China puts Green Dam plan on ice

Published Jul 7, 2009

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BEIJING: Several PC makers in China were including controversial internet-filtering software with computers being shipped last week - despite a government decision to postpone its plan to make such a step mandatory.

Beijing's decision to delay the requirement that the filtering software - known as Green Dam - be pre-installed or supplied on disk with all computers sold in China averted a possible trade clash with the US and Europe. But the move by some makers to include the software anyway could reignite complaints by Chinese web users.

A government newspaper said regulators would be reviving the plan to make Green Dam mandatory at some point - a move that would disappoint opponents, who hoped that the government would drop the effort.

Taiwan's Acer Inc, Sony Corporation and China's Haier Group said Green Dam would be supplied on disks with all computers for sale in China. Taiwan's Asus Inc said it would also do so, while Taiwanese laptop maker BenQ Inc said the system was on the hard drives of its computers.

Acer was supplying the software because disks already had already been packed with PCs before the government postponed the plan, company spokeswoman Meng Lei said. Other companies did not give reasons for supplying the system.

Hewlett-Packard Inc said it was working with the US government to get more information and declined to comment. Dell Inc did not respond to questions about its plans.

Chinese authorities said Green Dam was needed to shield children from violent and obscene material online, but experts who examined it said it would block material that the government deemed politically unacceptable.

An official of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said said last week that regulators would be reviving the plan to make Green Dam mandatory.

Beijing operates extensive internet filters to block access to material considered obscene or subversive. Still, Chinese web users were outraged by Green Dam, which would have raised screening to a new level by putting it on all computers. The controversy affects computer-makers globally, as China is both a major market and the production site for up to 80 percent of the world's PCs.

Washington and the EU have complained that Green Dam, imposed abruptly in May, might violate China's free-trade pledges because manufacturers had been given too little notice and no time to comment. Producers had little time to test the software, made by an obscure Chinese company, and industry groups warned that it might cause security problems.

American diplomats have been talking with Chinese officials about the plan, which European Union officials have also objected to.

Green Dam is already in use in Chinese internet cafes, and manufacturers said it had been supplied since early this year with PCs sold under a government programme to subsidise appliance purchases in the poor countryside. - Sapa-AP

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