If there's anything we've learned about the People's Republic of China, it's that the entire country seems to have exceptionally liberal views on copyright policies.  We've seen Chinese developers ripping artwork from other MMOs, reskinning Flash games for the official Beijing Olympic website and thinking no one would notice. 

Hell, some major Chinese tech site even stole a Sims 3 performance guide by our Kevin Spiess, including images, for which they crudely added watermarks over OURS.  It's all quite deplorable.

Most recently, we hear from Solid Oak, a small software company based in Santa Barbara, California.  It seems that Jinhui Computer System Engineering Inc. has been passing off Solid Oak's CYBERsitter program as their own, using stolen code in their Green Dam Youth Escort screening software.

Solid Oak founder Brian Milburn said he noticed this issue on Friday, June 12, when he received an email from someone claiming to be affliated with the Chinese Communist Party.  Not surprisingly, Milburn and his employees thought this was a joke

"At first I thought it was a prank and didn't pay much attention to it," he said, but they took a deeper look anyway.  Further digging revealed the tip-off was not a hoax.

"One of our employees researched it and came back to me and said I might want to look at it more closely. We then found actual proprietary code from CYBERsitter within the Green Dam programme that is only available in an encrypted format."

"I spent a good deal of the weekend with another engineer trying to find if it was an honest mistake. But someone made a 100% conscious effort to do this. This is not some accident," explained Milburn, who's obviously more than a little vexed at this point.

Of course, Jinhui Computer System Engineering isn't admitting to anything.  "That's impossible. We didn't steal their programming code," claimed spokesperson Bryan Zhang.

The Chinese government currently requires Green Dam to be pre-installed on every new PC made or shipped by July 1, meaning Solid Oak has quite a fight on their hands.  But the Californian software developer isn't giving in.

"We're contacting Dell, HP and others to stop compromised material being shipped," Milburn stated, though he believes the pirated software has already been installed on 9 million computers. 

"If China had gotten hold of free pirated copies of Microsoft's Windows and told Dell and HP to put this on all computers you ship, you would hear a loud outcry. China has a very loose interpretation of what is intellectual property."

He's trying to be understanding, admitting that he understands the PC manufacturers aren't at fault, just "stuck in the middle."  Still, he hopes they'll do the right thing and stop distributing machines with Green Dam.

"We are just a little company and trying to take on China is an impossible task. We don't want to turn into a litigation company."

Ironically, the Chinese incarnation has been revealed to contain serious weak spots, vulnerable to hackers.  China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is trying to get that fixed.

Meanwhile, critics are using this as an opportunity to poke more holes in the "Great Firewall of China."  Although the government claims Green Dam is necessary for protecting children from offensive online material, the program's true purpose remains painfully clear. 

The said "offensive" content includes politically sensitive / damning information, images, keywords, and certain web addresses.  Green Dam can also monitor general computer usage and shut down applications.

"While the justification may be pitched as protecting children and mostly concerning pornography, once the architecture is set up it can be used for broader purposes, such as the filtering of political ideas," said Harvard's Professor Jonathan Zittrain.

Dell spokesman David Frink insists the PC giant hasn't shipped any machines containing the Green Dam program.  According to Frink, Dell is "aware of the policy from China and along with the rest of the industry are reviewing it."