3 biggest ISPs unite to fight child porn
Three big Internet service providers said yesterday they plan to block access to child porn Web sites and newsgroups after an undercover probe by the New York State attorney general’s office found numerous cases of explicit child sex on the Web. At a news conference announcing the initiative, officials from Time Warner Cable, Sprint and Verizon also announced they were giving more than $1 million to combat the spread of child porn. The three companies are among the nation’s largest service providers, with several million customers, said Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. He acknowledged that two other large Internet service providers hadn’t signed the agreement but he wouldn’t identify them at the news conference.
Acknowledging that efforts to stop child Internet porn face challenges, Cuomo said that his office is shifting strategy, aiming at pornography suppliers rather than customers. Jeffrey Zimmerman, a senior vice president for Time Warner Cable, said the company expects to start blocking access to the newsgroups by the end of the month. Representatives for Verizon and Sprint didn’t give a time frame. Cuomo said that under the agreement the companies will take down child porn Web sites when they learn of them through complaints or investigation, including a directory of questionable Web sites identified by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which will receive some of the money being put up by the companies.
Source: Newsday, InfoWeek
Date: 13 June 2008, Friday
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