It now looks like the Chinese government has fully backed down in the face of international pressure to not use their Green Dam Youth Escort spyware. Now instead of being mandatory for all new computers sold in China, it will be optional. Given how bad this episode, especially now that they’ve caved, this makes the Chinese government look internally, I’ll be curious to find out how widespread this program is. I’d expect there still be heavy pressure to have it installed so the ruling Chinese Communist Party doesn’t lose any more face than they already have in this incident.

On an unrelated note, the British press is able to use a lot of words that you won’t find in the mainstream American press (especially given that this article is ostensible about a pornography censorship tool).