Protesting China's Required Censorship Software

dinoyum writes "Censorship in China is nothing new, but the level of action taken to force Chinese citizens to comply has garnered global recognition. China marked the date July 1st, 2009 as the day manufacturers will be forced to install filtering software on all new PCs. While many have resorted to digitally lashing out against Green Dam, Chinese artist and designer of the famous Bird's Nest at the Beijing Olympics, Ai Weiwei has decided upon a different approach. '[He wants] a general internet strike — no work, no games, no email or anything else online — for 24 hours on the date the government plans to require censorship software on all new computers, he says, will be a quiet act of rebellion. Not coincidentally, July 1 is the 88th anniversary of the Communist Party of China. Though he posted the idea, Ai wants to leave the meaning to those who participate. "I gave almost no explanation about why I'm doing it," Ai said. "I just give the structure and people will fill in their own meaning. I don't want to be political first. I wanted to set up an act that everyone can easily accept, and then realize the power later. I want people to see their own power," he said.'"

Not mandatory anymore

[CosmicRabbit]

Due to all the international pressure and bad publicity gathered from the original move to mandate the installation of Green Dam on every computer, China backpedaled from the decision [businessweek.com].
So it seems weird to me that this kind of protests are being organized. It would make a lot more sense to educate people about how to uninstall the dam(n) software out of their machines, or why people should not willingly accept to install it under the usual "think of the children" argument.
Having said that, it's a free country, and he can protest whatever he wants... Wait, no... I'll be back to you on that one.

Re:Not mandatory anymore

[Dotnaught]

Apparently the Chinese government has backpedaled on its backpedaling: The Green Dam mandate stands [informationweek.com].

It's likely however that the government will change its mind at the last minute. There's precedent for brinkmanship in negotiations over cyber security rules in China.

Re:Green Damn Exploit

[FudRucker]

ok, i will tell you why i did not just post a link, at the time i made that first comment i was using a linux powered computer that is very old and does not have an X window system, i was using a commandline interface browser so copy & paste does not work considering the lenghth of most URLs nowadays i did not want to spend a hour typing in a URL that was 750 characters long (or longer).

Re:Green Damn Exploit

[beyondkaoru]

http://www.cse.umich.edu/~jhalderm/pub/gd/ [umich.edu]

If this is to be believed (I haven't tried verifying it myself), then they've committed the most ancient web browser vulnerability I know of (accepting a URL into a fixed size buffer).