Putting the Squeeze on Child Porn

It’s been a slow couple of days news-wise (at least in terms of what I thought interesting enough to blog about,), but from the Christian Post comes good news from the world of media, specifically, Internet service providers:

Pro-family groups were encouraged this week with the news that AT&T and AOL would join a growing number of Internet service providers that are working to curb the proliferation of child pornography on the Internet.

The two companies, along with Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable which made similar announcements last month, said that they would help eliminate access to Internet newsgroups where pornography is posted and purge servers of child porn Web sites.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, child pornography on the Internet is a rampant problem, making the efforts and cooperation of Internet service providers all the more crucial.

“[S]ince 1997 the number of child pornography images available on the Internet [has] increased by 1500%,” the group wrote in a report.

Pat Truman, special counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, said that the recent move by AT&T and AOL was a major milestone, and would help to spur other providers to join the bandwagon in combating child pornography.

“They should have been blocking child pornography from the beginning,” he said.

That they should. This won’t solve the problem–there are still lots of ways of accessing the Internet, even if you don’t deal with one of these five companies–but any time civilized society or some segment of it stands up and does the right thing, it’s a victory for humanity everywhere. Way to go, AOL and AT&T.