At my school we have internet access and computer access (duh) which we have to pay to use. You get your account topped up by giving them money. For every Mb you use some money comes off. All good there!
Since my school is fairly new the IT guys have only had a few years to experiment.
The first things they blocked us from using were porn sites, illegal sites etc.
Then they moved onto game sites and sites like NG here.
Now that was fair enough, I'm OK with that (even though I love NG)
What followed on from then pushed me and everyone else at school over the edge.
They started blocking sites for really stupid reasons. Sites were blocked for having advertisements on them. My friend tried to access his own site and it said it contained alcohol content! His site was made for a paint company. It contained nothing of the sort. Not even the word 'alcohol' could be found on the site.
Thats when we decided it had gone too far. We started using proxy's to get past these firewalls. That lasted a month until they found a way to block proxy's.
How could they go any further you ask? Hmmm....
Around a month ago they decided that they would block ALL search engines. Funnily enough, the school homepage links to search engines to help students. Yet now.....all of them are blocked!
The IT guys have also decided that they would buy some software that logs all of your actions and a program that takes screen shots of what your looking at when using the computer.
Its very hard to find a site now that isn't blocked and you cant search through sites that are similar because the search engines are blocked.
At what point does protecting the school turn into an abuse of power?
Pandora-Productions
Jesus that sounds pathetic! man i feel for you i really do, since I've moved to china, I'm used to a perminant blocking of good sites including Newgrounds (damn you gotta love Proxy servers eh?) has any one from your school taken up the case with any teachers, or the IT department themselves? cause if not i reccommend it, just say how now you cant get any thing done, hang on... YOU HAVE TO PAY TO USE THE SCHOOLS INTERNET CONECTION? oh fucking hell... i can imagine its slow as fuck as well.. christ at my school it was was never that bad, the program they used to track students (it was called Ranger) went down hill very quickly as soon as we found a way to access it, then in our college making new folders, saving work and right clicking was banned (and i think it still is) id complain to higher authorities or get a petition going, its how we opened up our own internet inside the school a bit as it was starting to get to the point where your school is at now.