Tight control of cyber cafes set to deny valuable learning tools

It is a situation question. You find something very interesting on the street and want to tell a friend overseas about the discovery immediately. What will you do?

You may pop into a cyber cafe, get online and write to your friend via Web mail while enjoying your drink. Next to you, other Internet surfers may be playing online games or visiting other Web sites.

Cyber cafes, a.k.a (also known as) Internet cafes, network cafes or personal-computer cafes, have mushroomed all over the world in the past few years. The cafes' popularity spread fast. Many governments and educators take it as a threat to young minds.

In July, the Taipei city government decided to ban anyone under 18 from Net cafes. The policy-makers believe that teenagers will simply drift home and get down to some studying, if they are prevented from surfing the Web or playing online games.

Meanwhile, the Malaysian authorities have stepped up the crackdown on unlicensed cyber cafes that allegedly lure schoolchildren into missing classes and function 'more like an amusement park than a cafe'.

In mainland China, operators have to fulfil a list of requirements for a Net cafe licence. In the city of Wuhan in Hebei, licensees must install police-approved filter software in their computers to bar access to games and other illegitimate sites; record customers' details and send minors home after 9 pm.