(Relatively) good news from China for the World Wide Web as a whole today: The government today announced it will (partially) back down over its controversial internet monitoring filter software “Green Dam Youth Escort”. As a reminder, the software is supposed to protect Chinese web users from harmful content, especially from online porn, and was to be made mandatory with all PC shipments in the country from July 1 this year.
But today Li Yizhong, China’s Minister of Industry and Information Technology, said this won’t happen, at least not to that extent. Even though some PC makers started shipping Green Dam with their hardware to Chinese customers already, Yizhong made clear it’s up to the makers if they ship the software with their PCs or not.
But all’s not well in China’s web scene: Yizhong also said the mass installation of Green Dam in public spaces such as schools and Internet cafes won’t be stopped. In addition, the government is still working on improving the software and doesn’t rule out the possibility of either forcing PC manufacturers to ship different filter software or Green Dam with their hardware in the future.
China’s Green Dam initiative apparently inspired the Malaysian government, which started publicly thinking about censoring the web through a similar piece of software a few months ago. But (by coincidence?), Malaysia dropped these plans for the time being just today.
The software is stolen and doesn’t even work properly…lol @ China “the new superpower”…the stupider an idea is, the harder it is to implement…
I spend every other day of my life wondering if my own government could possibly be any more stupid…and all I have to do is look to China and realise that yes indeed, my government could be waay stupider.
It was doomed to fail, just like Internet controls in Iran.
Users could simply go to services like the Chinese version of http://www.yauba.com to bypass censors and search and browse the Internet privately.
+1
nice one on yauba. Took a look, and now it is my homepage.
The Chinese and Australian versions of Yauba also have private anonymous torrent searches! http://au.yauba.com
But the govt does not realize they are stupid. They think they are smart doing that.
Yeah well, they might be dropping Green Dam but the web has never been more censored than it is now. Plus, they’re developing new tactics to trace VPN traffic and block/throttle it. It’s not fun.
What always makes me wonder is this is all what we know is being monitored … what else is out there that people dont know about
Meanwhile, over in Germany, they are currently scaling up Internet censorship.
To say that these forms of mass internet censorship are pointless because its so easy to get past the filters does not get to the root of the problem, and the Chinese government knows this. The purpose of these filters is to control the flow of information to the majority of people, not to everyone. I’m sure they acknowledge internally that its impossible to completely stop all ways around their elaborate firewall.
There will always be a fringe element of Chinese (or Iran or wherever other) society that gets past the firewalls by using various techniques (proxies, proxy services (free and paid), anonymous browsing, trust me I know them all). The fact is though that most people in China have no clue that the internet is filtered. Most people, when told, that the internet is filtered, don’t care.
So in my opinion, for the most part, these strategies to deploy filters and firewalls works like a charm. And now that they are still going ahead with implementing the Green Dam stuff in places like schools and public places, the motives still see the same to me, if not more direct and intentional.
+1
+++10
Your Are Right!
Chinese?
The filtering/censorship will not happen at a PC level. It will happen at an ISP level.
Cisco was awarded a huge contract to overhaul the whole internet infrastructure in CN. The only reason they got that was because Saint John Chambers went to China and showed them how much control/filtering/tracking is possible with Cisco. And when in place, it will allow the government to filter anything they want and track any user they want.
More details? Just look on the Cisco Press Releases page and read between the lines….
I thought Cisco already helped China overhaul their internet infrastructure around 2002 or 2003.
I lived in mainland China for a while. I thought the Cisco-based filtering firewall was bad enough. That was possible to circumvent via Tor (onion router). Tor has never been blocked. The Tor website was blocked, however.
There is also an internet police force. Post something politically sensitive on a blog? Cops show up at your door. The cost of labor in China is pretty low, so even if it’s not very organized, it can have a real effect on the internet in China.
There are already enough measures to control the media in China. So I think this Green damn thing is sort of strange. What purpose does it really have? Surveillance? It’s obviously not about “protecting children”, that’s just the most effective excuse in the world.
LOL, they are filtering “homosexual content.”
With young men outnumbering young women 2 to 1 in some areas due to female infantacide, I guess it is a legit concern that those “leftover” males may wander to the other side.
“We want to protect your children from the internet.” That’s their excuse. It’s the same excuse used in the Internet Decency Act in the US and the Australian Labor Party’s proposed internet filter. And then there is the terrorism or nationalism excuse, and the protection of intellectual property excuse. It’s really scary.
Many people don’t realize that, if they have a problem with something on the internet, they can support legislation about that specific issue (right or wrong), and no central authority must systematically control the internet. If someone wants to “protect children”, they can start their own ISP or proxy service. And if someone in the government wants to monitor our activities, they will either have to do it secretly, without legal precedent, or propose legislation that protects privacy while enhancing security.
We must protect the children from the Internet…it’s our responsibility.
Hello, smart western people, you’re all “warm heart” ! Do you think that you have known Chinese culture enough when you talk about this thing? Do you really learn about Chinese people? Green Dam is aimed to protect the children, if you want, you can shutdown it, even uninstall it. Please remember that not all Chinese people hate it and not all Chinese people agree with it. It’s just a common case in China. — comment from Guangzhou, China
ha!! u really think green dam’s aim is to protect the children? come on, don’t be so navie. it’s just a excuse. look at it’s filter word, most is releted political. yeah, it can shut down, but it shound’t be existed. why such a rubbish software worth ￥40M? first most money can go to someone’s pocket, second, it can control people’s mind. yes, some idiot like this, but most people don’t like this. fuck Communist party — comment from china too.
OK, we can’t agree with each other. In fact, we have a choice to install/uninstall Green Dam on your will. first, i agree that it’s too expensive. second, the mind can’t be controlled by it — just a small software.
http://www.techchinaonline.com/online/green-dam-is-coming.html
小盆友
The aim of this software is good but the way it does is totally wrong..that’s all i know
You need to cover in depth FOE (Feed Over Email). Sponsored by U.S. Gov’t to bypass China filtering on the DL. Saw it Reuters.