New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. today issued the following statement after shareholders at Yahoo! voted on a measure to prompt Yahoo! to establish a set of standards to enforce policies to protect global freedom of access to the Internet. Preliminary reports indicate that the measure received 15 percent of votes cast in its favor at the company’s annual meeting in Santa Clara, CA, this morning.
 
“We must ensure that we preserve the fundamental human rights of freedom of speech and freedom the press. We cannot allow political censorship of the Internet to threaten the integrity and viability of the industry at home and abroad. I will encourage the New York City Pension Funds to resubmit the measure next year.”

Thompson filed the measure on behalf of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, New York City Police Department Pension Fund, New York City Fire Department Pension Fund, Teachers’ Retirement System of New York and New York City Board of Education Retirement System. The Funds collectively have 4,504,336 Yahoo! shares valued at $123,689,067.

The resolution – which can be viewed at www.comptroller.nyc.gov - called for management at Yahoo! to institute policies, with certain minimum standards, to protect freedom of access to the Internet.

Those standards ask that: Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system; the company will not engage in pro-active censorship; the company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship.  The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures; users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that users are trying to access; users should be informed about the company’s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties; and, the company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available.

Besides Thompson, the Pension Fund trustees are:

New York City Fire Department Pension Fund: Mayor Michael Bloomberg; New York City Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta (Chair); New York City Finance Commissioner Martha E. Stark; Stephen Cassidy, President, James Slevin, Vice President, Robert Straub, Treasurer, and John Kelly, Brooklyn Representative and Chair, Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York; Peter Gorman, President and Captains’ Rep., Nicholas J. Visconti, Chiefs’ Rep., and Stephen J. Carbone, Lieutenants’ Rep., Uniformed Fire Officers Association; and, Joseph Gagliardi, Marine Engineers Association.

New York City Police Pension Fund: Mayor Michael Bloomberg; New York City Finance Commissioner Martha E. Stark; New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly (Chair); Patrick Lynch, Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association; Michael Palladino, Detectives Endowment Association; Edward Mullins, Sergeants Benevolent Association; Anthony Garvey, Lieutenants Benevolent Association; and, John Driscoll, Captains Endowment Association.

New York City Employees’ Retirement System: New York City Finance Commissioner Martha E. Stark (Chair); New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum; Borough Presidents Scott Stringer (Manhattan), Helen Marshall (Queens), Marty Markowitz (Brooklyn), Adolfo Carrion (Bronx), and James Molinaro (Staten Island); Lillian Roberts, Executive Director, District Council 37, AFSCME; Roger Toussaint, President Transport Workers Union Local 100; and, Gregory Floyd, President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 237.

Teachers’ Retirement System of New York: New York City Finance Commissioner Martha E. Stark (Chair); Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm, New York City Department of Education; and, Sandra March, Melvyn Aaronson and Mona Romain, all of the United Federation of Teachers.

Board of Education Retirement System: mayoral appointees Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Alan Aviles, Philip Berry, David Chang, Tino Hernandez, Augusta Souza Kappner, Richard Menschel and Marita Regan; Borough President appointees, Martine G. Guerrier (Brooklyn), Vivian Farmery (Manhattan), Michael Flowers (Queens), and Joan Correale (Staten Island); and employee members Thomas J. Malanga of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 891, and  Milagros Rodriguez of District Council 37, Local 372.

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