International Law

Net Filtering Software ? The Plot Thickens

By Stan

No great surprise that yesterday’s big story, that the government is mandating that all PCs sold in China come pre-installed with a web-filtering program, has been picked up by the foreign press and is being discussed ad nauseum here in China.

Far be it from me to avoid a popular story.

A couple of things since I wrote about this yesterday:

1. The policy seems to be a bit more coercive than initial press reports suggested. PCs will be required to have the software pre-installed, with a CD copy included for backup purposes only. Manufacturers will also be required to report sales volume to the government for compliance purposes, although enforcement of all this seems like it would be rather difficult.

2. The most intriguing bit of verbiage in the government’s official announcement is brief mention in the first paragraph that the government is picking up the tab for the software service fees for the first year.

3. It has also been reported that the government has paid/will pay the software manufacturer, Jin Hui (?????????????), a whopping 4,170,000 RMB. What’s going to happen after the first year? And if the company will be charging fees after the first year, you’d think the government could have had the first year’s fees waived by the company in return for this sweet monopoly. Good thing I’m not a cynic or I would say that the whole thing smells kind of funky.

4. I’m still not all that incensed about this. As I mentioned yesterday, this appears to be about porn. I know, technically the software could be used to filter sites that include other sorts of content, but I’m just not getting the feeling that this is some sort of super-secret invasive Orwellian political crackdown software. Seems too rushed, slipshod, and way too easy to get around. Consider the statement of Jin Hui’s Chairman, Zhang Chenmin, who is working really hard to allay fears:

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Very short summary: don’t worry, you can turn it off.

5. Reports are already coming in from folks who claim that the software is making their processors unhappy (i.e. taking up a significant amount of system resources) or even crashing PCs. There are also a lot of foreign companies who are pissed off that this major requirement is being thrust upon them with little if no advance warning — the implementation deadline is July freakin’ 1st. I heard this afternoon on the China Hearsay Grapevine (just made that up - actually a friend told me) that the foreign IT community chatter on this over the past 24 hours has been heavy, perhaps a bit panicky.

OK, this whole fiasco may die a quiet death sometime late this year or early next year (just my opinion). Lucky for Chairman Zhang of Jin Hui that his company is getting paid half a million dollars regardless, huh? By the way, everyone is curious to know who this guy’s father/brother/uncle is and how Jin Hui got this contract.

More on this as the facts dribble in.

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Full post as published by China Hearsay on June 09, 2009 (boomark / email).