The NYT has an interesting report on the fallout in Washington of the capitulation of Yahoo, Google, Cisco and Microsoft to the requirements of the Chinese regime.

Now the companies are being pressed in Washington for fuller answers about their business practices in China and the implications for human rights. That pressure will escalate today when the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations questions officials of the four technology companies, along with other witnesses critical of their activities.

The subcommittee’s chairman, Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, plans to introduce legislation by week’s end that would restrict an Internet company’s ability to censor or filter basic political or religious terms — even if that puts the company at odds with local laws in the countries where it now operates.

Mr. Smith’s legislation, called the Global Online Freedom Act, however, would render much of what the Internet companies are currently doing in China illegal.

Among the act’s provisions is the establishment of an Office of Global Internet Freedom, which would establish standards for Internet companies operating abroad. In addition to prohibiting companies from filtering out certain political or religious terms, it would require them to disclose to users any sort of filtering they undertake.

Separately, the State Department announced the formation of a new Global Internet Freedom Task Force yesterday, charged with examining efforts by foreign governments “to restrict access to political content and the impact of such censorship efforts on U.S. companies.”

I bet those pesky Chinese are quaking in their boots.

The NYT report also has some interesting further information about the extent to which Yahoo has compromised itself:

The company, which has been providing Web services in China since 1999, has been criticized for filtering the results of its China-based search engine. But its bigger problems began last fall when human rights advocates revealed that in 2004, a Chinese division of the company had turned over to Chinese authorities information on a journalist, Shi Tao, using an anonymous Yahoo e-mail account. Mr. Shi, who had sent a government missive on Tiananmen Square anniversary rites to foreign colleagues, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Last week, Reporters Without Borders, a group based in Paris, revealed that a Chinese division of Yahoo had provided information to authorities that contributed to the conviction in 2003 of Li Zhi, a former civil servant who had criticized local officials online. Mr. Li is serving eight years in prison.

From today’s New York Times…

BEIJING, Jan. 5 – Microsoft has shut the blog site of a well-known Chinese blogger who uses its MSN online service in China after he discussed a high-profile newspaper strike that broke out here one week ago.

The decision is the latest in a series of measures in which some of America’s biggest technology companies have cooperated with the Chinese authorities to censor Web sites and curb dissent or free speech online as they seek access to China’s booming Internet marketplace.

Microsoft drew criticism last summer when it was discovered that its blog tool in China was designed to filter words like “democracy” and “human rights” from blog titles. The company said Thursday that it must “comply with global and local laws.”

“This is a complex and difficult issue,” said Brooke Richardson, a group product manager for MSN in Seattle. “We think it’s better to be there with our services than not be there.”

The site pulled down was a popular one created by Zhao Jing, a well-known blogger with an online pen name, An Ti. Mr. Zhao, 30, also works as a research assistant in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times.

Lots of stuff on the Web about this. Here, for example, is a translation of what Zhao has said about the experience on his blog-city site (mirrored at ZonaLatina.com):

On the afternoon when Microsoft deleted my space, I did not feel anything at all. A few days ago, I was at Peking University speaking to students and someone asked me whether MSN Spaces would be shut down on account of me. My response was, “When the warning comes, Microsoft will sell me out first. So everybody should feel free to use MSN Spaces.” I sensed that the day will be coming. Over the last days, the daily traffic was about 15,000, and then everything was deleted. Damn Great Wall, damn Microsoft. I will make Microsoft pay.

That night, I felt bad and I cried.

It is so hard to be a free Chinese person. This year, my blog was shut down twice because I supported media (Chinese Youth Daily and Beijing News). When I was in Hong Kong, I told the reporters that I know where the bottom line is. The problem is that when my fellow media are in trouble, it is my obligation as a member of the news media to offer support immediately. Under this type of moral obligation, personal bottom lines are irrelevant. One can continue to live meticulously and technically, but one must also have another side that puts everything aside to express true feelings.

One of the most interesting developments is a post by Microsoft’s most famous Blogger, Scobelizer, in which he says:

OK, this one is depressing to me. It’s one thing to pull a list of words out of blogs using an algorithm. It’s another thing to become an agent of a government and censor an entire blogger’s work. Yes, I know the consequences. Yes, there are thousands of jobs at stake. Billions of dollars. But, the behavior of my company in this instance is not right.

Some people within the Microsoft chain of command are reported to be taking this issue up. So they should.