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Yahoo gives $1 million for Georgetown fellowship on international values

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
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Elinor Mills
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Yahoo, which has been criticized for providing information to the Chinese government that landed a journalist in prison for 10 years, is giving $1 million to Georgetown University to establish a fellowship fund to research the link between international values and Internet technologies.

"Yahoo is excited about forming a partnership with Georgetown University on global values and technology. This commitment is another step in our efforts to be actively engaged on issues that arise at the intersection of human rights and the Internet," Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang said in a statement.

The money will be used to support a Yahoo Fellow in Residence and two Junior Yahoo Fellows at the School of Foreign Service's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy over the next eight years. The fellows will study "how international values impact the development and use of new communication technologies such as how the operation and regulation of the global internet affects personal privacy, freedom of expression, education, socio-cultural change and cross-national contacts among civil society groups," according to the statement.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is working with Google, Microsoft, Amnesty International and other industry representatives, human rights groups, academics and socially responsible investors to create principles on freedom of expression and privacy to guide company behavior when faced with laws, regulations and policies that interfere with human rights, says Yahoo spokesman Jim Cullinan. The participants talk every other week and are hoping to have the principles finalized later this year, he said.

"We were outraged that someone was jailed for freedom of speech and we expressed that to the government of China and to our State Department," Cullinan said. Yahoo's partner Alibaba provided the information to the Chinese authorities and Yahoo "had no idea" what the premise of the investigation was, he added.

"We certainly believe and understand that human rights issues are validÂ… thatÂ’s why we're working with others to make (governments) accountable and to ensure that freedom of speech is protected," he said. "This is not about assuaging guilt. This is about tackling a very difficult problem."