Chinese porn blocker switched off

A nation's youth rejoices, celebrates with western filth.

The internet censorship system that the Chinese government decreed should be installed on every computer distributed within its borders has been permanently cancelled.

It's not certain whether the Middle Kingdom's U-turn was brought about by public pressure (incredibly unlikely), security fears (significantly more likely) or the impending threat of legal action over copyright infringement (ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!), but it seems that Green Dam will no longer be forcefully installed on every single computer manufactured in or imported to China.

The software - Green Dam Youth Escort by its full name - as well as acting as an Internet filter to protect kiddies from porn, was also capable of spying on users and reporting on undesirable activities as well as blocking political sites perceived as unfriendly to the Communist regime, like a lot of western media sites.

A number of OEMs, including Acer, Lenovo, Sony and Asus, had already begun shipping boxes with the software pre-installed in anticipation that the government mandate would become permanent policy, but the mandate was indefinitely postponed just hours before it would have gone into effect.

We can only hope there are highly embarrassed execs staring at their shoes in boardrooms all over the world, mumbling something about having done it 'cos a big boy told them to.

The official line was that the postponement was put in place to give box builders more time to get with the programme, but a new deadline was never announced.

California insecurity company Solid Oak also threw a spanner into the works when it threatened to take legal action over code included in the Green Dam application, which it claimed had been stolen.

International pressure was also levelled against the Chinese authorities, with trade groups from all over the world writing indignant letters of protest about issues of security, privacy and system reliability. That must have really put some fear into those Chinese bureaucrats.

The final straw on the Green Dam camel's back could well have been that it didn't support 64-bit operating systems.
Now the only people who seem to be mourning the demise of Green Dam are Chinese hackers who were looking forward to seeing how long it would take them to hack into the software and take it over.