Blocking
of Access to Websites Removed
By
Noel Laam
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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.