Green Dam May Be Gone in China, But in the US It’s Getting Sued

You may not remember the Green Dam Youth Escort. Even for its creators, it’s the sort of thing that’s probably best forgotten. Developed under a directive from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Green Dam was censorship software ostensibly aimed at protecting children from pornography on the internet. MIIT had directed that Green Dam come pre-installed on all computers in China sold on or after July 1, 2009, but as that day approached, things got ugly.

The software was met with criticism from all sides. It censored indiscriminately, blocking anything that contained images with human-like skin tones in large quantities (which it interpreted as nudity). It censored political content. An American company accused its designers of stealing their code. But mostly, the problem was that it wasn’t very well written and had serious security holes. In the face of criticism from the public and experts alike, the project was postponed and eventually scrapped.

Since then, the software has, to paraphrase Mike Tyson, faded into Bolivian. Most Chinese people have probably forgotten about it, but guess who hasn’t? Cybersitter, the US company who claims the Chinese developers of Green Dam stole 3,000 lines of their code.

The Lawsuit

The case has become something of a legal turf war. Cybersitter, an American company, filed its claim in the California court system. The suit names Zhengzhou Jinhui Computer System Engineering and the Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology Academy — the developers of Green Dam — as defendants, but it also names a number of Chinese and international companies who were complicit in installing the software on their machines, including Haier, Sony, Acer, and Lenovo. Since the Chinese government had initially paid Jinhui and Dazheng — the developers — for a software license, the PRC government itself was also implicated in the suit.

Various defendants have tried to get the suit dismissed. First the multinationals filed to have the suit dropped, but the court rejected them back in December 2010. Haier moved to have the entire suit dismissed on the grounds that US courts cannot try a foreign government, but their motion was also dismissed on the grounds that a US court can try a foreign state if it’s engaged in commercial activity that has a direct effect in the US.

Most recently, another dismissal motion — this one from the developers of Green Dam themselves — was rejected on Monday. Jinhui and Dazheng had sought to have themselves dismissed as defendants on the grounds that they’re Chinese companies that were acting solely within China. However, the California court said that they had allegedly committed criminal acts while being fully aware that Cybersitter was based in California and that its business there could be damaged.

The case, it seems, will go to trial whether the Chinese defendants want it to or not. Were the court to find Dazheng and Jinhui at fault, it’s unclear how any ruling and penalties could be enforced, but the defendants had better hope they can’t be, because Cybersitter is seeking a cool $2.2 billion in damages.

If you’re curious, feel free to peruse Cybersitter’s filing below:

Cybersitter complaint for misappropriation of trade secrets, etc

[Via PC World. Image Source]