Intellectual Property Law

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif. died early this morning at the  Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland. He was 80 years old.

Lantos, born in  Budapest, Hungary, is known as the only Holocaust survivor to have served in the US Congress. THREAT LEVEL readers last heard from the co-founder of the congressional human rights caucus in November when he begrudgingly acknowledged Yahoo!'s settlement with the relatives of Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning, the Chinese dissidents that it had helped to imprison by surrendering their e-mail addresses to the mainland Chinese authorities.

Earlier that November, Lantos had held a hearing that shone the klieg lights on Yahoo!'s presence in China. Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang testified and apologized to the Chinese dissidents' wife and mother, who sat directly behind him as he received a verbal drubbing from Lantos and his foreign affairs committee colleagues.

Lantos' most colorful quote from the Yahoo hearing came when he expressed his deep disappointment with the scripted and wishy-washy responses from Yahoo executives Yang and general counsel Michael Callahan.

"Technically and financially, you are giants, but morally, you are pygmies," he said, adding "I simply cannot begin to tell you how disappointing your and Mr. Yang's testimony was."

See Also:

• Relatives of Chinese Dissidents Look on as Yahoo Execs Endure ...
• Yahoo Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing Members Blast Yang, Callahan
• Yahoo Chief Executives: We Didn't Lie
• Yahoo in China Hearing Begins