Who needs lawyers? Two more Chinese dissidents sue Yahoo

Yahoo won't be yodeling from the mountaintops after being served with yet another lawsuit this week that focuses on the company's actions in China. Chinese dissidents Zheng Cunzhu and Guo Quan filed suit against Yahoo in a California federal court, but two things set the new lawsuit apart from previous dissident lawsuits against Yahoo: the plaintiffs are representing themselves, and neither has actually been arrested.

The lawsuit is filed under the Alien Court Statute and the Torture Victim Protection Act, two laws that allow foreigners to file suits in US courts. Most of the complaint focuses on Yahoo's willingness to turn e-mail and personal information over to the Chinese authorities and its decision in 2002 to voluntarily sign the "Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry" (the name alone should probably have given Yahoo pause). It also contains the usual accusations that the company's conduct has led to "battery, false imprisonment, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence" and more.

But that's not actually what happened to the plaintiffs. Zheng Cunzhu describes himself as a student leader during democratic movements back in 1989 and a member of the "China Democracy Party." A businessman, Zheng worked in China up until 2005 and invested in "two factories and one trading company in Anhui province." He moved to the US in January, 2006, and a month later learned to the Chinese dissident Li Zhi had been arrested after Yahoo turned over information to the Chinese government.

Zheng had also used a Yahoo e-mail account to join the same political party that Li had. The news made him scared to return to China as he feared that he might meet a similar fate, so he remained in the US and lost "the real control of the two factories and his investment and property were under danger of being defrauded by others."

Guo Quan was an associate professor at Nanjing Normal University, but he lost his job there after publishing a series of letters calling on Chinese leaders to allow multiparty democracy. His complaint about Yahoo doesn't concern the company's e-mail system at all; instead, Guo asserts that his personal name and the name of his garment company (which features his personal name) have both been blocked by yahoo.com.cn. When he tries to search his own name, the system tells him, "The keyword you typed may involve in [sic] illegal contents."

Yahoo no doubt wants the mess in China to simply go away, but every few months a similar story seems to find its way into the media. Suing the company in US courts appears to be the newest strategy, and the new lawsuit is only one of several. The issue of cooperating with the Chinese government has also exposed the company to Congressional hearings, and it didn't help that Yahoo failed to mention certain information to the committee when it first appeared.

"Yahoo claims that this is just one big misunderstanding," said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) last year (Lantos died a few weeks ago). "Let me be clear—this was no misunderstanding. This was inexcusably negligent behavior at best, and deliberately deceptive behavior at

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