Have no fear folks this system has been in use in the UK for a long time now and has thus far not been abused by the authorities, although the Swedish police did
try once to have the pirate bay thrown on it in secret
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7446637.stmThree of the biggest US internet service providers have agreed to block access to bulletin boards and websites that carry images of child sex abuse.
The firms - Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable - will also provide more than $1m (£500,000) to fund efforts to remove child sex sites.
The agreement was brokered by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Previous attempts to crack down on child pornography have been resisted by the industry.
Internet companies had previously argued that they could not be held responsible for how individuals communicate with other individuals online.
Law enforcement agencies therefore concentrated on targeting the producers of images of child sex abuse rather than the ISPs.
Agents from Mr Cuomo's office conducted an eight-month investigation into the ISPs before the agreement was reached.
They posed as ISP subscribers and complained to the companies that they were allowing images of child sex abuse to proliferate in spite of customer service agreements pledging to discourage such activity. Mr Cuomo's office threatened the ISPs with charges of fraud and deceptive business practices.
In an attempt to avoid the charges, the firms agreed to Mr Cuomo's terms, including the agreement to block access to child sex sites.
The agreement will affect customers across the US.
I see no downside to this welcome initiative in fact in the whole of the time I have known this system is in operation (in europe/UK) I have yet to visit a site blocked by it, that is how good the police have been at targetting the correct sites and may I say doing a fine job of it, if the quality of blocking these types of site can be maintained then this is not something anyone need fear.
