Tuesday, September 2, 2008

It wouldn’t be a surprise when we say that youths are the internet biggest fans. They use the internet day in and day out for numerous reasons. For example, the internet are their source for academic purposes, entertainment, news, just to name a few. In this post, we are trying to narrow down our scope to university students. Many university students sigh when it comes to assignments. Why? It’s simply because they have insufficient information. This insufficient information is due to restricted accessing system. Certain content will be restricted and various internet applications will be blocked. Accesses are logged. There are times where the activities of students are monitored, investigated and this can even lead to disciplinary acts when the students crossed the line. Most of the universities in our country reserve the right to block access to any network, protocol or network based application at any time, especially local universities. Therefore, students have boundaries in finding vital information. In other words, they have limited and insufficient information to produce quality masterpieces.


There are two sides to every story. Therefore, it would not be fair to look at this matter based only from the students’ perspectives. In order to look at a bigger picture, we interviewed the authority regarding the access of internet. According to Encik Khairil Anwar bin Jusoh, who is an officer of Information Technology in University Science Malaysia (USM), most universities block some websites based on policies that are set up by the government but the blocked websites are slighty different from one universities to another. USM restrict and filter some websites like:-
www.playboy.com
www.xniaga.com
www.penangtraveltips.com
www.wangmatrix.com
www.anugerahcsrmalaysia.org
www.antivirus2009_freescan.com
www.gtonlineasistance.com
www.micronext.info

During the interview, we asked Encik Khairil Anwar bin Jusoh for the reasons of the restriction of websites. He stated the reasons which sounds very reasonable once we understand the authority from their side of the story. There are four main reasons for the prohibited websites which are:-


COPYRIGHT RESERVE

Some websites are banned by the authorities to protect the rights of the author. Some websites need subscriptions before the students can actually view the websites. Many people does not actknowledge the fact that they are downloading information illegally. Therefore, they invade the privacy of the author without the slightest guilt. By banning some of these websites, illegal downloading can be be stopped.





PORNOGRAPHY

Nowadays, many students spend their time surfing for pornography materials, which is not a very healthy activity for university students. They can easily obtain these materials by keying in a simple word like ‘sex’ and get in touch with thousands of websites and links which is related to that particular word. Many universities banned websites containing pornography because they think that students should put more effort on academic purposes rather than pornography. In USM, students are able to get wireless connections as long as they register with the authority. Since most universities provide wireless connection for the students within the campus, it is therefore their duty to control and limit the students’ assessment on such materials.


PREVENTION FROM INTERNET VIRUSES

Certain websites might convey viruses to others through the process of downloading. Dangerous internet viruses such as ‘Trojan’ might bring harm to the whole internet system. Internet delinquents like hackers can hacked into private and confidential websites and misused the information they found. In order to protect students, authorities play a role to limit their assessment to harmful websites.




TO COPE WITH TRAFFIC CONNECTIONS AROUND THE CAMPUS

Most universities which provide wireless connection within the campus limit the range of assessment for each particular person. This is to enable everyone to have their fair share of internet connection. For example, in USM, each user will be provided 155mbps to gain access to the internet. Besides that, authorities also prevent students from being able to access to large capacity usage of wireless connection by blocking certain webpage with large capacity.


In a nutshell, we found out that most students are ignorant of why the universities have gone through so much trouble by restricting some of the websites. They feel that their freedom for assessing is limited by boundaries even though they do not have the intention of invading or violating the rules. They want to have a say and make the authorities understand their needs and the pressure of not having access to some websites they considered important. For example, some students complain that they face problems accessing to you-tube to get electronic advertisements for academic purposes. They feel that there is no harm in doing so. Yet, all these complain comes back to the reasons why the authorities blocked the websites at the first place. So what we are trying to arise here is; although the authorities are restricting some websites for the sake of the students, their efforts might end up bringing inconvenience to the students. It is indeed hard to meet the needs of both sides. Therefore, what we are trying to propose here is; the students need to know and be informed the reasons of the restrictions and at the same time, authorities should try to reconsider some websites which is less harmful and beneficial to students.

RESOURCES

http://www.curtin.edu.my/sch_dept/ICT/students/AccomInternetAccessPolicy.pdf

Interview with Encik Khairil Anwar bin Jusoh,an officer of Information Technology in University Science Malaysia (USM)

Labels: blockage towards certain websites, youths