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Well, one can always hope.
The debate is heating up. Yesterday, a Beijing based lawyer Li Fangping sent a request to the Ministry of Industry and Information asking for information about the Green Dam Youth Escort software: the reasons for its development, the legal basis for the order to have Green Dam and Youth Escort pre-installed in PCs, etc. As far as we know there is no Freedom of Information Act in China, or anything analogous, but pissed off netizens and citizens in China have begun to talk about this, which is a sign, if nothing else, that there is some real grassroots displeasure for this state of affairs.
Gay rights advocates aren't happy with the new censorware either: take a look at the picture and you can see that along with sites of adult content, violence, games, illegal activities and drugs, gay sites are a category in themselves and can therefore also be banned with a click of the mouse.
Of course, there are going to largely symbolic acts of cyber-protest, such as this online petition, but if you do visit that site we recommend you read some of the comments (they are mostly in Chinese), if only to get a sense of how people feel about this software. For example, some have already given the Green Dam a homophonous satirical slant: 滤霸, pronounced exactly the same as 绿坝=lv ba=Green Dam. 滤=filter and 霸=overbearing, strong. Not quite as poetic as caonima , but bizarrely precise in its meaning.
Notice that one of the demands that they make is not just about the software: they want to know what was behind the deal (我们的要求：反对预安装“绿坝-花季护航”，要求清查4170万采购背后有没有幕后交易). Why?Because that software cost the Chinese government 41.7 million RMB ... which is taxpayer money, and those same taxpayers, at least the ones that use computers on a regular basis, are now beginning to wonder what happens when their one-year subscription to this runs out? Do they have to keep using it and pay for it?
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I hate to defend things like this, but I do believe that this was mostly done with the best of all intentions.
I could imagine that this could serve to put (part of) the access control to the user-level. May be in preparation of dismantling the Great Firewall of China?
Pre-installing or separate CD, either one will require a level of know-how that most users, especially first time buyers, do not have.
I think, any such filtering must be left to the ISP, who shoudl have a menu for the user to decide if and what restrictions should apply. The satellite TV guys can do it, the ISPs can do it, too.
This puts control to the user-level, at home at least.
If we visualize the internet like a bookstore, then there we would also have the smut corner, more or less tasteful erotica, politics, science, history, fiction, non-fiction and so on. The question is simply how much the general public should be able to see of the smut, without withdrawing the product from view entirely (then it can't be sold).
No it was done because too many Chinese and too many foreigners are going around, over, under or right through the GFW. It has grown beyond the point of effective management and when you have western computer scientists publishing open papers on how the GFW works, its death knell has sounded. The installed software is there as a backup to protect "pure Chinese thought".
I am more concerned of computers installing the software and now vulnerable to penetration of the people/groups China wants to keep out. Can you imagine those entity break into a sea of computers and propagate unlawful contents in the computers? Legally it will be a nightmare, someone can be arrested for having such content in its computer not even knowing being framed! Surely the software will report such contents, like a list of FLG members in China, regardless of its authenticity. Then no one is safe and anyone can be framed.
Chinese information technology is good, but not ready for such a monumental project. It will backfire and invite hackers to attack Chinese computers and cause massive blackout as it has already attract so much international attention. It has become a challenge to hackers...they must be salivating at the moment.
3-6 months, we will see someone high up losing they jobs for introducing such brilliant idea.