By Abd Rahman Koya

The UMNO anti-defamation panel, whose members are said to be "a little above novice" when it comes to information technology, now bares its total ignorance about the internet.

The panel's chairman, Datuk Ibrahim Ali, said on June 5 that most of the websites the panel had "investigated" were based abroad and claimed that "websites are expensive to maintain".

Ibrahim said he had been told that it would cost RM60,000 to set up the "equipment", and around RM30,000 to "maintain" the website.

The committee, whose members are now getting used to mouse clicks and the "Save As" command found on the menus in browser programmes, has spent the two months of its existence downloading 3,000 pages from various websites.

The UMNO committee was also surprised that they had "detected" websites "as far as the United States" - quite a big discovery indeed. As such Ibrahim concluded that the websites are funded by foreign elements, "perhaps using students to do the work overseas". A webmaster met recently laughed off the suggestion and said perhaps "we are little more safe because there are not many left in UMNO who know anything about IT".

"Their ignorance about IT is a good thing for us", he added.

"We are monitoring the situation and receiving advice from lawyers," said Ibrahim. A serious "situation" indeed requiring urgent intervention of the Ministry of Home Affairs and also probably the newly appointed information minister!

"With such a statement, it is now confirmed that UMNO leaders are not only ignorant about Islam but also about information technology," said Hamzah Alias (not his real name for obvious reasons). It reminded him, Hamzah added, of the statement by Datuk Paduka Dr Abdul Hamid Othman who recently said the Government would stop Muslims from attending mosques located outside their residential areas as it was "against the Shariah" to do so.

Hamzah said he rents his website space for a mere US$10 a month from an internet company in Michigan, US.

Veteran journalist MGG Pillai who runs the popular "SangKancil" mailing list, said his cost was RM0.00.

"The only additional expense is the monthly phone bill charges," he said.

A quick check on the superhighway - which, by the way, did not take two months - revealed that dozens of internet companies now offer free homepages to users in exchange for banner advertisements. The most popular of these are Tripod.com and Geocities. Website addresses (URLs) of homepages set up through these websites however must bear the domain name of the host (for example https://members.tripod.com/your-name).

Those who prefer to use their own domain name (such as www.your-name.com or www.your-name.net) can register at US-based internet providers, one of the most popular being Network Solutions, which undertakes the registration of all internet domain names in the US. However, with the internet being what it is - borderless, domain names can be registered online by
anybody from any part of the world. The fee? US$100 for new registration and US$50 for renewal.

Once a domain name is registered, the webmaster then must find a server space to store the files for the homepage. With the exceptions of very large corporations such as Microsoft, CNN and online daily newspapers whose sites are hourly updated, nobody in their right mind - not even large companies - would invest in webservers even though the price of a webserver now can be as low as RM20,000. (It is like a company buying a hospital to cater for its staff's medical needs). Hundreds of companies around the world, including the local-based MIMOS, are now in the business of renting out "virtual" webservers. The most popular webservers are located in the US
since the speed of data transfer there is faster and more stable. The cost ranges from US$10 to US$30 a month. Intense competition however is sharply reducing rental rates for server space.

These "servers" are in fact remote hard disks for users to store their files in. When updating a site, newer files are transferred into the remote hard disk to replace the older files. For this, a user is
provided with a password so that his website would not be hacked into. One can do it from the comfort of his own room thousands of miles away. It does not require one to engage "students to do the work overseas"!

For someone embarking on an "investigation" of internet websites, details above are considered some of the most elementary knowledge. But to UMNO worthies, they may be as frustrating as learning Additional Mathematics in classic Latin.

"The government continues to stumble disastrously in coming to terms with the Internet. It does not know how it works, nor how it can be used with effect to spread information," said Pillai.

Now that the likes of Ibrahim have left it wide open for UMNO to become the object of further ridicule, one wonders how in the world the party is going to lead Malaysia into the multimedia super corridor. It is time the Great Leader consider another reshuffle.