Politics on the Hudson

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said he’s reached a deal with Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint to block access to child porn from Newsgroups, which he said are a major supplier of illegal images. The companies will also purge their servers of child porn websites.

“The pervasiveness of child pornography on the Internet is horrific and it needs to be stopped,” said Cuomo, who gave the story to the New York Times yesterday.

“We are attacking this problem by working with Internet Service Providers to ensure they do not play host to this immoral business. I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry.”

Cuomo’s office undertook an undercover investigation that determined a large amount of child pornography was found on these so-called Newgroups, which are an online service not affiliated with the websites. The Newsgroups serve as bulletin boards where users can upload and download files, Cuomo said.

The investigation uncovered 88 different Newsgroups that contained a total of 11,390 sexually lewd photos featuring children. Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint provided their subscribers with access to many of these Newsgroups, Cuomo said.

The companies also agreed to rid their servers of child pornography websites identified by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

The companies will also pay $1.125 million to fund efforts remove child pornography from the Web.