The Green Dam of internet censorship: US makes official complaint.

[azul]

US makes official complaint to China over internet censorship

~snip

China has ordered PC makers to load internet filtering software from a Chinese company, Green Dam, on all machines that go on sale in China from July 1. While officially directed at filtering out pornographic material, the order has raised concerns that it could give officials a far more powerful tool for blocking political content.

"We view with concern any attempt to restrict the free flow of information; efforts to filter internet content are incompatible with China's aspirations to build a modern, information-based economy and society," said Ian Kelly, a state department spokesman.

~snip

Chinese officials took action against Google late last week, ordering the search company to block access to international sites. Beijing said the action was a punishment for linking to pornographic material, though US internet executives say it was designed to direct public anger against a foreign internet service and distract attention from the Green Dam affair.

PC makers face an additional dilemma over deciding whether to install the software following a claim by Solid Oak, a California software company, that much of the code has been copied directly from its own internet filtering product.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3b3bd546-5ec5-11de-91ad-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1



Security tools for cheap crap: what an astonishing bargain communism and fascism have struck to pacify and control their populations. Make business, not war?

[Towlie]

1. Filtering software is abused everywhere around the world, including the USA.

Companies that provide the filtering software refuse to reveal their lists of filtered sites, giving the excuse that they don't want the lists to be guides for those who are searching for those sites. That's a lie. The real reason is to ensure that sites that are unfairly or inadvertently included on their lists have no way to know about it, no way to prove it, and no legal recourse against the software providers.

[Romulox]

2. Remember when sending China our jobs (plus the internet) was supposed to make China open up?

:rofl:

[azul]

3. There have been costs and benefits for the US and China from

opening up relations and trade, but the 10 billions people question is are all parties working toward a population-balanced sustainable future?

China has like 5 or 10 year plans. What has the US got? And it will increasingly be competition for resources -to prevent uprisings and to react to catastrophes.

[Romulox]

4. The US has negative population growth due to procreation.

All of our population growth is caused by immigration.

"China has like 5 or 10 year plans. What has the US got?"

Blaming China's overpopulation on a lack of US plan to reduce it's already negative population growth is a new one. :hi:

[azul]

5. Don't know how you came up with that direction.

what I was trying to say, apparently none to clearly, was that population problems are world-wide and every one and every country should be planning to prevent disaster. Instead of using the remaining resources and wealth to fight over oil, it should be put into investment into a nontoxic stable habitat for all life. We should by now realize what is good for us all.

(Sorry so late, just got off work.) :)