Fighting child porn
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo continues to press Internet service providers to block child pornography in any way they can.
Mr. Cuomo announced last week that Comcast Corp., NetZero, Juno and BlueLight Internet will eliminate child porn sites from their servers and halt access to child porn newsgroups.
The attorney general reached similar agreements recently with AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., AOL, Spring Nextel Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc.
He has also asked small local Internet providers for information on how they are fighting child pornography. Two weeks ago, Mr. Cuomo warned Comcast, the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, that he would pursue legal action if the company did not block pornographic images of children.
New York's efforts complement other initiatives, such as the recent decision by cable companies that offer Internet service to 112 million homes to reduce child pornography on home computers.
The companies have formed a pact with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. If the center discovers a child porn Web site hosted by a server managed by one of the companies, the company will shut the site down. If one of the cable firms finds a child pornography site on a server it is managing, it will close the site and report it to the center.
These efforts are all to the good. Society has a duty to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent the dissemination of images that promote such violence against the innocent and vulnerable.
