The Chinese manufacturer of Internet-filtering software that must be distributed with all new computers next week has received death threats, state media said Wednesday.

Workers at Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co. received more than 1,000 harassing phone calls that month, according to Zhang Chenmin, the general manager of the company. He said personal data of some of the programmers had been leaked online, and one caller threatened to kill his wife and child.

“Most of the calls came late at night, cursing our staff and uttering obscenities, voicing their resentment against the software,” Zhang was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

Phones rang unanswered Wednesday at company headquarters in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou.

China, which has the world’s largest population of Net users at more than 298 million, additionally has among the tightest controls on the Web in the world, including on political subject matter deemed challenging to the ruling Communist Party.

The government has historically used such mechanisms as network-level filters installed at the nation’s Net service providers. Censorship experts say that by moving the filters closer to the user, censorship can be more effective.

The Chinese government has come under pressure to scrap its plan to require that manufacturers distribute the Green Dam Youth Escort software with computers sold in China. The filtering software is to be pre-installed or included on a compact disc with all PCs sold in China starting July 1.

Many Chinese Net users have mocked the software, which is already available as a free download. The U.S. Embassy said Monday that Washington urged Beijing to reconsider its plan, saying it would restrict “the internationally recognized right to freedom of expression.”

Zhang was quoted as saying that he “never expected the software to have brought us so many troubles. Our aim is simply to protect children from World Wide Web pornography.”

The…

[Source] dhiram