U.S. Web servers oppose plan to get child porn off the Internet
Just over a decade ago, 18 percent of commercial child pornography produced in the world was hosted on computer servers and Web sites in the United Kingdom.
Today, the United Kingdom hosts less than 1 percent, studies found. It is no accident.
The computer industry in the United Kingdom works closely with that country’s Internet Watch Foundation to identify and then knock off child pornography hosted inside Great Britain’s borders.
Internet sites it doesn’t have jurisdiction over are blocked, limiting access within the United Kingdom. “On the rare occasion that a child abuse Web site is hosted on UK networks, the IWF issues a ‘notice and take-down’ order to the UK host or ISP [internet service provider] and they remove it — usually within a matter of hours,” said Internet Watch Foundation spokeswoman Sarah Robertson.
The United States, which a foundation study found hosts some 62 percent of the world’s commercial child pornography, is trying to develop a similar program. But the process is stumbling.
“There is no effective notice and take-down system,” the foundation said of the United States in one of its recent annual reports.
Part of the problem is the sheer size of the United States cyber system. There are an estimated 5,000 Web servers and internet service providers in the United States offering Web pages as well as Internet connections, making it by far the largest cyber system in the world. Given its size, authorities from the U.S. to Russia agree the U.S. system is vulnerable to child pornographers worldwide looking to post photos and films.
But beyond that, the Internet remains a sort of Wild West in America, a largely unregulated industry that, generally, isn’t working closely with Internet overseers.
The Internet industry says it’s concerned about child pornography, and the largest of the service providers — AOL in particular — are taking some steps to address the problem.
But overall, the industry is skeptical that it’s hosting as much child pornography as law enforcement and child advocates claim, or that knocking off and blocking sites is an effective way to keep the offensive material off the Internet.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a private agency in Alexandria, Va., authorized by Congress to help the Internet industry eliminate child pornography, has a list of 8,000 confirmed child pornography sites it is asking U.S. Internet companies to shut down or block — partly because police lack the resources to investigate all the sites.
“You end up blocking a site, and they move to a different address,” responds David P. McClure, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Internet Industry Association. “It’s like chasing fog. Let’s put more resources into law enforcement.”
The industry also worries that the self policing it’s being asked to do could violate First Amendment and privacy laws. Liability and cost are also concerns.
“ISPs are not set up to become the investigative branch of NCMEC or the police,” McClure said. “We just don’t want to do things that aren’t legal because a private organization says we should.”
Currently, just 329 of some 5,000 electronic service providers in the United States are registered with the National Center. What’s more, the National Center says current federal law requires service providers — under threat of a $50,000 penalty — to notify the agency when they find child pornography on their sites. Aside from the major service providers, few companies report to the National Center. The industry is reluctant to act.
“This is an industry that is horribly, horribly fragmented. There is no industry leadership. We do the best we can,” McClure said.
The shortcomings with the U.S. system were highlighted during the recent investigation into Regpay, an Eastern European child pornography business that used five different U.S. servers to host its pornography and financial records during 2002 and 2003. None of the servers was charged in the case.
The Buffalo News contacted the five Regpay server firms and spoke with officials from four. All said they didn’t know what Regpay was posting and can’t afford the staffing and technology it would require to search their customers-sites for child pornography. Also, given privacy rights, some servers say they are uncomfortable snooping on their customers.
“We’re not in the business of knowing what is on the servers,” said Lynn Hoover, co-owner of CalPOP.com, which got caught up in the Regpay case.
“We don’t monitor the network. It is too large, and not only that, there are First Amendment rights,” added Danna L. Thompson, legal compliance specialist with Verio, another Regpay server.
Some Regpay host companies said they never heard of the National Center or of any reporting laws. When they get complaints — often from unsuspecting Internet users — of illegal material on the sites they host, server companies said they investigate on their own. If there’s a problem, they order the images removed and in some cases, contact police.
“We turn stuff off when we get complaints, like everyone else,” Thompson said.
Beyond its plan to increase membership and institute a knock off and block procedure, the National Center wants Internet Web servers to police customer sites and maintain records for up to two years in case the information is needed for a criminal investigation.
“The idea is to proactively look at the content,” said John F. Shehan, CyberTipline program manager for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. “If we are able to get 5,000 on board doing the same things, it would be more difficult for them to exploit our U.S. servers.”
— Susan Schulman and Lou Michel
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