China's controversial Green Dam Youth Escort software is slowly fading into vaporware, as the latest report indicates that major PC manufacturers have dumped the Web filtering program. Originally, the Chinese government required that all new PCs sold in the country be armed with the program. However, after a huge negative backwash of protests, the government relented and made it "optional" for consumers.

Unfortunately, not everyone was exempt. According to Computerworld, public schools, Internet cafes, and other public areas were forced to install and run the filtering software. Although the software weeded out sensitive political content and pornography, the Chinese government insisted that Green Dam was for the benefit of the children, shielding them from "inappropriate" media.

But recently Green Dam was removed from computers at Beijing Number 50 High School despite the Chinese government's demands, claiming that the software, installed back in June, was causing problems. Now the ripple has moved on to larger corporations including China-based Lenovo, Taiwan-based Acer, and Sony, as all three have now discontinued supporting the Green Dam software.

Computerworld reports that Acer removed Green Dam this month because China no longer required distribution of the software, and Sony stopped shipping the software two months ago. Lenovo no longer pre-installs Green Dam, but will provide a disk version if requested by the consumer.