Cablevision Blocks Child Porn Sites
As much as I loathe Cablevision’s IO digital cable service (worst I have ever had out of 4 different ones), I have to give them props for joining the fight and following suit of several other major ISPs in the country against child pornography Web sites.
Good news and good job!!
(p.s. Parental control and monitoring software like PC Pandora can be used by parents to make sure their kids are not a victim to this despicable crime)
Cablevision joins ISPs blocking child porn sites
By Danny Teigman, Newsday
Cablevision Systems Corp., Long Island’s largest Internet service provider, yesterday became the latest provider to voluntarily block child pornography Web sites and their images.
The decision was part of an agreement reached with state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who since his 2006 election has made the elimination of Internet child pornography a key issue.
“We’re doing what I set out to do,” said Cuomo, speaking at a news conference at the Hempstead Public Library. “I laid out my priorities.”
Bethpage-based Cablevision – which owns Newsday and has 2.4 million high-speed-Internet customers – joins Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, AOL, Sprint and Time Warner Cable in blocking access.
Cablevision representatives did not attend the meeting, but the company said in a statement that it has employed “long-standing efforts to promote Internet safety and appropriate behavior online.”
“Child pornography has no place on the Internet, or in our society,” said Lisa Rosenblum, Cablevision’s senior vice president of government affairs and education.
Cablevision will also block newsgroups, which are public discussion boards that allow potential predators to send links to child porn and child sex trafficking Web sites. Jim Maiella, a spokesman for Cablevision, said that a new sub link to report child pornography has been added to the Web site within the overall child abuse reporting category.
The agreement, Cuomo said, will work in concert with legal strategies of the past, where law enforcement attempted to track individuals downloading or uploading illegal imagery. Now, Internet service providers will “turn off the faucet” of Internet porn by preventing the imagery from reaching the Internet in the first place.
Although the agreement is voluntary, Cuomo said that if companies do not comply with his office’s requests, criminal and civil litigation will be pursued.
At least one educator said the agreement will help her better self-monitor seemingly innocuous Web sites that automatically link to illegal sites.
“It’s a great start,” said Sheila Hankin, a third-grade teacher in Westbury. “We have filters, we have firewalls, but that doesn’t always work.”
