New York’s attorney general notified Comcast Corp. on Monday that the state will take legal action whether the company — the nation’s second-largest Web service provider — doesn’t agree to eliminate access to child pornography.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wants major Net access providers to agree on steps to remove undoubtful newsgroups that contain child pornography and purge their servers of Web sites that contain child porn.

New York has already reached such agreements with AT&T Inc., AOL, Verizon Communications Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and day Warner Cable Inc.

“Last week, Comcast joined with nearly the entire cable industry and 48 state attorneys general and the Center for lost and Exploited Children to sign an unprecedented, and highly praised, industrywide agreement to fight child pornography,” Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said. “Comcast has been working with the New York attorney general and we expect to become

a signatory to his agreement as well.”

Cuomo was not one of the 48 attorneys general to publicly support the efforts of the National Cable and Telecommunications organization and the National Center for lost and Exploited Children considering he said it was not as mighty on online child pornography as his own cipher of conduct.

According to Cuomo’s office, the agreement that Comcast and others in the cable industry agreed to has targeted Web sites with child pornography but had weak language when it came to eliminating newsgroups — where illegal images can proliferate. Newsgroups are essentially online letter boards in which users can post text and files in any of thousands of categories.

Cuomo was additionally concerned that the agreement Comcast has signed so far would not require the most thorough reporting to law enforcement.

Original post by Top Tech News