A group of five major Internet companies will pool their resources in an effort to crack down on child pornography and the exploitation of children on the World Wide Web.
The companies include Microsoft, AOL, Earthlink, Yahoo! and United Online. They will contribute an initial investment of $1 million to create a database of known images that contain child pornography in an attempt to track and stop the spread of the images. They will assist the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in combating images of child porn.
'We believe it is possible to increase the chance that child predators will be caught and provide a deterrent to those who would be tempted to exploit children on the Internet,' said John Ryan, chief counsel at Time Warner Inc.'s AOL.
By creating the database, the companies will place codes on the images and thereby prevent people from sharing them with other users.
The five companies also plan to research new tools to help law enforcement by combating the methods used to hide the spread of child pornography on the Internet.
'Child predators take advantage of Internet technologies not only to help distribute images of child exploitation, but also to attempt to conceal their criminal behavior,' explained NCMEC president Ernie Allen in a statement. 'These leading companies have a wealth of expertise and technological tools that can help protect children and reduce the proliferation of sexually abusive images of children. Similar tools have been used to protect users from other Internet-related threats, such as spam, phishing and viruses. Now they can also be applied to this fight against child pornographers.'
