Reporters Sans Frontières

Published on 3 July 2009

Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard wrote today to the heads of the Taiwanese companies Acer et BenQ and the Chinese companies Lenovo and Haier asking them to stop shipping the “Green Dam Youth Escort” filtering software with their computers.

The Chinese government announced on 30 June that the controversial software would not be distributed for the time being because of technical problems.

“You have a responsibility to ensure respect for human rights and, in particular, respect for the fundamental right to information,” Julliard said in his letters. “The promotion of democracy and good governance should be an essential part of your company’s priorities (…) Such actions endorse censorship in China and seriously harm your company’s image and credibility. We therefore urge you to take a public position on this subject.”

Green Dam’s filtering is supposedly targeted at pornographic content but its scope is in reality much broader. According to a study by the OpenNet Initiative, Green Dam has “an influence that extends beyond helping parents protect their children from age inappropriate material; the filtering options include blocking of political and religious content” (download the PDF report).

The use of Green Dam has been condemned by both the European Union and the United States.

The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced on 8 June that all companies selling computers in China had six weeks to ensure that the new Green Dam software (which was funded by the government) was installed on all their computers before they shipped in order to protect “young people” from “negative” Internet content.

After learning on 29 June that the Japanese company Sony was selling computers in China with Green Dam installed on them before the required date, Reporters Without Borders wrote to Sony’s chairman requesting an explanation.

See the letter :