March 8, 2006 (IDG News Service) Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday denied providing Chinese authorities with information that led to the arrest of a Chinese journalist on charges of incitement to subversion.
Reports emerged Tuesday that journalist Li Yuanlong was charged last month for using a Hotmail account to post articles on an overseas Web site under a pseudonym.
"Microsoft did not assist the Chinese government in this action, nor have we shared any of this customer's personal information with the Chinese authorities," Microsoft spokeswoman Charlene Chian said in an e-mail.
Li has been under arrest since September last year, but the news that he used a Hotmail account to post his articles came out only this week.
U.S. Internet companies, including Microsoft's MSN division, have faced criticism over their operations in China.
Earlier this year, Microsoft acknowledged censoring the blog of Zhao Jing, a Chinese journalist, at the request of Chinese authorities. As a result of that case, the company amended its policy to say it would remove blogs only after receiving a formal legal order.
Yahoo Inc., meanwhile, was widely condemned for handing over information to Chinese authorities about two Yahoo e-mail accounts. The information was used to jail the owners of the email accounts on charges of revealing state secrets and incitement to subversion.
Elsewhere, reports indicate that a dissident in a previous Chinese Net-censorship case has been released after serving a three-year sentence.
Cai Lujun, a former businessman and Internet dissident, was released from a Chinese prison on March 3, after completing a three-year sentence for incitement to subversion, Reporters Without Borders, a media advocacy group, said Tuesday.
Cai was imprisoned in Shijiazhuang, China, in March 2003 for posting online a series of articles that were critical of the Chinese government and called for democratic reforms. During a closed trial held in October 2003, Cai was sentenced to three years in prison.
At the time of Cai's arrest in 2003, Reporters Without Borders called for leniency in his case, saying Cai was just voicing his opinions online.
The charges brought against Cai stemmed from four articles -- titled "Towards Chinese democracy," "These wretched second-class citizens," "The present political monopoly and its weaknesses" and "Guidelines for rebuilding and leading the country" -- that he authored and posted on a foreign Web site, Reporters Without Borders said.