N.Y. AG pushes Comcast to block child-porn access

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wants major Internet access providers to agree on steps to remove certain newsgroups that contain child pornography and purge their servers of Web sites that contain child porn.

New York has already reached such agreements with AT&T Inc., AOL, Verizon Communications Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc.

"Last week, Comcast joined with nearly the entire cable industry and 48 state attorneys general and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children to sign an unprecedented, and highly praised, industrywide agreement to fight child pornography," Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said. "Comcast has been working with the New York attorney general and we expect to become a signatory to his agreement as well."

Cuomo was not one of the 48 attorneys general to publicly support the efforts of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children because he said it was not as tough on online child pornography as his own code of conduct.

According to Cuomo's office, the agreement that Comcast and others in the cable industry agreed to has targeted Web sites with child pornography but had weak language when it came to eliminating newsgroups--where illegal images can proliferate. Newsgroups are essentially online message boards in which users can post text and files in any of thousands of categories.

Cuomo was also concerned that the agreement Comcast has signed so far would not require the most thorough reporting to law enforcement.