China Demands PC Makers Add Site-Censoring Software

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 9, 2009 - 9:11am.

Beijing - The government of China has mandated that, starting next month, PC makers include software on new computers that will help censor content it deems to be "unhealthy," Reuters reports. The "Green Dam-Youth Escort" software is necessary "in order to consolidate the achievements of the online campaign against pornography, combine punishment and prevention, protect the healthy growth of young people, and promote the Internet's healthy and orderly development," according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The software has already been added to over 50 million locally-made PCs offered to rural Chinese citizens, and has otherwise been downloaded over 3.27 million times.

Reuters cited sources who had tested the software as saying that it maintains a "black list" of banned sites that is not publicized, and, while the company that makes the software maintains that users may turn it off at any time, foreign technicians testing the software "were unable to uninstall it."

"Along with the rest of the industry ... we are studying it and working with relevant government and other parties to seek clarifications," Dell spokeswoman Faith Brewitt told Reuters. Some 40 million PCs were sold in China last year, according to IDC data.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124440211524192081.html