WSJ: China not requiring Green Dam software

The Chinese government may be waving a white flag in response to all the criticism of its Green Dam filtering software.

Beijing won't force the widespread installation of the Internet filtering program on PCs and other consumer products, China's industry minister, Li Yizhong, said Thursday, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The Green Dam interface. (Credit: University of Michigan)

In June, China said it would require that the Green Dam software be installed on all computers sold in the country by both domestic and foreign manufacturers. Since later that month, China has been delaying a permanent decision on whether to demand the software be preinstalled on all PCs.

According to the Wall Street Journal story, Li said that the intention was for the software to be installed voluntarily by individuals or their parents. He stressed that the program is intended to protect children from pornography and other harmful content and that attempts to politicize the issue or "attack China's Internet management system" are fanciful and irresponsible, the Journal reported.

China will still move forward with installing Green Dam in schools and Internet cafes across the country.

Since China announced the requirement of Green Dam, the software had been criticized on several fronts, putting pressure on the Chinese government to re-examine its decision.

In addition to protecting children from pornography, the filter was seen as a further attempt at censoring content objectionable to the Chinese government, also creating potential trade barriers and other headaches for PC manufacturers.

Experts also said the program is poorly developed and unsafe and would leave PCs vulnerable to hackers. One exploit popped up in late June that would allow attacks on computers outfitted with Green Dam.

[tylrwnzl]

I don't know if people realize this but the filtering software currently used in School Districts is very similar to the restrictions that Green Dam will be putting on students in China, minus the possibility of the government restricting access to anti-government material. Although the infastructure is already in place here so really the attempts of the Chinese government isn't much different than that of what is here

[ZetaZeta_]

HP isn't mandated to install filtering software on my personal laptop. There's a huge difference between School Districts blocking material, and the entire civilization blocking material. Now, I personally hate censorship in any form, but I can still understand why a School District would block some material (specifically non-educational, or more specifically, pornographic, violent, or crude in nature).

Even if the government didn't mandate my school censor such material, I would still ask my children's school to consider such censorship. We're all free to install filters on our home computers, and although I'm against a government filtering for me, there's not much I can do except request a filter on my school's PCs.

Anyway, my main point - although Green Dam + School Computers is similar to U.S. filter software in U.S. schools, I never really thought that was specifically why people were against it. Everyone is against the software being preinstalled on all PCs.

[jake3373]

Although, at my school, they block it at the server, not o individual computers. The server has the filtering software installed on it, which monitors internet traffic and will replace pornography, violent games, and spyware with a message that says "This page has been blocked......."

[Seaspray0]

No doubt the chineese government will make it sound like they are doing the public a favor by not requiring it.

[kieranmullen]

perhaps they should use opendns.com on their routers :-)

[EvanSei]

china is getting really good at taking a big fat steaming load on top of where they east. (have you seen what they put in their water)

[gggg sssss]

How do we know that they are not doing the exact opposite - preloading every computer they ship, especially Lenovo, with software that spies on everything that happens OUTSIDE china and send it back. The green siphon?