Google, Yahoo shareholder demands
p2pnet.net News:- Shareholders in a major New York pension fund are demanding that Yahoo and Google respect online free expression.
The demand came in a shareholder resolution filed by the New York City Pension Fund which, says Reporters Without Borders, owns nearly 400 million dollars of stock in the two companies.
“The city`s pension fund, which mainly handles the retirement funds of city employees, owns 687,244 shares in Google worth 276 million dollars and 4,372,277 shares in Yahoo! worth 110 million dollars,” says RWB.
The resolution affirms that, “Technology companies in the United States that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian governments have an obligation to comply with the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.”
A resolution calling on Cisco Systems to produce a report on his activities in repressive countries was backed by 29 per cent of shareholders in a vote at the company`s annual shareholders meeting on 15 November,” says RWB, adding:
“Individual shareholders have filed a shareholder resolution on freedom of expression with Yahoo! Like the one filed by the New York City Pension Fund, it will be put up for vote at the company`s next annual shareholders meeting.”
Below is the New York City Pension Fund shareholder resolution:
INTERNET CENSORSHIP
Whereas, freedom of speech and freedom of the press are fundamental human rights, and free use of the Internet is protected in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom to receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers, and
Whereas, the rapid provision of full and uncensored information through the Internet has become a major industry in the United States, and one of its major exports, and
Whereas, political censorship of the Internet degrades the quality of that service and ultimately threatens the integrity and viability of the industry itself, both in the United States and abroad, and
Whereas, some authoritarian foreign governments such as the Governments of Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam block, restrict, and monitor the information their citizens attempt to obtain, and
Whereas, technology companies in the United States such as Google, that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian governments have an obligation to comply with the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and
Whereas, technology companies in the United States have failed to develop adequate standards by which they can conduct business with authoritarian governments while protecting human rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression,
Therefore, be it resolved, that shareholders request that management institute policies to help protect freedom of access to the Internet which would include the following minimum standards:
1) Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system.
2) The company will not engage in pro-active censorship.
3) The company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures.
4) Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access.
5) Users should be informed about the company`s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties.
6) The company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available.
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
Reporters Without Borders – Yahoo! and Google asked to respect free expression in shareholder resolution filed by New York City Pension Fund, December 14, 2006
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December 24th, 2006 at 7:16 am
THIS IS VERY INTERESTING,AS YOU KNOW YAHOO IS CHANGING THERE FORMAT,AND AS A POSTER AT THE SITE AND IN MY OPINION I BELIEVE THAT CENSORSHIP HAS REARED IT’S UGLY HEAD, MY FIRST INKLING OF THIS, AFTER POSTING SOMETHING ON THERE MESSAGE BDS, OUT OF ALL THE POSTERS, A MAGIC ARROW WOULD APPEAR POINTED TO MY NAME, 15 OR SO REQUESTS AS TO WHAT THIS MEANS. HAS MET WITH SILENCE IT FEELS LIKE I MAY HAVE SENTENCED MYSELF TO A GULAG IN MEXICO. IS THE AMERICAN GOV, GETTING A COPY OF MY POST. AM I ON SOME LIST THAT IN THE EVENT SOMETHING HAPPENS IN THE USA, I’LL BE ROUNDED UP AND PUT IN A QUIET PLACE, THANKYOU FOR OPPORTUNITY TO POST THIS. KARL MATTSON