Cablevision Joins Cuomo Campaign

Cablevision Systems is the latest Internet service provider to agree to block customers' access to online child pornography in the state of New York.

The state's attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, has urged companies throughout the state to join his antiporn campaign by pressing the ISPs to block access to newsgroups that have been identified as online sources of child porn.

Cablevision joins a list of companies that includes Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, AOL, Sprint-Nextel and Time Warner Cable.

In addition to eliminating access to the newsgroups, the ISPs also agree to purge their servers of all child porn Web sites identified by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

“Cablevision has committed to work with my office to proactively purge online child pornography, and I applaud them for it,” said Cuomo.

With Cablevision's participation in Cuomo's antiporn drive, access to suspect Web sites should be cut to Cablevision customers in Brooklyn, Nassau, Dutchess, Suffok and Westchester counties.

The attorney general's campaign follows a six-month investigation that identified 88 newsgroups that transmitted 11,390 “sexually lewd” photos of prepubescent children.

As part of the investigation, Cuomo's office developed a system for identification of online content containing child pornography. Every offensive picture is given a unique identifier which, once collected, can be used to digitally match the same image anywhere it is shared.

With that system, the AG's office can filter thousands of online files at a time to identify which ISPs were providing access to pornographic images.

Cuomo is keeping up the pressure on all ISPs that serve the state.

“There are no more excuses. Internet service providers can no longer drag their feet when it comes to protecting children and purging this deplorable and illegal material from their servers,” Cuomo said in a prepared statement.