Whether you call it censorship or not, well, who cares? That’s just a way for writers to put a more negative spin on the story. But the outrage from Chinese youth and bloggers is likely due to the perceived intent of Beijing to control and shape the flow of information to future generations.

Some “Anti-sinoism” clearly is going on here, at least somewhat, but I think it’s mostly that censorship is a hot button topic in the US and much of the West, so the media latches onto any opportunity to call out “censorship”, regardless of the facts. We are regularly hearing about Iran’s internet censorship now (often compared to China’s); and in the past, Austrialia’s.

The bigger issue here seems to be that the government is using taxpayer money to rush out a piece of ass software and forcing schools to install it despite the claims of many that the software is a nuisance.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=19688

The end users were never required to install or run Green Dam. As to what Green Dam will filter, it is configuable by the user.

How this is twisted into censorhip by NYT and a handfull of bloggers is beyond me – anti-sinoism perhaps?

The impact of censorship is that China’s Y generation onwards are likely to be ignorant of the past and have an obscurely narrow world view. This is not in the Chinese people’s best interests at all.