It sounds improbable but the US companies that dominate the internet are begging their government for restrictive new rules or even laws to govern their overseas operations.

Stung by accusations that they are collaborating with China's repressive Communist rulers, Yahoo and Microsoft want to be relieved of hard decisions on how to deal with Chinese internet censorship. The idea is to pass the buck to US legislators or officials, who would then dictate how far companies could go in helping China to censor the media and track down political dissidents - both of which the internet companies have done with reprehensible alacrity in recent months.