China delays plan for mandatory "Green Dam" internet filter

There's not exactly much more details than the headline on this one, but China's official Xinhua news agency is reporting that the country is delaying its plans that would require that the so-called "Green Dam Youth Escort" internet filtering software be installed on all PCs sold in China. That requirement was set to go into effect on Wednesday but, as we have seen, it's caused no shortage of controversy during the lead up -- both because of the general nature of the software, and because of some piracy and security issues that could leave PCs with the software vulnerable to an attack. No word on a new date just yet, but it seems unlikely that the delay will be an indefinite one.

[Thanks, James]

[tech guy @ Jun 30th 2009 6:56PM]

A bunch of old men running China who have probably never seen a computer.

[Adderz @ Jun 30th 2009 7:24PM]

The entire world is run by old men with no idea, not just china.

The exception to the rule is Stephen Conroy, an Australian politician who has stopped at nothing to get the internet filter introduced in Australia. Hes not old, just a dumb ass.

[fanman @ Jul 1st 2009 4:08AM]

I thought that most of the world was run by most of its occupants.

[loocas @ Jul 1st 2009 6:23AM]

fanman, get your facts together...

Besides, China is the icon of SHITTYNESS! I personally try to boycott China by NOT buying stuff "Made in China", however, it's damn tough, almost impossible, those red bastards got us by the balls! They can destroy our economies in days if they wish to! F*ck that!

[Oscar5453 @ Jun 30th 2009 6:57PM]

Suckers!

Damn them with their limiting of Human Civil Rights.......We should stop selling electronics to them....but the $$$$ Speaks louder than their rights it seems.

[paul34 @ Jun 30th 2009 7:04PM]

>> We should stop selling electronics to them

Have you looked on the underside of the electronics sold to YOU, lately?

[BlurMagic @ Jun 30th 2009 8:14PM]

/facepalm yourself.

[robpetrin @ Jun 30th 2009 8:19PM]

A seminal moment in the history of stupidity.

[all things considered @ Jun 30th 2009 6:59PM]

is it just me or is the whole green dam idea completely ridiculous? censoring what chinese citizens are exposed to would only work if they never had any contact with the outside world and thus had no expectations for what 'could be'. and considering the software seems to make each system even more vulnerable to viruses, worms, etc., isn't china just doing itself a great disservice in the long run?

give the people pr0n ftw

[Don @ Jun 30th 2009 8:46PM]

lol, cant remember the anime i saw this scene in...
But the underground will rule the world

[paul34 @ Jun 30th 2009 8:12PM]

Did you seriously just try to create logic out of tyranny and censorship?

[the4thheat @ Jul 1st 2009 11:18AM]

Well it's not quite all that hardcore anyway, and I really do think the main use is for parents to block what their kids see. Believe it or not people in China might fully well not want their kids to read uncensored (political) stuff since you generally don't want your kids to attract the attention of the government. That and the fact that it really is a porn filter too.
Now if they really wanted to censor and spy on people with this they'd just rootkit all the computers sold in China instead of simply making the computer manufacturers include filtering software. The software isn't even pre-installed so only people who actually want to censor their own internet would install it.
Frankly all the Chinese attempts at censorship have only ever made it difficult for your "average Joe" to get unfiltered access to the internet. But every computer savvy person in China knows how to bypass the great firewall, and if this is really another attempt at censoring it's definitely one of those things where only computer illiterate people would actually be affected by it. For one thing even if an OEM decided to pre-install it for some moronic reason you would only need to be computer literate enough to reinstall Windows. Or install Linux.
And that's only if you're insanely paranoid, because the uninstall function appears to work just fine and actually removes everything save for a few log files:
http://www.cse.umich.edu/~jhalderm/pub/gd/
I really think this is just a Chinese law mostly meant to force PC manufacturers to bundle porn filtering software "for the kids" in China. It's easy to misinterpret as another attempt at forced internet censorship since China does that with the great firewall, but I actually think this is just a kludgy and crappy piece of software meant for parents to censor what their kids see. Otherwise it wouldn't be a voluntary install, and it sure as heck wouldn't have a functioning uninstall feature.
To state the rather obvious, since green dam updates it's blacklist off an existing list of blacklisted URLs, if China really wanted to block those URLs they would just put it into the great firewall and that would be that. It seriously would make no sense to use voluntarily installed software that could be uninstalled to block those URLs, unless you realize that it's just meant for parents to filter the internet for their kids.

[Jaques Marron @ Jun 30th 2009 7:17PM]

Woop. Finally something that i tip, i get thanked xD

[chuuchdizzle @ Jun 30th 2009 7:19PM]

Damn I want it to go into effect already, just imagine how fast it will be before china becomes the largest botnet EVAR!

[FT @ Jun 30th 2009 7:20PM]

Green Dam Internet Filter?

More like Goddamn Internet Filter......

[iceco @ Jun 30th 2009 9:26PM]

lol, U R damn right,these old men are damning internet...

[massive_98 @ Jun 30th 2009 7:22PM]

As long as China keeps its population from exploding I don't care what the fuck they do with their internet. My sympathy has to be earned, and populations that don't understand family planning are on the bottom of my sympathy list.

No matter what the chinese government does, there will be ways of getting around it. The days of propaganda and censorship are just about over.

