Negative Blogs

China on Tuesday announced it would indefinitely postpone a mandate requiring all personal computers sold in the country to be accompanied by a controversial content-filtering application, state media reported.

The announcement came one day before a government-set deadline that would have required the software, called Green Dam-Youth Escort, to come with all PCs, according to the official Xinhua news agency. NHMA

The Chinese government has said the software is chiefly a way for parents to protect children from pornography. But a wide range of outside parties have expressed concern about the software.

A letter was sent directly to Premier Wen Jiabao on June 26 and signed by an international group of more than 20 business associations including the Business Software Alliance, Consumer Electronics Association and both the U.S. and EU chambers of commerce.

China’s central government announced in May that the Green Dam software package must accompany all new computers in China. Citing China’s Ministry of Information Technology, China Daily recently reported the government policy came “in response to calls from many schools and parents.”

The number of people online in China has swelled in recent years. The nation surpassed the United States in 2008 as the world’s top user of the World Wide Web, according to a Chinese government-backed research group.