Chinese Minister Says Green Dam is Optional

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China has said the country will not force citizens to use the controversial Green Dam software.

The Wall Street Journal today reports that China's industry minister Li Yizhong has said China will not force mass installation of the Green Dam Internet filtering software on PCs and other consumer products.

The Green Dam software has been heavily criticized ever since the Chinese government announced that all computers shipped in mainland China after July 1 must ship with the software preinstalled. However, according to Yizhong, the government had always intended for the software to be optional and up to the individual who is responsible for the computer.

"The choice is yours," he said according to WSJ, saying that the regulations were unclear when first released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in May.

Li went on to say that the software is aimed at protecting children from unsavory content on the web. Nothing is mentioned about the software's alleged ability to block political content as well as porn. Just after the Chinese government announced its Green Dam plans, a report by Harvard University researcher Isaac Mao (who had seen the code) detailed that there were two kinds of keyword documents in the software: one related to pornographic content, and the other related to political content. Mao said the documents related to political content are much, much bigger than those related to pornographic content.

Jane McEntegart
15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • justiceguy216
    So it looks like "Who's Nailin' Palin" would be filtered out by either document...
    Reply
  • megahunter
    Green Damn
    Reply
  • leo2kp
    haha @ justiceguy
    Reply
  • scook9
    we are still talking about this?

    I thought this was dead....
    Reply
  • chaohsiangchen
    I wonder what is the fate of those who declined Soprano's "deals that they can't refuse."
    Reply
  • Wayoffbase
    It's optional until they figure out how to actually make it work. The good, compliant communist party loyalist will just be the beta testers.
    Reply
  • Come on who cares! I'm getting sick of all these articles lately about useless news in China.
    Reply
  • omnimodis78
    The 'Green Dam' is a farce, a distraction! All data on the net is monitored and filtered by the central government, with or without the green dam... Just open up google.com and in another window open google.cn and type in "tiananmen square" and compare the two... This is just a basic example. My chinese friend showed me a Chinese computer site and he wrote a comment on there which included the phrase "central government tiananmen" and when he hit the save button he got a pop-up stating that his comment could not be posted due to "inappropriate" language. It's unreal!
    Reply
  • griffed88
    omnimodis78The 'Green Dam' is a farce, a distraction! All data on the net is monitored and filtered by the central government, with or without the green dam... Just open up google.com and in another window open google.cn and type in "tiananmen square" and compare the two... This is just a basic example. My chinese friend showed me a Chinese computer site and he wrote a comment on there which included the phrase "central government tiananmen" and when he hit the save button he got a pop-up stating that his comment could not be posted due to "inappropriate" language. It's unreal!
    Just did that...crazy...
    Reply
  • Shnur
    As a guy that lived in USSR I can tell you by "people's choice" they actually mean that it is up to you, but if you don't, there's going to be big consequences.... (like Apple iPhones blowing up in your faces so you throw yourself of a 10 story building because you searched with Bing and tryed to educate himself with a dictionnary...)
    Reply