Cable ISPs Team up to Bar Child Porn

All 18 U.S. providers of cable Internet service have agreed to use a common list of verified child porn sites to make sure the sites aren't hosted by their networks.

Continuing to build on last month’s agreement by three ISPs to combat child porn and Google’s own effort to stamp it out, every single broadband cable provider in the U.S. signed an agreement Thursday to ensure that the Web sites providing such material would not be hosted by their networks.

Unlike last month’s agreement, which will have ISPs actively blocking access to child porn sites for their users, the new agreement only serves to make sure that cable companies aren’t inadvertently hosting the content. Under the agreement, each operator will use a blacklist provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to identify and remove sites on their own networks with illicit material, then report them to the organization as required by law.

While less aggressive than the earlier pact, the new agreement is unprecedented in its industry-wide scale. All 18 U.S. providers of cable Internet have signed on, representing the companies that bring the Internet to 112 million homes. Each provider will begin executing the agreement within 30 days.