Any California customer of the five ISPs already signed on in New York is included in the restrictions. For customers, the initiative's inability to target porn-serving newsgroups means the loss of access to many innocent newsgroups. But there are countless workarounds for Usenet users, a demographic dominated by technical types, to get access. For Cuomo et al., the initiative sounds so good on paper that they don't have to even bother making it work.

“You can’t help but look at this material and not be disturbed,” Cuomo told the New York Times. Double negatives aside, we wouldn't argue with Cuomo — except that most of Usenet, no matter how offensive or value-lacking, does not contain child pornography. As journalist Debbie Nathan reported from The Academy of Forensic Sciences conference on child porn, even the feds are having a hard time deciding what's real and not out there. In this case, Cuomo's office is armed with software that compares this "established" child porn with possible child porn, an application that sounds a lot like the one YouTube offered up to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children earlier this year. They say their database of searchable child porn contains 11,000 images. If anyone wants to know where to find some "disturbing material", at least they know where to start.

This is apparently the first time these ISPs have agreed to censor certain web content. (AOL, whose user base is shrinking, has already blocked certain content, according to the Times.) And once that line is crossed, theoretically it could be pushed to block more and more porn. The first iteration of this filter will probably block just this universally illegal and dangerous content. But with this tool in place nationwide, another federal A.G. like Alberto Gonzales would find it much easier to enforce draconian obscenity laws. (A relevant concern: Just last week a federal jury convicted pornographer Max Hardcore of criminal obscenity for his consensual of-age extreme pornography.)

A filter doesn't stop child porn; it just moves the problem somewhere else. The distributors will just find new ways to pass the porn along, new ways to disguise it, ways to get around the cataloging system that Cuomo's office uses to search for child porn. (Since only law enforcement is allowed to view child porn so they can make sure no one else ever does, one can only speculate what leads a person to land a job on the child porn task force and how much Cuomo's description of child porn — "These are 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, assault victims, there are animals in the pictures" — comes from direct experience.)

The decision also turns the country into Cuomo's de facto jurisdiction. If the content is coming from inside New York, why hasn't Cuomo's office shut down and prosecuted the source? If it's not from New York, how does Cuomo have authority? He argues that ISPs are responsible, and it is hard to refute the logic that no one should knowingly allow someone else to view child pornography. But isn't stopping it his job in the first place?

Photo of Andrew Cuomo by Getty

UPDATE: A Time Warner spokesperson says the Times was wrong, and the company does not plan to block any web sites, but it will access to all newsgroups.

Never mind that according to research, only 7 percent of arrests for statutory rape are Internet-related. And that experts say the best way to keep sex-offender recidivism rates low is to allow the criminal to live in a stable environment where he can get a job and live a normal life. This bill will pass. Facebook will have cover from litigation. Cuomo will have his Eliot-Spitzer moment. And nothing, really, will have been accomplished.