The AP reports that a company in California is not happy about code in the Chinese mandated personal computer Internet-filtering.

Solid Oak Software of Santa Barbara said Friday that parts of its filtering software, which is designed for parents, are being used in the “Green Dam-Youth Escort” filtering software that must be packaged with all computers sold in China from July 1.

There is some irony in this quote:

“I don’t know how far you can try and reach into China and try to stop stuff like this,” he said in an interview. “We’re still trying to assess what they’re doing.”

A phone number for the Chinese developer could not immediately be located. A call by The Associated Press to China’s embassy in the U.S. after business hours Friday went unanswered.

Can’t see what’s going on? Can’t “reach into China”? It must be especially frustrating to be a filtering company that gets filtered out.

Sold Oak seems to have a sold case, but here’s more irony:

A report released Thursday by University of Michigan researchers who examined the Chinese software supports Solid Oak’s claim that the Green Dam software contains pirated code. The report also found serious security vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to hijack PCs running the Chinese software.

Might be wise to differentiate the code that was stolen from the code that allows PCs to be hijacked. On the other hand, maybe it would be wiser to get the Chinese to steal code that is known to have a backdoor, which can then be used to prove that the code is stolen? Just kidding, the code in question seems to be little more than blacklist files, which probably go stale without management anyway. Solid Oak could be congratulating the Chinese on their careful selection of code and offering an update and maintenance service for ongoing quality control.