House votes to tighten net child porn regulations

The US House of Representatives late Wednesday approved a measure by a vote of 409-2, to expand the responsibilities of ISPs to reign in child pornography on their servers.

Under the new law, Internet service providers will be required to preserve child pornography images as evidence, and report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children the online screen names and locations of suspected child predators, along with the times when the images in question were accessed.

Fines would be levied on ISPs that do not cooperate. If an incident is not reported, an ISP could be fined $150,000 per image per day, which would increase the penalty by three times. If the ISP fails to do so again, the fine would double. The bill will now be passed on to the Senate for approval, where it is expected to pass.