At News.com, Anne Broache reports:
Politicians on Wednesday attacked Google, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Yahoo for declining to appear at a briefing about China's Internet censorship and called for a new law to outlaw compliance with such requirements.
The four technology companies said earlier this week that they were not able to schedule an appearance with short notice but would testify at a similar House of Representatives hearing scheduled for Feb. 15.
"These massively successful high-tech companies, which couldn't bring themselves to send their representatives to this meeting today, should be ashamed," said Rep. Tom Lantos, the California Democrat who is co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which organized the briefing.
"With all their power and influence, wealth and high visibility, they neglected to commit to the kind of positive action that human rights activists in China take every day," Lantos went on. "They caved in to Beijing's demands for the sake of profits, or whatever else they choose to call it."
Link to story. More background on the story — and the full text of response statements submitted to Congress today by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft — in this politech post: Link.
Reader Comment: Matt Browner-Hamlin from studentsforafreetibet.org says,
Students for a Free Tibet launched NoLuv4Google.com today to help people "break up" with Google on Valentine's Day.
We have online actions for them to take part in, resources to form protests at Google offices, downloadable images, lists of alternatives to Google, testimonials for them to read written by people who've broken up with Google, and answers to some FAQs about our campaign. We've also formed an online action for people to tell Microsoft and Yahoo how they feel about their ongoing partnerships with the Chinese government. We also have a video blog post up on our blog, Tibet Will Be Free.
The blog also currently has a script that changes the Google homepage for any local Google domain to our jammed Google logo — "I'm feeling lucky" is replaced with "I'm feeling repressed".
