New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said that he's gotten agreements from Verizon, Time Warner Cable (TWC), and Sprint to block online access to child pornography in newsgroups and to expunge such sites from their own networks.
The Attorney General's office said that it discovered 88 newsgroups containing a total of 11,390 images of child pornography, including rape and beastiality.
Verizon, TWC, and Sprint will collectively contribute just under $1.2 million to help fund efforts to remove child pornography from the Internet.
Verizon and TWC are among the five biggest ISPs in the world with 8.2 million and 7.9 million subscribers respectively. Sprint is among the top three largest wireless companies in the US; no subscriber figures were available at press time.
Ernie Allen, CEO at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said, "This is a major step forward in the fight against child pornography. Attorney General Cuomo has developed a new and effective system that cuts online child porn off at the source, and stops it from spreading across the Internet. I applaud the Attorney General for making the protection of children a priority for his office."
