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China backpedals on filtering software
China's authoritarian government has withdrawn from the load order of Internet filtering software on all new equipment after an outcry from citizens for the relative freedom of life online.
Legal challenges, demands and satirical cartoons was part of a broad-based effort to scuttle the initiative since it was announced earlier this month.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Chinese computer users are not required to use or install the software Dam Green Youth Escort – although the software still will come pre-installed or be included on a CD with all equipment sold on the mainland from July 1.
"The use of this software is not mandatory," said the official, who would not give his name, as is customary with Chinese officials.
Executives at the company that created the software had said earlier that it is possible to uninstall Green Dam, but it was not clear until Tuesday that the new government regulation does not penalize people who chose not to use it.
The shift marked a small victory for a growing movement against censorship in China. Internet users, in particular, have expressed growing frustration with official efforts to control and restrict online content. Internet in China has encouraged the public and open to the public the tools they need to mobilize around a cause, such as exposure of corruption or stop a project believes the public health threat.
Although the government claims that the software is to block violence and pornography, users who have tried it say it also prohibited from visiting sites with discussions about homosexuality, mentions the ban on Falun Gong spiritual group and even images pigs because the confuse software with the naked human bodies, according to press reports in Hong Kong.
Many Chinese Internet users have mocked mercilessly software, which is available as a free download.
Creative critics have published at least a dozen variations of the barrier of "Green Girl" imagined as a busty Japanese cartoon character, anime-style in a military cap and a mini dress that totes a bucket of soy sauce – is considered a disinfectant – For cleaning dirt Web sites. An online image, has the title "Big Brother is watching you" scrawled on the bottom.
Requests and at least one Legal challenges have also been launched. Beijing lawyer Li Fangping petitioned the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last week demanding A public hearing on the "legitimacy and rationality" to force computer manufacturers to include software on each unit sold. Li said Tuesday he has not has received a response from the ministry.
Hengjun Yang, 45, a known blogger and novelist based in the southern city of Guangzhou said that Chinese parents today are more inclined to demand a free and open Internet pornography on a free but faulty filter.
"On the Internet, can do many things and we can criticize the government. This was not possible before, "he said." After having used the Internet as this, now can not tolerate is limited. "
Yang cited the central role of the Internet to expose and criticize several recent scandals of special interest to parents, such as pollution of infant formulas with the industrial chemical melamine and research showed that schools collapsed more easily than other buildings during the earthquake Sichuan last year.
"In the past two years, all miserable about what happened with regard to children is revealed primarily through the Internet, although some government officials, especially local ones, would not go out, "Yang said.
Online forums also helped build support Deng Yujiao for a karaoke bar waitress 21 years old who stabbed a local official to death after he demanded sex from her.
A court Deng ruled Tuesday that he acted in self defense and not face the death penalty. The outpouring of support for women through the Internet in recent weeks led local government to take the extraordinary step of pledging that he would receive a fair trial.
China has world's largest system of surveillance and Internet censorship and has published numerous regulations in response to growing trends and other blogs. But much more open than print well controlled in the country and television media.
Control content online has also become increasingly difficult with the explosion of the Internet population in China now largest world with 298 million users. Chinese blog writers total of 162 million.
Green Dam is the most intrusive government yet, and censorship extending hard disk of the user, and can even bind non-Internet software, such as text editors to crash if a line in the blacklist, as practitioners of Falun Gong is written.
PC makers will determine if the software is preinstalled on the hard disk or a CD enclosed and will be obliged to inform the authorities how many computers have been distributed with the software.
Critics have argued that the deployment of software in a manner so widespread take people to a greater self-censorship among Chinese net users, as they are forced to fear that the program might still be working in secret in the background, even after being deleted.
Green Dam testing by independent researchers have also found that the software makes computers more vulnerable to security threats.
Computer scientists at the University of Michigan, said in a report last week that the program contained "Serious security vulnerabilities due to errors programming ", and recommended that users protect themselves by uninstalling Green Dam immediately.
The Michigan report also said a Green Dam look at the code seemed to show some of it was lifted from a U.S. manufacturing program CyberSitter filtering, which raises questions about violations of intellectual property related to the software. The manufacturer of that program, Solid Oak Software of Santa Barbara, California, plans to seek a court order, but recognized that a new legal ground for the company.
Yunchao Wen, a former journalist who blogs under the name Bei Feng, said that many now expect the government will go a step further and scrap the 40 billion yuan ($ 5.8 million) order for the software.
"When the government uses taxpayers' money, must think clearly if necessary or not, "Wen said." If you bought something that people do not use, then what is the point of spending all that money? "
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