Three Major ISPs Vow To Fight Child Porn
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo unveiled landmark agreements on Tuesday with Sprint, Time Warner Cable and Verizon Communications to shutter major sources of online child pornography. The announcement comes as many on Capitol Hill are exploring legislative solutions aimed at curbing illegal Web content.
The three major Internet service providers for the first time have agreed to block customers' access to child porn-themed online bulletin boards known as "newsgroups" and will purge their servers of child porn Web sites. That "new standard of responsibility… should serve as a model for the entire industry," Cuomo said.
An investigation by his office uncovered 88 different newsgroups that contained more than 11,000 lewd photos. As part of the probe, Cuomo's staffers developed a new system for flagging online child pornography and digitally matching an image anywhere else it is distributed. The companies will also pay $1.12 million to fund additional efforts to remove child porn from the Internet.
The Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill last month intended to improve the federal government's response to Internet-based crimes against children and the House approved several bills in the fall. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who sponsored one of the measures, lauded Cuomo's announcement. "We need to think of this as a war -- a war we must wage against sex predators, a war for our children," she said.
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