Dissidents in China say that they still face danger in using the internet to spread their message, despite a pledge by Yahoo! to protect their right to confidentiality.

Yahoo! has settled a lawsuit that accused the US internet company of handing over information to the Communist Government, which led to the jailing and torture of two dissidents.

Although the terms of the financial settlement were not disclosed, Yahoo! has agreed to provide financial, humanitarian and legal assistance to the families and set up a human rights fund to pay legal aid to other imprisoned dissidents.

Announcing the settlement Jerry Yang, a founder of Yahoo!, said: “It was clear to me what we had to do to make this right for them, for Yahoo! and for the future. Yahoo! was founded on the idea that the free exchange of information can change how people lead their lives, conduct their business and interact with their governments. We are committed to making sure our actions match our values.”

At a congressional hearing in Washington this month Mr Yang apologised to the families of Shi Tao, a journalist, and Wang Xiaoning, who are both serving ten-year jail sentences after Yahoo! shared information with the Chinese authorities about their online activities.

In 2002 Mr Wang, an engineer, was detained by Chinese officials for writing pro-democracy articles on a Yahoo! Groups website. Mr Shi was arrested in 2004 after he forwarded an e-mail, directing him not to cover the Tiananmen Square anniversary, to an overseas website.

Yesterday dissidents wanting to share their thoughts with others in China said that the settlement would not reduce the dangers they faced. One man, who has spent most of the past 18 years in jail, said that Chinese wanting to exercise freedom of expression had no choice but to use the internet and thus expose their writings to China’s cyberspace police.

He said: “The point is, the authorities know exactly what is being said and being written by people with dissenting views. They know all these people. The only question is whether they want to pick someone up and jail them.”

Yahoo! had long argued that it had no choice but to cooperate with China in providing details of Mr Shi’s e-mail account since its server was in China and its contract was subject to Chinese law. The experience has made other providers, such as Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Hotmail, cautious about hosting their sites in China. They have told Chinese police seeking information from their US servers to apply through the US courts.

The vast majority of China’s 162 million internet users go online to engage in gaming, exchange instant messages and chat with members of the opposite sex. Only a tiny fraction are looking for a medium to voice dissenting views or to organise groups more political than a UFO club. The internet has brought huge freedoms of expression that could only have been dreamt of in China 20 years ago. Most people know where the line is, and few are interested in crossing it.

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