LocalNet joins Internet providers pledging not to transmit child porn
A Williamsville Internet provider that resisted signing an agreement to block child pornography now has signed on to a growing list of servers who are halting the transmission of the sexually abusive images.
State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo made the announcement Tuesday during a stop in Cheektowaga to promote a new addition to his Web site www.nystopchildporn.com . The site lists, by mapped regions of the state, all Internet service providers who have or have not signed the agreement with his office. “The power of the pocketbook is a powerful incentive,” Cuomo said, in urging consumers to take a stand against child pornography by finding out which companies have refused to sign on and avoid doing business with them.
In addition to LocalNet of Williamsville, the attorney general also announced that four other local servers — Windstream of Little Rock, Ark.; WildBlue of Englewood, Colo.; OneStream Networks of Rochester; and WINC Communications of Hamburg — have signed the agreement.
With those additions, Cuomo said, all of the mainstream servers providing Internet access in Western New York now participate, though three smaller servers — Express 56, Orange County Online and Spin Internet — have not joined the effort.
An investigation into those companies is under way, according to Cuomo’s staff. If the companies do not comply, they face the threat of a lawsuit — a strategy the state attorney general has successfully used in getting all the major providers to agree in recent months.
Marc P. Silvestri, president of LocalNet Corp., said he signed the agreement after the attorney general’s office acknowledged in writing that his company had done nothing wrong.
“Once they dropped the threat of litigation and changed the agreement so as not to imply any guilt on our part, it was a simple decision to join the effort,” Silvestri said.
His company, he insisted, always had been willing to sign the agreement but wanted an acknowledgment that LocalNet had not been guilty of transmitting child pornography.
The attorney general’s office, however, said the agreement Silvestri signed is no different than the one all of the other servers have signed. That document never was viewed as an admission of guilt, according to the attorney general’s staff.
Cuomo’s Web site also enables individuals to contact his office and report any service providers they may encounter not listed on the site.
During the news conference to showcase the new Web page map, Cuomo stressed that parents remain the first line of defense.
“The new ‘neighborhood’ is the Internet, and one of the most dangerous scenes can be a child sitting in a bedroom with an open laptop,” Cuomo said, in explaining that youngsters are at serious risk from sexual predators “who are masters at seducing young boys and girls.”
He said adults need to discuss Internet safety issues, even if children argue that they have privacy rights.
Biserka Tabar, of Buffalo, who attended the event in Cleveland Hill High School, said the privacy argument holds little sway with her.
“If you have nothing to hide, you don’t need privacy,” the mother of three teenagers said.
The attorney general’s campaign against child pornography on the Internet followed an investigation and series, “The Child Porn Pipeline,” published in June by The Buffalo News.
