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Moves target Internet child porn

By Helen Huntley, Times Staff Writer
In print: Wednesday, June 11, 2008

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Internet service providers Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable will sharply restrict their customers' access to child pornography under an agreement New York officials announced Tuesday.

But don't expect it to eliminate child porn from the Internet.

"We are in effect starting a technological arms race that we've got to have the will and the resolve to see through," said Bill Stewart, deputy chief of staff for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum. "Once we tackle U.S. Internet service providers, this traffic will move to another venue."

The agreement announced by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will apply nationwide and will block two major sources of Internet child porn for customers of the three companies:

• "Newsgroups," which are public online bulletin boards for uploading and downloading files and which bring together users with like interests. Although newsgroups are separate from the World Wide Web, users get to them through their Internet service providers.

• Web sites featuring child pornography that are located on one of the three companies' servers.

"This is not a perfect solution by any means, but it clearly is going to make it harder for people to get to this kind of material," Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe said.

The filter will not stop a Verizon customer from gaining access to child porn sites on the servers of other companies that aren't part of the agreement. In addition, new sites constantly pop up.

"We're trying to remain a step ahead of the child pornographers," said Time Warner Cable spokesman Alex Dudley. "These folks are clever, and they're constantly trying to dupe the system."

The New York investigation found 11,390 lewd photos of children on 88 newsgroups devoted to child pornography, which all three of the participating companies will block. Time Warner Cable is going a step further and blocking all newsgroups, no matter the topic.

"Only 2 percent or less of our customers actually use newsgroups," Dudley said. "The technology is dated and the potential for abuse was just not worth it."

The companies agreed to pay $1.1-million to help fund efforts to remove online child pornography. They agreed to block sites identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and to respond quickly to customer complaints about child pornography.

Many Internet service providers have parental controls that allow users to block access to pornographic sites. But "it's a much larger issue than parents can attack unaided," said Stewart, the Florida deputy chief of staff. "We are definitely involved in the situation and we applaud Attorney General Cuomo for taking action."

Cuomo's office said it is continuing its inquiry, looking at other Internet service providers.

Helen Huntley can be reached at hhuntley@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8230.