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
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