Ralph Lauren: We are responsible
Glow in the dark mushrooms
As of July 1, PCs sold in China will come with mandatory on-disk censorware that will prevent users from looking at web-pages that displease the party. How much do you want to bet that this is proposed (in the name of protecting children) in at least one western country within 12 months? I'm guessing Australia -- they've got some techno-ignorant parliamentarians down who're so eager to censor the Internet it'd curl your hair.
The government, which has told global PC makers of the requirement but has yet to announce it to the public, says the effort is aimed at protecting young people from "harmful" content. The primary target is pornography, says the main developer of the software, a company that has ties to China's security ministry and military.China Squeezes PC Makers (Thanks, Patrick!)
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so much for BB in China
cory, i'll take your bet for $1,000 USD ($999 to be donated, ok?), once we agree about what constitutes a "western country" and, more importantly, whether the proposal has any serious merit. crackpot joke legislation is proposed every single day, and i'm not sure if your definition of "proposed" encompasses the public's initiative and referendum process. up for a legislative vote would be closer, but that's not close enough. help me out here... mmbb_c (can't log into bb anymore, sorry).
So it only affects PCs sold in China and not MADE in China??
so is this software going to work for linux machines in china, or are they going to ban that too?
I think this is not a good move of China trying to lock down the internet.
Right now their approach of the great firewall is more "invisible" to the most people, as they control the information from spreading by 1)threatening the content providers to shut down the site and put them in jail, and 2)paying for professional patriotic comments/message across the internet communities.
Force installing a censorship software is an act that crosses the line of the general public, as it is more significant than what the government used to do (not in a technological point of view) as it is psychologically more intrusive to execute in people's own PC.
Probably the Chinese government is freaked out by the recent discussion of the Tienanmen Massacre. Sites are shut down, taken off for "maintenance", and still there are thousands unwanted messages that slip through the gaps of the great wall.
I do hope that my fellow Chinese citizens will finally be aware of the warm pot of water they're in before it's too late.
Pardon my bad English :)
@#2 Duncan:
I don't think they're dumb enough to do that... btw, the poison food and toys are more than enough to conquer the world though :)
Germany - considering we are right in the middle of censorship laws (#Zensursula) in the name of childporn. Laws against selling and "killing games" (meaning ego shooters of ANY kind) and our far center right is now the supreme leader of the nation with a 15 point lead above the main center (slightly right) party. The outlook is even more ugly with more election on the way later this year where the center right might be able to form a coalition with the "liberals" (means the banksters party) - then its all downhill from there on and we are moving into China territory.
With french HADOPI laws and future LOPPSI, it will come to France in less than 12 months.
(the reasons will be the fight against pedopornography... (and of course copyright infringments))
France - HADOPI law (the connection owner is invited to install a filter on his own connection).
What OS will these PCs run? Windows or some flavour of Linux? What about people who reinstall the OS or install other flavors of Linux without censorware?
But maybe installing your own OS which does not support the censorware will simply be illegal.
Here in Denmark, a government-appointed committee for IT security seriously proposed that the government should develop a program which would make it possible for the government to periodically inspect citizen's PCs and scan them for malware.
The committee proposed to make this a prerequisite for accessing government webpages to check or submit your tax returns and declarations, health care records, etc.
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=da&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.modspil.dk%2Fitpolitik%2Fteknologir_det_vil_afskaffe_privatlivets_fred.html&sl=da&tl=en&history_state0=
This proposal (mandatory inspection of people's computers) was introduced with the pretext/intent of protecting people against malware like keyloggers and Trojans.
The committee did not appear to appreciate the fact that similar protection might be achieved is people were to generally switch to Linux or FreeBSD or similar system with a decent security architecture.
I do believe the proposal was shot down, however, but for a while they were dead serious about their mandatory inspections.
1. It's China. China. I mean, seriously, it's not that surprising.
2. Falk - so nice to read someone who seems even more depressed about German politics than I am. I don't see the rights that much on the rise, though, and there is protest against Zensursula. The "Killerspiele" (FPS shooter) thing will (hopefully) disappear after the election, it's just a topic that can rally all the internet/videogameculture ignorants so very nicely, considering that, maybe it won't disappear.
Elections will be a simple affair, center right and the so-called liberals will form a coalition, center-left will lose, Greens will win a little or lose a little. Browns won't make it.
depressing that no one yet seems to find the entire computer industry apparently going along with this worth condemnation, let alone protest or censure.
oh well, it'll never happen here.
Australia?
No. I would say my good old Germany. Here our 'Familienministerin' Ursula "Zensursula" von der Leyen swings the childporn club for about a month to start filtering the internet - with a list nobody knows what stands on it.
