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Chinese Government To Mandate PC Censorware

An anonymous reader writes "The Chinese government has sponsored the development of a censorware package called 'Green Dam Youth Escort'; basically a PC-resident IP blocker that gets regular updates of banned sites from a central government site. There are now plans afoot to mandate that all new PCs sold in China be shipped with this software. The rationale behind this is to 'stop the poisoning of children's minds.'"

3 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State by JordanL · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You understand what communism in any form is, right?

    The state controls commerce and corporations.

    Xinhua is a "private" news company... owned by the Chinese government. Its ingenious really, because "public" implies some sort of transparency. The Chinese government is very fond of the federal government privately owning corporations... you have the same level of control and no specter of transparency or oversight.

  2. Fight communist tyranny and opression by Ellis+D+Trippman · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    It should be the patriotic duty of any American company shipping PCs to China to crack and re-write this software and ship PCs with a hacked version that bypasses all Chinese censorship but still appears to be the official party censorware.

  3. Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State by jandersen · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    No private corporation in China does anything without the express blessing of the Chinese government.

    For a statement as sweeping as that I think you should provide some solid sources; in my experience what you say is not true. Of course, if one were to take your words to the extreme, they would imply that people in private corporations in China need to get explicit permission to go and get a new piece of paper or go to toilet. But even if we read more permissively it just doesn't add up to what I have experienced. I would say in some cases private companies actually have more freedom than in Europe or America - it certainly seems to be easier to go and build a new factory in China than in most places in Europe. In other cases there are more restrictions, but all in all it isn't all that different from the West - the usual picture of the Chinese state having total and direct control over everything is just silly, 'cos they don't.