Essay Part 3

 Part 3:

As you can see here, Yahoo! was prodded by Chinese officials to hand over the information regarding the owner of the email address in question. In this case they did, breaking the trust they had with Shi Tao and basically handing him over to receive a prison sentence. There are deeper problems with this though. First off, we need to start with how companies operate in China. Basically, in order to operate a business on the Internet in China, you have to first get a license. This license binds you to Chinese law regarding the Internet, which means you have to comply with censorship laws. This leads to companies enforcing Chinese censorship laws and requests from the government to hand over information, or else risk the revocation of their business license. If this seems corrupt, it’s because it is. Both sides can be said to partake in the corrupt nature of this deal, as the companies know what they are getting into. This leads us to our second problem, the problem with companies themselves. Since there is little legislation that dictates consumer-corporate interaction on the Internet, companies are often left to make their own policies regarding these types of situations. In these cases their rules stay inflexible, which can lead to what some call human rights breaches. By revealing Shi Tao’s identity, Yahoo! breached his right of privacy and free speech.  Despite the fact that it was acceptable within its own code of conduct and China’s laws, it was in violation of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically articles 17 and 19. In this case Yahoo! acted according to it Chinese law in order to keep its license, however many call Yahoo! out for not taking into consideration the human rights aspect.

Corporations always have their own set of rules, a code for them to follow in order to do efficient business and keep things running smoothly. Such is the case with Facebook and other sites. With Facebook, creating an account under a fake name is against their policy. This policy makes sense in order to uphold an enjoyable atmosphere and create a stable business enterprise. No one wants to go onto Facebook and see twelve different accounts saying they are the same person. However, Facebook doesn’t take into account different situations where revealing ones identity may be the difference between life and death. Take for example the revolutionaries in Egypt. Many banded together on Facebook via pseudonyms, in order to protect themselves from Mubarak’s regime and the consequences they would face if caught. However, since most of their pages on Facebook are created by someone with a pseudonym character, Facebook removed them. This created uproar in the activist community, as many felt vulnerable and deceived. There are other instances where people have been inadvertently affected by new privacy settings that come with a new release of a product as well. When Google Plus changed its policy regarding privacy, it made it so people could see other peoples contacts, information, real names, everything. It was either this way or leave. This took many activists by surprise and they had to scramble to leave before their identities were revealed and they themselves prosecuted by their government.