China has changed its tune about the Green Dam censoring software it commissioned from Jinhui. While PC makers were told the software must be included with all PCs sold in China by July 1, China is now saying Green Dam is not compulsory, according to AP.The Chinese government appears to be changing its stance on the
Green Dam Youth Escort filtering software, according to the
Associated Press.
AP has reported that, when reached by telephone, a member of the
Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, who would not give his
name, said the use of the Green Dam software was not compulsory.
On
May 19, the Ministry reportedly circulated a notice to PC makers,
stating that by July 1, all personal computers sold in the country must
be shipped with a copy of the software, which it said was to enable young people to surf the Internet protected from explicit adult content.
The mandate immediately raised business concerns for PC makers such as
HP, Dell and Lenovo, as well as privacy and human rights issues.
Computer virus and security concerns were later added to the list.
U.S. technology advocacy groups, including the Information Technology Industry Council, urged China to reconsider and posted a public statement.
We believe there should be an open and healthy dialogue on how
parental control software can be offered in the market in ways that
ensure privacy, system reliability, freedom of expression, the free
flow of information, security and user choice, they wrote.
Early testing of the software by the University of Michigans Computer
Science and Engineering Division found it to contain censoring script,
which blocked access or caused the computer to crash when it came up on
certain words, many of them related to Falun Gong or homosexuality.
Created by Chinese software maker Jinhui, whose owner said the software
could easily be deleted, the Michigan researchers also found that the
software maintained a log of the users activity, even after it was
seemingly uninstalled.
Lastly, the researchers additionally found Green Dam to contain serious security vulnerabilities, which
gave some hope that technological faults would give the Chinese
government the ability to back away from the software, without losing
face.
AP reports that China already has the worlds most extensive Web
monitoring and censorship system, and that operators monitor Web pages
and bulletin boards and delete content they feel is subversive.
AP estimates that approximately 40 million yuan, or $5.8 million, of
taxpayers money has already been spent on the software, and that PC
makers will be required to tell authorities how many computers have
already shipped with the software.