Thursday, June 11, 2009

Having fun with China's censorship

Mozilla FirefoxFirefox: no effect via Wikipedia
Even weeks before the much-debated compulsory censorship software Green Dam Youth Escort has to be applied on all PC's in China, the Chinese geeks are shooting holes in the concept and the software itself. In an email Han Teng Liao, a PhD student in Oxford, summarized the current state of the debate (and gave me permission to use it here).
First, China's most popular anti-virus software (www.360.cn)identifies the future guardian of the Chinese internet users as badware.  (Source here). Second, the image processing software violates open source agreements. (Source here) Third, the software only works on Microsoft's IE, not on Firefox or other browsers.
Well, that sounds already fine for starters.
Rebecca MacKinnon gives a solid overview of all the issues involved here.
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