PC firms race to meet China’s filter deadline
BEIJING - Days before a deadline abruptly imposed by China, computer makers are scrambling to comply with an order to supply Web-filtering software with PCs, amid concern about what it may do to their reputations.
Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Inc., and Taiwan’s Acer Inc. - the top three global producers - are asking regulators for details of the order to provide Green Dam Youth Escort software with every laptop and desktop PC sold in China, starting Wednesday.
China is important to PC suppliers both as a major manufacturing site and a fast-growing market. It accounts for up to 80 percent of world production and for sales that state media say have risen to $21 billion, up 12.8 percent from 2007.
Beijing launched new criticisms this week against search giant Google Inc., which the foreign ministry accused of spreading pornography. Chinese users were unable to connect to Google’s main site or its China-based service, google.cn, from late Wednesday into yesterday. But spokesman Qin Gang, speaking at a regular briefing, sidestepped questions about whether the government was blocking access.
Washington has called on Beijing to revoke the order to supply the software, calling it a “serious barrier to trade’’ and saying the software could pose a security risk.
Government regulators say Green Dam must be supplied to protect children from pornography. But technical analyses of the software - developed by a previously unknown Chinese company - have shown key words embedded in the program to filter out content the government deems politically objectionable.
Manufacturers could face the same criticism that US Internet services did in 2006 after complaints they cooperated with Chinese censors, said David Wolf, a technology consultant in Beijing. At that time, Congress held hearings and some lawmakers accused the companies of aiding dictators.
