China's Web Filtering Controversy Escalates With Censorship, Anticompetition Concerns
A court challenge has even been filed by two professors in China, arguing that the requirement by the China government that a specific Web-filtering application be installed on all PCs is anticompetitive and constitutes an "abuse of power," according to a story in The Wall Street Journal.
The controversy began earlier this week when word leaked out that starting July 1 the Chinese government would require that all PCs sold within the country be equipped with Web-filtering software that blocks access to pornographic sites.
Since then there has been an uproar from critics inside and outside the country who worry that the software, called Green Dam-Youth Escort, can be used to block access to Web sites the government considers politically sensitive or a threat to its power base. China has insisted the intent of the software mandate is only to protect young people from pornography and violent content.
But concerns were heightened Thursday when a report from researchers at the University of Michigan said the software automatically closed browser windows when it detected words related to Falun Gong, the spiritual movement in China the government has labeled "a cult" and outlawed.
There are also reports that a petition opposed to the software mandate is making its way among Internet users in the country.
The same University of Michigan researchers also found that the Green Dam software has a number of very serious security vulnerabilities that malicious hackers could exploit to run arbitrary code on a user's computer.
Now comes word that the government mandate that PC makers use filtering software developed by two companies selected by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is being challenged on anticompetitive grounds.
A political science professor and another academic from Hong Kong have submitted formal complaints to China's State Council and the National Anti-Monopoly Committee, arguing that the mandate constitutes an abuse of power, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The complaint argues that the move is anticompetitive because the software developers, JinHuo Computer System Engineering Co. and Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology Academy Co., were chosen by the MIIT in a nontransparent way, the story said.
And a prominent human rights lawyer in Beijing, Li Fangping, has also submitted a request to the MIIT to release information about how the companies were chosen, according to the story. He questions why the government chose the Green Dam software when so many others are available.
China has the world's largest population of Internet users, estimated at more than 250 million.