China wants all new PCs to include software called Green Dam-Youth Escort to control private individual’s access to ideas the government doesn’t like.
The Chinese government isn’t tech savvy enough to pull this off, so instead the government of China appears to have stolen this software from the U.S. company Solid Oak Software.
Now, after raising this point publicly, Solid Oak is reporting that it's servers are being attacked (here too).
The best coverage of this is on ZDNet Government.
The U.S. government has gotten involved in this as a trade issue (Go Obama!), and it seems to be working – the Chinese are at least backtracking on their requirement that this be on all new PCs starting tomorrow.
I wonder if the effectiveness of the U.S. policy – which is large compared to its publicity – is because the government takes this attack very seriously, and recognizes it clearly for what it is.
