Ditching of net nanny 'admission it was mistake'

The central government's quiet ditching of the notorious Green Dam Youth Escort internet content-filtering software was effectively an admission that the censorship project was a political gaffe that had hurt its already flagging credibility, analysts say.

'The funding cut from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is in fact an acknowledgement of its mistake,' said Zhou Ze, a lawyer specialising in media law who has been a vocal critic of the web-censorship project.

In May of last year, the ministry ordered the mandatory installation of the Green Dam software on every computer to be sold on the mainland because of concerns about 'harmful' internet content. It later dropped the requirement after widespread criticism that it was tightening internet censorship, but still required schools and internet cafes to use the software.

Zhou called the government's attempt to control the internet through the promotion of a commercial software product 'rash and imprudent'. He said the plan breached the mainland's competition law and was doomed to fail because it lacked public support.

'If it was useful, parents would naturally want to use the product.'

Zhang Lifan, a former Chinese Academy of Social Sciences scholar, said the government's reputation had been badly damaged by the Green Dam project and it now saw it as a political liability that it wanted to be rid of.