14 DAY TRIAL // Solid Oak Software, a Santa Barbara-based company, plans to release a low-cost version of its Internet content-filtering solution on the Chinese market. The company wants its product to rival Green Dam Youth Escort, the controversial software that stole its proprietary code and used it without authorization.
The Chinese government dropped a media bomb earlier this year when it mandated that all new computers sold in the country beginning with the 1st of July should have an Internet content-filtering program called Green Dam Youth Escort pre-installed. Researchers and privacy groups immediately rushed to see what this new piece of software, in which China invested $6 million, was all about.
A team of computer experts from the University of Michigan soon released its initial findings after reverse-engineering the program. In addition to a warning that Green Dam was riddled with serious security holes, the researchers also noted that the application was using blacklists from CYBERsitter, a program with similar functionality developed by a company called Solid Oak Software.
Solid Oak Software eventually confirmed the copyright infringement and announced plans to file for injunctions against OEMs with a presence in the U.S. that agreed to distribute the offending application. The company also filed lawsuits against Jinhui Computer System Engineering, the developer of Green Dam Youth Escort, in both the U.S. and China.
The Chinese government eventually delayed the order to ship Green Dam with all computers sold in the country, but still forced schools and public institutions to deploy it. Just recently, it was revealed that many schools were unhappy with its performance and some even proceeded to uninstalling it, as it interfered with other programs that were critical to the educational process.
Solid Oak Software seems to have a personal vendetta against Jinhui Computer System Engineering. "They should be utterly humiliated, not just because they stole much of the core functionality, but even more so because they intentionally inflicted such a miserable product on a population of innocent computer users," the company's President, Brian Milburn, told IDG News Service.
Solid Oak plans to soon release a modified version of its CYBERsitter application, specifically tailored for the Chinese market, at a very low cost or even free, if possible. The new product will feature a user interface translated into Chinese and a new, URL-based filtering technology.
If the company's plan materializes, it will be interesting to see how it impacts the future of Green Dam. It is hard to believe that the Chinese government will drop its $6-million project and it is uncertain that Solid Oak's product will cover all its needs of filtering "potentially unhealthy Internet content." After all, Green Dam's approach is much more invasive than URL filtering.