China could be punishing Google for U.S. push back against its censorship program
On Friday, China ordered Google to halt some search features that it said violated China’s laws to filter pornographic and vulgar content. But analysts say that this is really China slapping Google because of protests made by U.S. companies over the Chinese pornography censorship program called Green Dam-Youth Escort, reports the English-version China Daily website.
China told Google to 1) stop searches of foreign pages on the Chinese-version site google.cn, 2) Clear out of its search results material deemed pornographic or vulgar, 3) Turn off the “suggested search keywords” function that appears as users type. Google agreed to comply, and the keyword suggestion service promptly stopped working on google.cn (although it remained operational on the English-version site, google.com).
But the hubbub is more likely over China looking for justification to introduce its new controversial anti-pornography filter Green Dam, researchers and Chinese netizens say. The government wants to use Google to show all the nasty stuff on the Internet so they can step in and say they need to control it. The Chinese government has ordered that the Green Dam software must be included in all computers sold on the mainland by July 1. The Chinese government paid 41.7 billion yuan ($6 million) for the software.
But only the government deems Green Dam necessary, it seems. Chinese citizens have opposed Green Dam. And last week, U.S. company, Solid Oak Software, claimed that Green Dam includes software pirated from it. The company says Green Dam allegedly uses code written in the proprietary format used by CyberSitter, Solid Oak’s online content filter targeted at parents. Solid Oak has sent cease-and-desist orders to Lenovo, Acer, Gateway, Sony and Toshiba, following similar orders sent to Hewlett-Packard and Dell earlier last week.
With that ugly situation raging, opposition to Green Dam from the U.S. has mounted in more forms. A rather tepid letter, signed by 19 trade groups, was sent to the Chinese government last week asking it to reconsider its position on forcing PC manufacturers to include Green Dam.
But the Google wrist slap could be the last straw that actually causes someone powerful enough to step in and get China to change its mind. Today, the U.S. government lodged a formal complaint about Green Dam, reports InformationWeek. The story says.
“Officials from the State Department, the Commerce Department, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative met with officials from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Commerce Ministry to express concern about the filtering mandate, a State Department spokesperson confirmed Monday.”
While you can’t blame Google from wanting to pursue the almighty Yen by selling online advertising in that giant emerging market, the project seems to have been under an ill omen from the getgo. Google hired former Microsoft executive Kai-Fu Lee to establish the Chinese site in 2005, which promptly lead Microsoft to sue Google. This week’s China vs. Google go-round marks the third between the pair. The government had already found Google to be in violation of its anti-smut laws twice earlier this year. Google isn’t alone. just the most internationally visible site to be targeted. China has shutdown thousands of other Web sites and issued warnings for many other major Internet portals as well.
Do you think the U.S. government’s formal complain pack enough of a punch to stop the Green Day program as planned?
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