But that has a positive side effect: People get upset. There is a petition that is even now the second most sucessful (11277 at the moment, biggest was for tax reduction on gas with 123k), and that even as the politicians call everybody on that list as "someone who doesn't care for children" - and that is the friendly version.
And the german pirat party got a few new members. (But "only" 0,9% in the Europe Election)
#10 Ridl:
Exactly! It'll never happen here, at least not until it does.
[OT and in the "never happen here" dept.: BNP in the European Parliament. Blimey!]
Australia? Germany? Not if England gets there first...
/b
If J.Smith was still UK Home Secretary, UK would be first to do this after China. Alan Johnson - new Home Sec - a bit more sensible (known to not be too keen on ID cards), but give the civil service enough time to find ways to do it and justify it, and a future Home Sec will be bounced into it one day. Civil Service wanted ID cards for years before present govt decided "1984" was a manual not a warning - I expect they presented it as a policy option to every govt for the past couple of decades. How long will it be before they are presenting this as a valid policy option?
#8 - How about booting off a LiveCD every time you want to do something non-government-approved? Doesn't technically count as installing another OS, and if you take it out of your drive, your PC will pass the mandatory inspection, no problem.
Seems to be a waste of time. Chinese street vendors have managed to circumnavigate every copy-protect scheme ever conceived, I can't see them having too much problem with this.
Janie Crane: "An off switch?"
Metrocop: "She'll get years for that."
With the 2 laws HADOPI and LOPPSI, France is also on the way to force people to install censoreware and big brother eye inside people's computer. The only difference is, people have to pay for it. Awesome !
Though I don't doubt the government is thoroughly on board, the identicalness of these products suggests a commercial product of some sort.
RainyRat's got a pretty good workaround.
And to all you Germans, I'm always surprised that your government is hanging on to that list when so many equivalent games have sailed on past. Also, what's the current state of swastika-censorship? Everyone seems to be allowed to see one but Germans.
Duncan raises an interesting question:
> So it only affects PCs sold in China and not MADE in China??
Nearly every PC is made in either Taiwan or in China and the pace of moving manufacturing "off shore from Taiwan to China" is moving at a rapid pace.
No one should *assume* it's only PCs sold in China simply because it seldom makes sense to set up a separate manufacturing line just for one version of what you make. It's easier to either design in a customization that simply isn't activated (or not yet?) but make everything the same.
For the wretched Americans who no longer manufacture anything, this is how manufacturing is typically done. Anyone remember the Intel 486? Remember it had two versions: DX or SX with or without FX floating point co-processor. Guess what: there was only ever a single version of the 486! The 486 was design with on-board floating point which was the 486DX. If there was a flaw tested out in the floating point unit, a fuse was designed in which powered down and isolated the whole failed floating point circuitry and that part was labeled a 486SX. If a similar catastrophic occurred on the main CPU side, a similar fuse did the same to the CPU side and that part was labeled a 486FX math co-processor.
Odds are any and all export version will have the same features latent and it may only be a firmware flash or a remote activation step away from coming alive. This is how these things get designed and manufactured.
RainyRat has a good idea. There are many LiveCD's of various Linux flavors (some mods, like Incognito, help to circumvent even the great wall) that will bypass that software as long as the manufacturers don't mess with the Bios of booting from disc and usb.
Some predictions:
*The filtering software will be trivially removed, disabled, or bypassed by the technologically sophisticated.
*The slightly less technologically sophisticated will resort to wiping their hard drives and installing a pirated copy of Windows. These pirated copies of Windows will not receive updates from Microsoft, and will be vulnerable to infection by malware.
*The auto-update feature (mentioned here) will have security holes that are exploited by one or more internet worms.
*The main effect of the government mandated filtering software will be an increase in the number of malware-infected computers in China.
I still cannot comprehend why China wants to restrict pornography when their population is now experiencing a staggering shortage of females.
Sitting at home enjoying themselves to this content may be one of the few things keeping millions of young Chinese men with no hope for marriage from starting Tiennanmen 2.0.
No need to bet. The next one is France, as several others said, with the Hadopi and Loppsi 2 laws. Here's Bruce Sterling's take (in English):
http://www.laquadrature.net/fr/wired-beyond-the-beyond-just-another-wordpress-weblog-meanwhile-somewhere-in-french-cyberspace
And Ars Technica:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/next-up-for-france-police-keyloggers-and-web-censorship.ars
Oh, and the projected Loppsi 2 law would put mandatory censorware not only on PCs, but also all electronic devices with Net access, like smartphones. I can't think of a better incentive to make geeks emigrate...
#25 - Looks like you're about right:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8094026.stm
China-sized botnet, anyone?