Taipei City councilors demanded an apology from Internet portal Yahoo-Kimo Taiwan yesterday for including “Taiwan” in its list of illegal Chinese characters, preventing users from applying for accounts using the word.
Although Yahoo-Kimo immediately removed the ban early yesterday, some Taipei City councilors from the pan-green camp challenged the search engine company over its purpose of banning the word “Taiwan,” and demanded that it offer an apology and a clear explanation as to why it put the ban in place.
“We don’t know if Yahoo-Kimo was cooperating with China in suppressing Taiwan or the company adopted a new set of rules because the new government is pro-China,” Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Lee Ching-feng (李慶鋒) said yesterday at the Taipei City Council.
Lee said only Yahoo-Kimo Taiwan and China banned users from applying for accounts with the word “Taiwan.” The term could still be used to apply for an account on Yahoo Hong Kong and Canada during the ban.
When applying for an “ilovetaiwan” e-mail account on Wednesday, the Web site refused the request, saying “the username contains illegal characters,” rather than “the username is being used,” he said.
Lee said Yahoo-Kimo Taiwan removed the ban after a provisional meeting yesterday.
Independent Taipei City Councilor Chen Chien-ming (陳建銘) joined Lee in condemning Yahoo-Kimo Taiwan, and called on the public to write letters to the company protesting against its moves.
Chen and Lee also urged the public to boycott the company if it failed to explain the matter.
In response, a public relations representative from the company told the Taipei Times by telephone yesterday that the company initially restricted user names containing the word “Taiwan” because the local Internet search giant refers to itself as Yahoo, Taiwan. To the company, “Yahoo” and “Taiwan” are two keywords that are intricately linked, the representative said.
Yahoo-Kimo also has a list of keywords not allowed on its e-mail account names such as words related to pornography and brand names, said the representative, who wished not to be identified.
To prevent any misunderstanding, the Internet portal had blocked all e-mail account applications with user names containing Taiwan for fear people might affiliate them with the company.
But because of the overwhelming amount of feedback it received from users, the online auctioneers lifted the ban on Wednesday afternoon, the representative said, adding that the technology has been updated at midnight yesterday.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY ELIZABETH TCHII
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
BACK TO WINTER: A strong continental cold air mass would move south on Tuesday next week, bringing colder temperatures to northern and central Taiwan A tropical depression east of the Philippines could soon be upgraded to be the first tropical storm of this year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, adding that the next cold air mass is forecast to arrive on Monday next week. CWA forecaster Cheng Jie-ren (鄭傑仁) said the first tropical depression of this year is over waters east of the Philippines, about 1,867km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), and could strengthen into Tropical Storm Nokaen by early today. The system is moving slowly from northwest to north, and is expected to remain east of the Philippines with little chance of affecting Taiwan,
RSS