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China Faces Piracy Suit Over Censorship Software

Posted by kdawson on from the green-dam-blues dept.

angry tapir writes "Web software filtering vendor CyberSitter has filed a $2.2B lawsuit against the Chinese government, two Chinese software makers, and seven major computer manufacturers for their distribution of Green Dam Youth Escort, a controversial Web filtering package the Chinese government had mandated to be installed on computers sold there. Researchers at the University of Michigan found that Green Dam copied code from CyberSitter."

2 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I'll take Sovereign Immunity for the block by abigor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Exactly. The makers of this software aren't hoping for a settlement. They just want to make the rights infringement public, and lawsuits attract publicity.

    Everyone knows that Chinese "programmers" cheerfully copy whatever they get their hands on. This lawsuit is the legal equivalent of a press release.

  2. Re:I'll take Sovereign Immunity for the block by jsse · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Exactly. The makers of this software aren't hoping for a settlement. They just want to make the rights infringement public, and lawsuits attract publicity.

    On top of making a publicity, it's actually a profitable move. It's so obvious(at least to civilians Chinese like me) the China Government is intending to create another listed company by giving monoplization power to a private company created Green Dam. Law suits like that, international or local, would greatly affect the risk profile and directly affect the estimation of stock value. For mutual benefit, that listed company would pay for the royality eventually. CyberSitter could cheerfully accept compensation as a settlement in the future.

    Everyone knows that Chinese "programmers" cheerfully copy whatever they get their hands on. This lawsuit is the legal equivalent of a press release.

    To tell you the true, in the case of Green Dam, these programmers are not copying codes, they copied the binary directly, and they don't even bother to change the company name in the executables. XD

    But you're right in the sentance "Chinese porgrammers cheerfully whatever they get their hands on". In fact, they're the huge supporter of opensource programming. (I'm recruiting opensource programmers there and I've never found short of them. :)