NY Attorney General Fights Child Pornography
New York state attorney general Andrew Cuomo is making big strides in the quest to rid the internet of child pornography, coming down especially hard on internet service providers who allow those materials to be accessed via their networks. In an agreement with the attorney general, AOL, AT&T (the nation’s largest internet provider), Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint Nextel will remove access to alt.* newsgroups which have become a breeding ground for child pornography materials. Cuomo has even launched a website at NYStopChildPorn.com to aid those who would like to join in the fight to have other internet service providers follow suit, as well as keep the general public informed of where things stand. But is this for the greater good of the public, or just a matter of self promotion for the attorney general? John Timmer with ArsTechnica.com believes that may be the case.
Regardless of how you feel about Cuomo’s efforts or the implementation of his agreements by the ISPs, it’s difficult to interpret the new site as anything more than an effort in self promotion. Its intent is signaled by the entry page, which is entitled "Press Releases" and contains an animation that rotates through four photos of Cuomo announcing the site’s launch. Three of the four sentences in the draft letter to ISPs include Cuomo’s name, and the fourth refers to him by his title.
Whatever the motives may be, the campaign is a fantastic step towards a policy of eradicating such content from the internet. Will the attorney general’s office use what the article calls “a combination of legal threats and public shaming” to make sure that all internet service providers in the state are on board with the program? Or will the remaining ISP’s take the initiatives on their own?
