Green Dam on the Brink of Collapse

The controversial Chinese Internet filtering software project called Green Dam Youth Escort, which for a short period of time last year was pre-installed on new PCs sold in China, is close to shutting down. The development for the software has stopped and the maintenance team is facing financial problems as funding was cut.

Last year the government in Beijing mandated that all new computers sold in the country after July 1st must come with an Internet content filtering application called Green Dam Youth Escort. The program was developed under a government contract by the Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology Academy and Zhengzhou Jinhui Computer System Engineering.

However, it seems that the Chinese government only provided funding for one year, which has since passed. The BBC reports that the Beijing-based development team has already been closed down due to financial problems and the technical support and maintenance team in Henan is facing a similar faith if the government doesn't release any more money.

According Chen Xiaomeng, one of the project's managers, requests for additional funding have so far fallen on deaf ears. The government has not commented its plans for the software that was supposed to protect the country's youth from violent and adult content on the Internet.

Even since its release the Green Dam software was viewed by Internet freedom activists as a tool for the Chinese government to censor politically sensitive content. The program has been the subject of even more intense debate and criticism after researchers from the University of Michigan revealed that it is riddled with critical security vulnerabilities that could be exploited to create a massive botnet.

An US software company has also accused the Green Dam developers of reverse-engineering its own Internet filtering program called CYBERsitter and stealing its code. The company has since filed a $2.2-billion copyright infringement lawsuit against the Chinese government, Zhengzhou Jinhui Computer System Engineering and several PC manufactures who distributed the software.

After being accused of violating World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations, the Beijing government backtracked on its plan to deploy the software on all computers sold in China, but maintained the requirement for schools, internet cafes and public institutions. It was later reported that many schools began uninstalling it because it caused serious conflicts with other programs.

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