The Republic of China's Green Dam-Youth Escort initiative—wherein a mandatory computer program is installed into Internet cafes, public schools, and the like in order to filter online content more closely than ever before—is presently facing some obstacles in the form of certain organizations discarding or uninstalling their copy of the obligatory software. From its announcement in June to its planned implementation in July 1 and the countless troubles in between, it's quite clear that enforcing this policy hasn't at all been an easy task for the Chinese government.

Although it was supposed to be installed into all personal computers within China, the communist administration adjusted its initial mandate last August and immediately removed the requirement on PC manufacturers to package the Green Dam-Youth Escort application in all computers intended for Chinese use before they're even sold to businesses and consumers alike. Then again, the Green Dam program is still mandated for installation in machines used in public places and schools, which incidentally includes commercial Internet cafes.

What's more, the Green Dam project itself has been surrounded with problems and controversies ever since it first made news. For instance, a security firm alleges that the filter program uses dangerous coding practices that could lead to compromised networks and system vulnerabilities. Moreover, Solid Oak (a California-based software company) claims that Green Dam programmers have plagiarized nearly three thousand lines of code from its CyberSitter online content filtering application as well, which is a dubious if not outright illegal act to do.

Naturally, Solid Oak immediately filed a lawsuit against CBS Interactive and ZDNet China for enabling surfers to download the Green Dam program from the ZDNet China site, stolen codes and all. At any rate, PC manufacturers that had initially complied with the Chinese government's earlier mandate had halted shipping freshly manufactured PCs with Green Dam as soon as the stipulation was revised.

According to Reuters, despite the Green Dam installation requirement to include the content-filtering program on all the PCs of schools and public places in China, at least one Beijing-based high school ultimately decided to uninstall the program. The report further claims that the reason why the software was uninstalled roots from the fact that it was incompatible with most of the programs the school utilized for administrative and education purposes.