China gives up on Green Dam

Last week I wrote about the Malaysian government’s decision to not filter or censor the Internet. It was earlier reported that the government was considering the Green Dam program from China that would be installed in all computers, so that certain types of content would be blocked.

Well, it turns out that even China has now given up on Green Dam. The Chinese government had previously announced that all computers sold in the country would have to have the software installed by July 1.

This drew criticisms from amongst Chinese Internet users, who already have plenty of censorship to deal with, as well as from foreign computer makers.

Green Dam is produced by Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co. Its General Manager Zhang Chenmin told the state-run news agency Xinhua that his company had received more than 1,000 harassing phone calls and even death threats since news of Green Dam was first reported by the international media.

It’s doubtful that the Chinese authorities would care about an outcry by Internet users. But the protest from computer makers was something they can’t ignore just like that.

The US warned China that requiring Green Dam to be installed in all computers sold to China could be a violation of world trade regulations.

Not only that, the security researchers from University of Michigan found flaws in the program which could have allowed hackers to take control of the computer.

As if that was not enough, one American software company, Solid Oak, claims that Green Dam contained codes copied from its Cybersitter program that allows parents to control Internet access on their children’s computers.

Last but not least, even as a filtering program, it would not have been that effective as it was designed to work only with Internet Explorer and not with Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

It’s pretty safe to say that Green Dam was problematic on many fronts. On June 30, one day before the implementation deadline, the government decided that it was to become a voluntary program, that citizens can choose whether or not they wanted to install it in their computers.

Green Dam, however, would be installed on public computers in schools, cyber cafes and other public places.

To save face, Li Yizhong, China’s industry and information technology minister said the notion that Green Dam would be required on every new computer was actually “a misunderstanding” due to poorly written regulations.

Although this development would bring some cheer to Chinese Internet users, it doesn’t mean that they have unfiltered access to the net. It’s just not done at the personal computer level. China systematically blocks access to some websites at the ISP level.

These include some popular sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube because they contain some content that is critical of the Chinese government.

As I had mentioned in my article last week, government filters, no matter how good they are, can be bypassed by using anonymous proxy servers that hide the user’s identity. But the government can counter that by blocking access to these proxy servers. Of course new ones can emerge and the government will go after those as well. So, it’s an endless cat and mouse game.

And it is true that many Western Internet companies including Google and Yahoo! often give in to Chinese demands in order to do business there. There is no reason to think that would change much.

Still the successful derailing of the Green Dam project shows that when many forces work together, sometimes small victories can be achieved.

Oon Yeoh is editor for New Media at The Edge. He invites you to follow him at www.twitter.com/oonyeoh.