back to article US calls for China to revoke censorware plan

The US adminstration is pushing China to review its controversial policy of mandating the installation of specific content filtering software on new PCs. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and US Trade Representative Ron Kirk argue China may be placing itself in violation of World Trade Organization regulations by insisting on the …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    frre trade..US?...

    ...a ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaa............

    Sorry just pissed myself laughing.

    So are the Asian countries alllowed to inport unlimited amouts of goods now? Nope thought not.

    Pot / Kettle / Black.....

  2. Sooty
    Joke

    the simple answer

    would surely be to not do business with in country... Sorry, i couldn't finish that with a straight face.

    What exactly is America going to do, it's not like they can stop doing business in China, or impose trade restrictions no matter what the government does. Their economy would collapse, as 90% of the goods in America, and the rest of the western world probably, were produced by Chinese sweatshops.

  3. ratfox
    Thumb Down

    I don't get it

    Which is the country again which tried to impose DRM to the whole world? I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure it's not China.

    Honestly, this has very little to do with free trade. They might complain about the censorship, but that's all.

  4. Rob Dobs
    Big Brother

    SSSHHHHH!!!

    China to release a buggy program that allows back-doors and remote control of its machines......why are we even talking about this, let alone stopping them?

    Let them proceed!!!

    The U.S. in turn should return the favor of multiple cyber warfare attacks from China and make sure that its our government hackers that "own" their Green Damn network, and not the Chinese government. China is the closest thing to an opponent/enemy that the U.S. and free world have right now. (Iran, Russia, and N Korea are just not as big of threats).

    This sounds like a great way for the U.S. to gather Elvis sized pant-loads of data from the Chinese government and corporations.... Hello NSA, CIA, DHS.... are you listening?

    Ok, how about CDC, 4Chan or some other hacker groups...come on people, do it for Democracy!!!!

    -Rob

  5. Michael Fremlins

    Porn is big business in the USA

    Very BIG, if you get my drift!

  6. Ken Hagan Gold badge
    WTF?

    What's the WTO got to do with it?

    Is there some reason why foreign box makers can't just stick the software on the machines they export to China? Presumably it is free. I mean, it is pirate software after all. The hard discs on new boxes are all just copied from a master mirror anyway, which is presumably specific to each export market already (for locale reasons). I see zero cost here.

    On the other hand, considerations of national sovereignty would appear to indicate that the Chinese are perfectly entitled to screw over their own citizens and economy if they choose to.

    If the WTO is trying to reinvent itself as some kind of Pentagon-backed human rights organisation, I think we should be told, so that we can all run for our nuclear bunkers.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    WTF 2.0

    And the US administration is happy with Australia deciding to blacklist sites and enforce the blacklist at the ISP level. No censorship concerns there. Right?

  8. Chris C

    Censorship bad, murder good

    So installing censorship software onto computers is bad, but massive human rights violations (including the Tiananmen Square massacre) are OK? I guess it's OK as long as it doesn't directly affect us. My, what a fucked up world we live in.

  9. adnim

    I thought

    it was only countries that do not have a significant military force who have to bend over for the US.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Hey, cut them some slack...

    ...they're just trying to keep up with the Australians, who just decided to ban import of, sale of, and the *viewing of web sites of* any video game not suitable for 15 year olds. China made Blizzard get rid of skeletons in WoW - but because it's online, and as such not classified for 15-year-olds, it (and presumably Blizzard's web site as well) will likely be banned entirely in the land down undah.

    So, China is looking pretty relaxed at the moment...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'd just like to say

    I believe that this <censored> MAKE HIGH GLORY PRC may have the effect of <censored> and <censored> PRC GREAT COUNTRY and any freedom of WORK STRUGGLE HARD FOR PRC <censored> may be slightly <censored>.

  12. Chris C

    @ratfox

    "Which is the country again which tried to impose DRM to the whole world? I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure it's not China."

    DRM is mostly about preventing you from copyright something you don't own the rights to. This article is about a country censoring the information its citizens are allowed to access. Is this one of those days where you have trouble telling the difference?

    However, to answer your dribble, there was no country that "tried to impose DRM to the whole world". There have been various companies that "protected" their products with DRM (Sony/BMG is the first that comes to mind), but those are individual companies, not countries. Again, is this one of those days where you have trouble telling the difference?

    Also, as far as I'm aware, the first major push for DRM was using CSS and region encoding to "protect" DVDs. These methods were agreed upon by the DVD forum. In other words, it was a group of companies from many countries which agreed on using DRM, not a single company, not a single country.

    But hey, don't let silly things like facts distract from your outrage. It's much easier to argue when you don't limit yourself to such nonsense notions as "facts" or "truth".

  13. Goat Jam
    Big Brother

    Typical Western Hypocracy

    ""Protecting children from inappropriate content is a legitimate objective, but this is an inappropriate means and is likely to have a broader scope," US trade representative Kirk argues."

    Yes, it is bad when governments push mandatory censorship on their citizens, so how come this bozo isn't bellowing his righteous indignation and sanctimonious claptrap in the direction of Australia and that Conroy numpty?

  14. frank ly

    @Ken Hagan re. What's the WTO got to do with it?

    "...some kind of Pentagon-backed human rights organisation,..."

    That is an astounding concept. It needs a DARPA research contract to study its viability and devise optimal implementation strategies.

  15. JK
    Paris Hilton

    Do they really need to...

    ... do this?

    I mean... it's not exactly like their current methods are causing epic fail. So why "fix" something that isn't broken?

    Currently, whatever they're doing manages to uh... "quiet" most "inharmonious content" and their creators... while still allowing a negligible amount to seep out. And... it's not like they were the ones whom were on the brink of a popular uprising over their government policies.

  16. Rex Alfie Lee
    Flame

    The Real Issues

    China will be using this clunky piece of software to block-out nasty commentary about the things that the Chinese Gov't has done. What we need to do is find a bypass & send as much of the unwanted info back to China as possible so that the Chinese people see what has really been done.

    As for the corruption in the good old US of A, we should be doing exactly the same thing bcoz the Americans are as naive as the Chinese are.

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