This worthy proviso seems to have been forgotten in the case of Shi Tao, a journalist now serving 10 years in jail after Yahoo ratted on him to Chinese security authorities.

Last week Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom group, revealed that Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) had provided authorities with details that helped to identify and convict Shi, who was sentenced in April.

The verdict in the case reveals that Yahoo gave the Chinese authorities access to Shi’s personal Yahoo e-mail account, the message that contained the “state secret” he was convicted of leaking and his computer’s identifying IP address.

Ironically the rather anodyne “top-secret” information leaked by Shi referred to dissidents involved in China’s most famous populist uprising. An uprising that arguably paved the way for the country’s slightly more liberal regime and the entry of companies like Yahoo.

The offending text was a message sent by the authorities to Shi’s newspaper, the daily Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News), warning journalists of potential trouble from dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Chinese state security insisted during the trial that the message was “jue mi” (top secret).

Shi took notes when the message was read out in the office and later used his Yahoo e-mail account to contact various pro-democracy publications in the west. He asked that his identity be protected and the piece was eventually published in an online forum under his self-invented pseudonym 198964 — the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

But, according to the judgment, thanks to “account holder information furnished by Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong)” 198964 was soon unmasked.

“We already knew that Yahoo collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well,” the press freedom organisation said.

Yahoo did not return calls for comment.

Reporters Without Borders claims Yahoo has allowed the Chinese version of its search engine to be censored for years. In 2002 Yahoo China signed a pledge of “self-discipline” vowing to refrain from posting “pernicious information that may jeopardise state security”. It seems to be paying off for them. Just last month Yahoo got the go ahead to buy a 40% stake in Alibaba.com, China’s largest online commerce firm.

But as Reporters Without Borders said: “It is one thing to turn a blind eye to the Chinese government’s abuses and it is quite another thing to collaborate.”
Yahoo is not the only internet firm that seems happy to axe its core principles when it comes to China. Both Google, whose mantra is “Do no evil”, and Microsoft, have been attacked for censorship in China.

Microsoft blocked the use of certain words, including democracy, freedom and human rights, by users on parts of its new Chinese internet portal. The words trigger this message: “This item should not contain forbidden speech, such as profanity.”

The internet has proved the greatest democratiser of information since the invention of the printing press. Internet use in China has quadrupled since 2000 and ultimately censorship may prove futile. There are a growing number of “anonymiser” programs and services that make it almost impossible to track information sent or searched from a PC. Keeping tabs on 94m users may prove beyond the reach of even China’s censors.

But in the meantime wouldn’t it be better for companies, especially ones that claim such high moral standards, to stand up to censors rather than to join them?