PC giants ship Chinese censorware anyway
Found on The Register on Wednesday, 01 July 2009
In shipping the software, Acer, Sony, and Lenovo have defied cease and desist letters from US software maker Solid Oak, which claims that Green Dam includes code pirated from its Cybersitter net-filtering tool.
"Not only does it block access to a wide range of web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes, it actively monitors individual computer behavior, such that a wide range of programs including word processing and email can be suddenly terminated if content algorithm detects inappropriate speech."
This is confirmed by Brian Milburn and Solid Oak. If you type certain words related to Falun Gong, for instance, Green Dam shuts down your notepad.
Green Dam was never about blocking porn; that's just the official reason to introduce the total monitoring of citizens and the censorship of unpleasant information. If you look around, that's nothing limited to China. Many other nations do the same, although they use a more narrow reasoning: fighting child porn and terrorism. Everybody knows that it will fail, but if you speak up against it, you are suddenly a child abusing terrorist supporter.