Group: Yahoo Helped China Jail Journalist [pdf]

A French media watchdog said Tuesday that information provided by Internet powerhouse Yahoo Inc. helped Chinese authorities convict and jail a journalist who had written an e-mail about press restrictions.

The criticism from Reporters Without Borders marks the latest instance in which a prominent high-tech company has faced accusations of cooperating with Chinese authorities to gain favor in a country that’s expected to become an Internet gold mine.

Later: LATimes opinion piece: Just Following Orders in China [pdf]

IMAGINE WHAT would have happened if during the 1980s an American communications company had provided information that allowed the South African government to track down and imprison an anti-apartheid activist. That is pretty much the moral equivalent of what Yahoo has just done in China in the case of journalist Shi Tao. And the California-based Web giant deserves the same kind of public opprobrium that would have fallen on any Western firm that dared to publicly cooperate with the enforcers of apartheid.

Also Yahoo Says It Gave China Internet Data [pdf]

A/k/a, the future of Samba: Microsoft sues European Commission [pdf]

“Microsoft has filed an application for annulment with the Court of First Instance specifically concerning the issue of broad licences for the source code of communications protocols,” a company spokesman said.

The issue relates to server software which runs printing, filing and security tasks for small office groups.

[...] Essentially, the Commission and Microsoft agreed that those who received the protocols could not make them public.

The makers of open-source server software, who publish the source codes for all products they issue, cried foul at this, however, and Microsoft and the Commission decided to leave the issue to the Court of First Instance.

Slashdot: Microsoft Sues EU