3 net providers to block child porn
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - June 10, 2008 The companies also will pay $1.1 million to help fund efforts to
remove the online child porn created and disseminated by users
through their services, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said. The
changes will affect customers nationwide.
Time Warner Cable acted as soon as it learned that users were
posting objectionable material and eliminated the newsgroups, a
mainstay of the Internet from its early days, said spokesman Alex
Dudley.
He emphasized that Time Warner didn't host or provide any of the
content and was simply a portal, allowing groups to be created with
content provided by the users.
"As soon as we were made aware of the issue ... we took steps
to correct," Dudley said Tuesday.
The agreements follow an undercover investigation of child porn
newsgroups. Cuomo said in a prepared statement that his
investigation of other service providers is continuing. He has used
similar probes and the possibility of civil or criminal charges to
extract concessions on Internet safety in the past.
Last year, Cuomo reached agreement with the social networking
sites MySpace and Facebook to toughen protections against online
sexual predators.
"By shutting down offending newsgroups and contributing to
funds that will combat child pornography online, we are working to
remove this content permanently," said Verizon deputy general
counsel Tom Dailey.
Verizon and Time Warner Cable are two of the five largest
internet service providers in the world. Verizon has 8.2 million
subscribers and Time Warner Cable's Road Runner has 7.9 million.
Sprint is one of the three largest wireless companies in the United
States.
"We are doing our part to deter the accessibility of such
harmful content through the internet and we are providing monetary
resources that will go toward the identification and removal of
online child pornography," said Sprint spokesman Matthew Sullivan.
"We embrace this opportunity to build upon our own long-standing
commitment to online child safety."
