Foreign companies in China, which has the world’s biggest online community, have faced allegations of bowing to censorship rules in their hunt for market access. To be careful, they usually avoid questions on the subject altogether or deflect them with humour. “I don’t think I am the expert to comment on this,” Shirley Yu-Tsui, a vice president of strategy for IBM greater China, said at the Reuters China Investment Summit. “All I know is my children complain they can not get on Facebook,” she said.

If you're sharing your computer with the kids in the house, then get ready to make some serious decisions. As the new school year gets under way the family computer will be used for a myriad of tasks including Internet research. In many households the computer will also become a source of anguish as parents agonize over the time that their children spend on the Internet and the inherent dangers that lurk within websites and e-mails. There is also the problem of keeping the computer safe from the children. A young child could unwittingly visit a shady site, click on a link, and install evil software or seriously compromise the functioning of the computer. The answer to the dilemma of protecting young children from online dangers or restricting computer activities by certain family members is a delicate act of balancing trust and caution. At a basic level you can restrict computer activities by making yourself an administrator and everyone else limited users of the computer. In either XP or Vista navigate to the Control Panel and open the User Accounts section. Give yourself admin rights and use a password to protect the account, then make each child a Limited User without a password. You will have unfettered rights to do anything on the computer whereas the youths will be unable to install software or make any changes without your permission.

Opposition spokesperson Nick Minchin has bought the Government’s proposed Internet content filtering scheme back to the political forefront, criticising the Government over its lack of transparency regarding the trials. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy originally scheduled results of the Internet filtering trial to be released earlier this year. Minchin says the results are overdue and has renewed calls for the Government to scrap its plans and return to the coalition’s Netalert program.

Attempting to use online social-networking tools, read blogs, or see multimedia presentations on a classroom computer can generate a message that’s become all too familiar in many American schools: Access Denied. So what teachers and students in Trussville, Ala., are doing on the Internet might be considered illicit activity in other districts across the country. Lessons in the 4,100-student district near Birmingham include YouTube videos and film trailers, Internet chats with peers in Nigeria or award-winning children’s authors, even blogging sessions and Web research on open search engines such as Google. Faced with concerns about Internet predators, cyberbullying, students’ sharing of inappropriate content on social networks, and the abundance of sexually explicit or violent content online, many school leaders and technology directors are placing tighter restrictions on Web access to shield students from potential harm. Yet in Trussville and other like-minded school systems, educators and school boards are instead expanding access to online resources, including social-networking sites, for students and teachers. Instead of blocking the many exit ramps and side routes on the information superhighway, they have decided that educating students and teachers on how to navigate the Internet’s vast resources responsibly, safely, and productively—and setting clear rules and expectations for doing so—is the best way to head off online collisions.