On June 10^th New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced an agreement with Verizon Communications, Sprint  and Time Warner Cable for these Internet service providers (ISPs) to “shut down major sources of online child pornography.” At first glance it appeared to be a significant event  designed to put a serious dent into this illegal and horrendous practice.

Child pornography, also known as “child sexual abuse images,” is illegal in the United States and many other countries because it exploits children first when it’s produced and then over and over again each time it’s viewed. And it can also contribute to harming children who aren’t even in the pictures or videos because predators will sometimes use sexual images of children to help break down resistance of victims during the "grooming" process. 

The issue of whether child porn is considered “free” or “protected” speech was resolved in 1982 when the Supreme Court ruled that is not.

The three ISPs have pledged to no longer host newsgroups or websites that contain such images. Newsgroups, which function like forums or bulletin boards, have been around for decades, and before the development of the World Wide Web were popular places for Internet discussions.

These days very few people visit or post to newsgroups so, to make sure that they won’t be used to distribute child porn, Time Warner Cable is simply deleting all newsgroups from its servers even though the vast majority of them have nothing to do with adult or child pornography. Sprint and Verizon are deleting all newsgroups that start with “alt” (for alternative)—even though the vast majority of alt groups do not contain illegal material. 

Deleting this material from their servers is mostly a symbolic action because while the ISPs are ridding their servers of these exploitive images, they are not blocking their customers from accessing child porn stored elsewhere.

The same is true with websites. Under this agreement, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (where I serve as a board member) will send each company lists of Web URLs known to contain child porn. In turn, each company will delete any of these sites found to be on servers connected to their networks. Trouble is, these major ISPs have already long prohibited people from storing child porn on servers connected to their networks.

Because this agreement is largely symbolic, it won’t do much to stem trafficking in child pornography. And because the ISPs are simply enforcing their long-standing policies of deleting the material from their servers rather than blocking people from accessing it elsewhere, I’m not concerned about free speech issues—even though there are some watchdog groups (including the Center for Democracy and Technology) that worry about where this could lead.  Still, this does remind us all that this type of material is illegal.

For most parents, the issue of child pornography is somewhat removed. Chances are very low that your child will ever be used in this way, but as parents, it’s our responsibility to look out for the welfare of all children, including those  who live in other countries whose images—thanks to the Internet—may wind up on our shores. For helping to raise the issue I congratulate Attorney General Cuomo and the ISPs who signed the agreement.