Filtering software 'poorly designed': researchers

“Green Dam-Youth Escort” is a “substandard product” developed by companies with little experience in such software, according to a report by OpenNet Initiative Friday. It will increase government control of Internet use in China, said the group, which includes researchers at the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford and University of Toronto.

China will require PCs sold in the nation to incorporate the software starting July 1 to block Internet pornography and other “unhealthy” online content, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on its Web site this week.

Green Dam is “far more intrusive than any other content control software we have reviewed,” the OpenNet report said. The program blocks access to “a wide range of Web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes,” it said.

The program has been criticized by a Harvard University researcher for blocking anti-government Web sites and preventing users from typing in keywords unrelated to sex.

Computers loaded with Green Dam are prevented from accessing Web sites about the 1989 Tiananmen Square military crackdown and the banned spiritual movement known as Falun Gong, according to Isaac Mao, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society who says he's tested the program.

“There are too many comments by different groups on this software, and I cannot possibly respond to each one individually,” Bryan Chang, chief executive officer of Jinhui Computer System Engineering Corp., which co-developed the software, said by phone Saturday. Green Dam blocks only pornography, he said on June 11.

Wang Lijian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said he couldn't immediately comment Saturday.

China bans online pornography, gambling and politically critical content by requiring all domestic Web sites to be registered and by blocking access to foreign sites such as Google Inc.'s YouTube.

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