Top U.S. trade officials said Wednesday they have written to the Chinese government urging it to drop a new rule requiring all new computers to include internet-filtering software. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said China may be violating its World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations by requiring all computers sold in the country to include the “Green Dam” program. “China is putting companies in an untenable position by requiring them, with virtually no public notice, to pre-install software that appears to have broad-based censorship implications and network-security issues,” Locke said. The two U.S. officials said they sent letters to their counterparts at China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Commerce. Beijing says the Chinese-made Green Dam software will filter out pornography, ensuring that more young people can use the internet. But trade and civil-rights groups fear that Green Dam is another attempt by China to control access to the internet and filter out politically sensitive topics and opposing views. “Protecting children from inappropriate content is a legitimate objective, but this is an inappropriate means and is likely to have a broader scope,” Kirk said. “Mandating technically flawed Green Dam software and denying manufacturers and consumers freedom to select filtering software is an unnecessary and unjustified means to achieve that objective, and poses a serious barrier to trade,” Kirk said.
