We reported on Setpember 7 that Yahoo! helped China jail a dissident journalist. We also quoted Reporters Without Borders, who said that: “The company will yet again simply state that they just conform to the laws of the countries in which they operate […].”

Today, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang is reported by the International Herald Tribune and others to have said that the company legally had no choice but to provide Chinese authorities with information used to prosecute and jail Chinese journalist Shi Tao for 10 years.

Very predictable, in other words. We found it very interesting to read in Rebecca MacKinnon’s excellent blog that it should not have been necessary for Yahoo! to be comply with the Chinese authorities to be legal.

Yahoo! chose to provide an e-mail service hosted on servers based inside China, and it was this choice that made them subject to Chinese legal jurisdiction in this case. If Yahoo! had chosen to place the mail servers outside of China, they would not have had to aid the Chinese authorities in suppressing the freedom of speech, MacKinnon argues.

She writes: “When providing information and communications services in countries where political dissent is illegal, companies like Yahoo! need to ask themselves tough questions about whether they can realistically operate “within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based” while still upholding their ethical values. Assuming they have some.

“Even if they don’t, they must recognize that helping put dissidents in jail is pretty bad for the corporate image. Is the damage to Yahoo!’s reputation, credibility, and consumer trust really worth whatever money they’re making on that Chinese-language e-mail service?”

See also: In China’s cyberspace, many do not know the dangers of a careless phrase (Physorg.com)