【纽约时报】China Holds Firm on Software Filter, U.S. Firms Say

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China Holds Firm on Software Filter, U.S. Firms Say

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/business/global/19censor.html?_r=2&ref=global-home
By EDWARD WONG & ASHLEE VANCE   Published: June 18, 2009

BEIJING — American computer makers say the Chinese government has not backed down from a requirement that Internet censorship software be installed on all computers sold in China after July 1, despite reports this week that the rule had been relaxed.

In a further sign that Chinese officials are trying to assert more control over the Internet, the city of Beijing wants to recruit 10,000 volunteers by the end of the summer to monitor Internet content, said an employee of the Beijing government’s Spiritual Civilization Office.

The plan was presented in a document submitted on Tuesday by the Beijing Internet Administration Office during a meeting in which city officials discussed “purifying social civilization,” said the employee, who identified herself only by her surname, Guo. She said she had no further details on the plan.

Chinese authorities have also sought to assert control by directly warning some on-line services. On Thursday, for example, an Internet watchdog group supported by the Chinese government criticized the Chinese-language site of Google for linking to a large number of “pornographic and vulgar” Web sites. The group, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center, said www.google.cn had already been criticized in January and April, and that it must purge the offending links.

China’s central and local governments use a vast array of programs and human monitors to block Internet content deemed pornographic or politically harmful to the Communist Party, such as Web sites discussing Tibet or the Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement. The system of censorship is nicknamed the Great Firewall, and savvy computer users in China usually use software to circumvent it, thinking of it as nothing more than a headache. But the government’s new requirement that computer makers install censorship software on computers has inflamed anti-government sentiment among Chinese computer users.

Many people say the software, called Green Dam-Youth Escort, will be used to block Web sites with politically unacceptable content even though officials insist the software will be used primarily to censor pornography.

Computer experts also discovered severe weaknesses in the software that would allow hackers to hijack the computers of people using Green Dam. Chinese officials say they have ordered the developers to fix these problems.Trade groups representing the major American computer makers, including Hewlett-Packard and Dell, which have significant market share in China, have been asking the Chinese government to rescind the requirement that Green Dam be pre-installed on computers, but have seen no change in the Chinese position.

Four trade groups based in the United States have sent a statement to the Chinese government asking it to “to reconsider implementing its new mandatory filtering software requirement.”

On Wednesday, the major American computer makers said they had yet to hear anything concrete from China regarding the possibility of making installation of Green Dam optional.

Lenovo, the largest computer maker in China, did not answer requests for comment.

Confusion was sown on Monday when China Daily, the official English-language newspaper, quoted an unnamed official in the software department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology saying that the government was requiring that the software be offered on a CD packaged with new computers or be placed on hard drives as set-up files only.

Some people interpreted that as the Chinese government backing down from its requirement that Green Dam be installed. But soon it became clear that the unnamed official was not speaking in any authoritative role. Telephone inquiries to the ministry’s software department seeking clarity on the government’s position were not answered. No government official has given any statement this week indicating that the policy has changed.

On May 19, the ministry issued a directive to computer makers that required pre-installation of Green Dam on the hard drives of new computers or put on the CD with installation software that usually is packaged with new computers. A second clause of the directive requires that Green Dam be saved in back-up files on the computer.

The directive makes clear that the Chinese government intends to ensure universal use of Green Dam on new personal computers in China.

The software and its two Chinese developers are coming under legal attack by Solid Oak Software, a company based in Santa Barbara, Calif. The company is accusing the two Chinese developers, Jinhui Computer System Engineering and Dazheng Human Language Technology, of stealing programming code from software called Cybersitter that was developed by Solid Oak.

Solid Oak said it was weighing legal options, and has sent letters to Hewlett-Packard and Dell demanding that the companies halt distribution of any computers with the Green Dam software.

Edward Wong reported from Beijing and Ashlee Vance from San Francisco. Huang Yuanxi contributed research from Beijing.