The Green Dam filter that has caused much controversy over the last week may not be a “compulsory” addition for computers. Cui Jia of China Daily reports:
The authorities are only requiring PC makers to include the porn-filtering software, the Green Dam-Youth Escort program, in their products and not making it mandatory for consumers to use the filter, officials said Monday.
“The PC makers only need to save the setup files of the program on the hard drives of the computers, or provide CD-ROMs containing the program with their PC packages,” said an official of the department of software service under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, who did not want to be named.
PC users have the “final say” over installing the filter and recent reports of the government compelling them to use the software was “a misunderstanding”, the official said.
Oiwan Lam from Global Voices Advocacy writes about the government’s push back against the anti-Green Dam sentiment:
On June 10th, the central propaganda department issued a notice reminding all the media to report positively on Green Dam, Youth Escort, the filter and spyware to be installed in all PCs sold in China.
[…] Given the propaganda department’s notice, people were surprised to see that the government’s mouthpiece people.com.cn’s nationalistic “strong country” forum had created a special page (removed) and criticized the Ministry of Information Industry and Technology for taking the decision without consulting the public. Moreover, a poll in the forum showed that more than 80% of the netizens is against the introduction of the compulsory filter on their PCs.
However, the special topic page only stay[ed] online for two days, it was removed today (June 15), together with the poll.