[BlurMagic @ Jun 30th 2009 8:18PM]

I think censoring youth often has a somewhat opposite affect of what you want it to... Because... Well. The youth get curious. And they start experimenting...Then...

Ahhh shit. The population just doubled.

[Christopher Y @ Jun 30th 2009 7:24PM]

theres way too much porn anyway. wish i had a filter to stop myself

[CheshireCat @ Jun 30th 2009 7:31PM]

I feel your pain, buddy.

[paul34 @ Jun 30th 2009 8:13PM]

You'll get tired of it eventually.

[BlurMagic @ Jun 30th 2009 8:19PM]

I filter my porn habits by you know... Actually getting laid. Just saying. You should try it some time.

[Doug @ Jun 30th 2009 8:45PM]

Indeed. I have had filters.. But I always hack my way around them... Sadness indeed!

[Michael @ Jun 30th 2009 7:35PM]

I suppose the economic effect will be that the Chinese will either buy ahead of this stupid regulation to avoid having the software on their PC. They will build their own PC - System builders dominate desktop PC sales in China anyway so I suppose that China is also going after Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Linux.

I am happy to live in America. Who instead does not scare me with regulation but infringes on my privacy (and just does not tell me and thus I am blind and not annoyed.)

[Phoenix @ Jun 30th 2009 7:42PM]

It's better than them preloading Greeday...

[Doug @ Jun 30th 2009 8:46PM]

windows 98 was awesome! or was that 2000? or ME?! AHHH I DON'T REMEMBER!

[John @ Jul 1st 2009 2:32AM]

win95cd

[Goatee Man @ Jun 30th 2009 8:28PM]

When are people just going to give up on trying to control the Internet? Seriously...

[keithwwalker @ Jun 30th 2009 8:33PM]

"Green Dam Youth Escort" - they got the translation all wrong! All computers will now be provided with youth prostitutes, who are expert at the 'Green Dam' technique....

[Gabe @ Jun 30th 2009 9:00PM]

Apparently the government is thinking of canceling the contract with the company that made the software because of piracy issues.

[Jo @ Jul 7th 2009 5:27AM]

When you enter "六四" (6/4, Tiananmen Square Massacre) in Google.com, it will return normal information about the incident.
(related wikipedia, photo, youtube, blog...)

However, if you do the same thing at GOOGLE.COM.CN, it will never return any information about the incident. All you get is irrelevant information.At the bottom of the search, Google China will tell you "据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示" (some of the search results are not shown in accordance with local regulations and policies"

[Gabe @ Jul 1st 2009 2:22AM]

Funny how certain people think 6/4 is the most important thing that happened in China in the past however many years.

Maybe they should consider moving on.

[Kizorblade @ Jul 1st 2009 6:02AM]

Err. Considering loads of people got murdered by their government and there was no official inquiry.. I think it's important.

[loocas @ Jul 1st 2009 6:19AM]

Yeah, Gabe, like Americans, the next day after 9/11, nobody cared anymore... right?

[the4thheat @ Jul 1st 2009 12:03PM]

lol there was an official inquiry but I don't think you would like the conclusions it came to. It's actually pretty interesting to read what went down politically in China after the whole thing, since it forced most of the moderates in the party to take a much more hardliner stance and actually set back the amount of freedoms people were given for a long time.
One of the reasons why they're so paranoid about internet censorship is probably because Tiananmen happened, which convinced the rulers that outside governments were trying to stir up rebellion and overthrow the government. Which may very well be true, since this was the very end of the Cold War and 1989 is also the year the Berlin wall fell.
Most people in China know that freaking out the government generally just results in less freedoms, and given the massive improvement in economic and living circumstances most of them have enjoyed over the last 20 years there just aren't that many people who really want to go test the government when there isn't much to gain for it and a lot to lose.
Most people who live in China don't actually have much of a problem with the government. Since there's 1.5 billion people there, if even a tiny percentage of people actually cared enough to protest it would cause a of a lot of problems even if 99% of people didn't care, since 1% of 1.5 billion is 15 million people.
Of course this doesn't excuse their excessive censorship of anything even slightly political, and insistence on not letting people read alternate versions of history. It's probably actually a good thing that some things are censored, since the internet lets fringe groups feel like there's lots of people who think the same way-look at all the racist websites (like the guy who shot up that museum), terrorist websites, etc. But hopefully someday soon they won't be so insecure and paranoid about people trying to overthrow the government and will just let people read stuff like Wikipedia.
But the truth is that for probably 90%+ of the population of China, the only problems they have in their life are being solved by the current government. And while it stinks not being able to read Wikipedia without using a VPN, and it's annoying that youtube gets censored every other week at random, these just aren't huge enough issues that people are going to go risk pissing off the government.

[3Djesus @ Jun 30th 2009 9:53PM]

I was under the impression it was called ^Green Hell Youth Escort^, and anytime images or words, unapproved of by the Ch government, appeared onscreen, Glenn Danzig would popup and punch you in the eyes. Thankfully I'm tired and misunderstood.

[Agent .25i @ Jun 30th 2009 9:54PM]

So, this filter keeps you from looking at advertisements/images of eco-friendly underage hookers?

[aquaibm @ Jun 30th 2009 10:07PM]

That's a joke, and it is worth 3 million dollors.Oh ,man!