The Story
Green Dam was going to be this big deal. China’s plan was to preinstall it on every new computer. The software would allow the Chinese government to monitor what users were doing online (as if they couldn’t see that already). Well, Green Dam is no longer going to be used in schools, and the reason for this is pretty funny: the program broke a lot of the educational software already in use on school computers.
…It’s Not All That Important
I can see how someone would think that the defeat of Green Dam really meant something, but that’s sort of wrong. See, China does not need local software to serve you the internet they want. China is so powerful and in control of the internet that Google isn’t even allowed to operate normally there. It wasn’t so long ago that China slammed Google for not removing all the porn. And remember, this is the country which for the longest time pretended that nothing happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
While it’s always good to see internet filtering software defeated (net neutrality and all that), this isn’t a major victory for free speech so much as it is what the kids would call China fail. The software was so poorly engineered that the Chinese government wouldn’t use it for censorship? I have to admit, that’s pretty funny.
