CYBERJAYA: The Government will get together with local mobile service providers (MSPs) and Internet service providers (ISPs) soon to address the growing concern that children and youths can have access to pornographic and other inappropriate websites via their cellphones. 

“We are in the process of arranging this meeting,” said Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Seri Dr Jamaludin Jarjis. “We expect this meeting to take place in one or two weeks.” 

Jamaludin was speaking to reporters after officiating the NTDC (.NET Technopreneur Development Centre) graduation ceremony here on Tuesday.  

The NTDC is a supporting programme under the MSC Technopreneur Development Flagship (MSC-TDF) initiative and offers a conducive rapid-prototyping development environment for promising technopreneurs.

Jamaludin said the meeting's objective would be to work out guidelines for ISPs and MSPs “so that they can provide content-filtering software to their respective customers.” 

A local daily reported last week that Jamaluddin was saddened by the increasing number of youths being exposed to pornographic material on the Internet and wants to meet ISPs soon to find a solution.  

He said the exposure of the country's youths to pornographic materials via the Internet is worrying and that “something has to be done quickly before this gets out of hand.” 

Nine companies have graduated from the NTDC within a year of enrolling in the facility. 

Jamaludin, in his keynote address, lauded the NTDC because it offers technopreneurs “strategic resources and a controlled, conducive environment that helps them take their ideas to market in the shortest time possible.” 

However he said that this is only a good beginning. “It is still only a drop in the bucket,” he said, and urged new ICT (information and communications technology) graduates to try their hand at technopreneurship. 

“We produce thousands of ICT graduates every year. I hope that more will take up the challenge of entrepreneurship,” he said. 

Under the NTDC programme, the companies benefitted from having work space, servers and PCs from sponsors such as Hewlett-Packard (M) Sdn Bhd, software tools and training from Microsoft (M) Sdn Bhd, as well as equipment for testing their software. 

For more on the NTDC, go to ntdc.msctdf.com.my/C5/About%20NTDC/default.aspx.

Source : The Star

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