If the Internet is dedicated to democratizing the flow of information throughout the world, can it fulfill its mission in countries still under the grip of communism?

Considering the news from China, where officials of Yahoo admitted that they provided personal e-mail information which helped the authoritarian government imprison a journalist, the answer is an unequivocal no.

Shi Tao, 37, a reporter for Contemporary Business News in China's Hunan province, is serving a 10-year term for an act that would not be a crime in most of the world but is considered divulging a state secret at home.

His offense? In April 2004, he e-mailed to a Web site in the United States a summary of what was described as a routine Communist Party advisory about 15th anniversary demonstrations marking the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Yahoo's Hong Kong affiliate provided information about the electronic message that led to Shi's arrest. Jerry Yang, a Taiwanese national who was Yahoo's co-founder and lives in California, said the company had no choice but to comply with Chinese law, which requires cooperation with authorities.

Nice try, Mr. Yang, but all that proves is that Yahoo values its burgeoning business dealings in China more than quaint notions about democracy and privacy. And that's not surprising, given that the company recently paid $1 billion for a 40 percent share in a Chinese e-commerce firm called Alibaba.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the investment was the largest ever by a foreign company in China, which has nearly 100 million Internet users, second only to the United States.

Given the stakes for future business, it is likely that Yahoo and its competitors would do almost anything to remain in the good graces of the Chinese regime, which is reputed to maintain a huge spy apparatus to keep track of and filter what its people are learning via the Internet.

Microsoft, Google and Cisco all have been criticized by human rights groups for kowtowing to government demands to limit political discussion or block "sensitive" pages on Chinese Web sites.

One way the United States could stand up for democracy and help companies maintain the integrity of Internet communications is for Congress to fashion a law on Internet privacy patterned after an existing U.S. statute that prohibits American businesses from paying bribes in foreign countries.

Such a law would give Internet businesses a reason to stop ratting on their customers, like Shi Tao. The Chinese would resist, of course, but they want U.S. investment as badly as American concerns want to do business there, so maybe some sort of detente is possible.

The Internet's vast reach around the planet has transformed the world of knowledge. We would like to believe it also can be used to transform political systems and put democracy on the march.