China's backs down from mandatory Green Dam software for new PCs

Slim ray of hope for China's PC users...for now.

The glorious Peoples Republic of China has backed down from its demand that all PCs sold in the country include its home-grown web filtering software called Green Dam from today.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the postponement on Xinhua, China's official news agency, late Tuesday. It said that the delay is to allow computer manufacturers more time to prepare for the rollout.

The announcement didn't disclose a new deadline for PC makers to start preloading the software, but said that the Ministry will install Green Dam on PCs in Chinese schools and Internet cafes and will offer it as a free download for users who want it.

Green Dam was promoted by the Chinese government as an anti-pornography Internet filtering measure, but researchers who examined the software reported that it also is set up to block other content that China's authorities deem inconvenient.

It was also found to create security vulnerabilities and facilitate surveillance of individuals' PCs, stored files and Internet activities.

In addition, researchers reportedly discovered that Green Dam contained software code and data files belonging to Solid Oak Software, a US based software company.

Following that disclosure, Solid Oak sent warnings to PC manufacturers that they could incur legal liability if they shipped its proprietary code in their systems.

Then, entirely coincidentally, Solid Oak said it had been targeted by hacking attacks that appeared to originate in mainland China and that attempted to compromise and damage its computer systems.

Most computer manufacturers had objected to China's mandate that they pre-install the Green Dam software, but Sony has already begun shipping PCs that include it and Acer reportedly said that it planned to comply.

Although Sony said it would include a disclaimer about the risks inherent in the Green Dam software, apparently its fear of losing sales in the growing Chinese market trumped its concerns about shipping insecure PCs that enable official surveillance or infringe software copyrights belonging to a US software company.

There's another interesting possibility occasioned by this Green Dam situation that we haven't seen remarked upon elsewhere.

Sony Entertainment has been heavily involved in threatening and filing lawsuits against peer-to-peer filesharing users that it has accused of infringing its music copyrights. In the one so-called music 'piracy' case that has gone to trial in the US, an individual Internet user was assessed $80,000 in statutory damages per file that she allegedly had downloaded.

Wouldn't it therefore be fitting and entertaining, if Sony Electronics were to be sued successfully for software copyright infringement and ordered to pay up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each and every PC it shipped to China containing the allegedly infringing Green Dam software?

Not that either Sony corporation would ever admit that the two situations might be even remotely comparable, but it would fun to see how they might react to being hoisted by their own petard, so to speak.

As to Green Dam, though, it's not yet clear why China backed down on its demand that PC makers include the software. Computer industry trade associations, as well as Internet users within and outside China, protested the Chinese government's authoritarian Green Dam mandate.

But as recently as last week, China's government had been intransigent about the issues raised against its web filtering mandate.

The US government had notified China that imposing Green Dam on computer makers might be a breach of its trade obligations under World Trade Organisation rules. That might have been what gave the Chinese government pause with its Green Dam web filtering decree.