Offering a nationwide support to the groundbreaking agreement made between various Internet service providers (ISPs) and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo a few days ago, cable operators delivering Internet to 87 percent of U.S. households have come up wholeheartedly to stop child pornography online.

 

The National Cable & Telecommunications Associations (NCTA (News - Alert)), the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), and the National Association of Attorneys General signed an industry-wide agreement last week to curtail child exploitation online. The companies included in NCTA that signed the agreement provide Internet services to more than 112 million homes in U.S.

 

As part of the agreement, the cable companies will prevent hosting of a number of specific Web sites that contain child pornography. NCMEC will provide the list of Web sites to the companies. The companies also agreed to report instances of online child abuse as mandated by federal law to NCMEC’s CyberTipline.

 

The agreement also mandates that the companies update policies to act against the emerging sources of child pornography including some newsgroups. The agreement will be effective within a month.

 

“We are deeply grateful for this industry-wide attack on child pornography,” said Ernie Allen, president and CEO of NCMEC, in an announcement. “It is not possible to arrest and prosecute every offender. We must be creative and build new public-private partnerships to address this insidious problem more effectively. Today's announcement represents a bold step forward.”

 

As of December 2007, NCMEC’s Child Victim Identification Program had identified more than 1,233 child victims worldwide who were seen in sexually abusive images on Internet. NCMEC has also seized a huge collection of child pornography from more than 11,650 investigations across the country.

 

The new cable companies that signed the agreement include: BendBroadband, Bresnan Communications, Bright House Networks, Broadstripe, Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Eagle Communications, GCI (News - Alert), Harron Communications, Insight Communications, Mediacom Communications, Midcontinent Communications, Sjoberg's, Suddenlink Communications, and U.S. Cable. Time Warner (News - Alert) Cable already signed the memorandum of understanding.

 

“Although NCMEC has recently signed similar agreements with individual companies, this agreement is notable as the first such agreement NCMEC has reached with an entire sector of the nation's communications industry,” said Patrick C. Lynch, general president, National Association of Attorneys, in a statement.

 

According to Lynch, the new agreement between the cable operators and NCMEC will limit the ability of predators to store and distribute images of sexual exploitation of the most vulnerable group in society.