Blocking of Access to Websites Removed By Noel Laam

The blooming of the internet in the 1990’s not only made it become an invaluable spring of educational support, but also an unrestricted and uncontrolled source of less desirable materials. In order to conserve and make best use of the IT resources (e.g. network bandwidth, PCs, etc.) which were scarce and very expensive in those days, the web filtering policy on public shared PCs in 1998 was implemented to bar access to certain web sites which were considered indecent, unsafe, or unrelated to learning. Nevertheless, information explosion and rapid advancement in IT technologies in the past decade not only made network bandwidth and computers more affordable, but also induced societal changes towards a free and open society for information exchange, and any form of information blockage, especially in a university environment, seemed a notion against the world trend. In view of this, the 16th meeting of the Committee on Information Services and Technology held on 18 May 2009 carefully deliberated on this issue and approved to rescind the practice of blocking access to websites with immediate effect. The University hoped that the decision will enable CityU staff and students to enjoy a barrier-free internet for their studies and research. Users are, however, reminded to minimize the chance of being infected by malicious software by rebooting the publicly shared PC before using it, and to comply with the law of HKSAR and the University policies when using the University’s IT facilities.