PC makers rush to embrace censorship
PC makers race to comply with China’s Web filter
BEIJING – Days before a deadline abruptly imposed by China, computer makers are scrambling to comply with an order to supply Web-filtering software with PCs amid concerns about what it might do to their reputations.
Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Inc. and Taiwan’s Acer Inc. – the top three global producers – are asking regulators for details of the order that takes effect July 1 to provide Green Dam Youth Escort software with every laptop and desktop PC sold in China.
The conflict reflects the clash between the authoritarian government’s efforts to control information and China’s high-tech ambitions.
China is important to PC suppliers both as a major manufacturing site and a fast-growing market. It accounts for up to 80 percent of world production and sales that state media say rose to 147 billion yuan ($21 billion), up 12.8 percent from 2007.
The conflict comes as Beijing launched new criticisms this week against search giant Google Inc., which a foreign ministry spokesman accused Thursday of spreading pornography. Chinese users were unable to connect to Google’s main site or its China-based service, google.cn, from late Wednesday into Thursday.
Government regulators say Green Dam must be supplied with every computer to prevent children from surfing the Internet for pornography. But technical analyses of the software – developed by a previously unknown Chinese company – have shown embedded programs to filter out content the government deems politically objectionable.</em>
Whats freedom of speech worth? Apparently not as much as Chinese money.
