House Passes ISP Bill H.R. 3791

The United States House recently made some changes to the law regarding internet service providers. These new laws call for stiff penalties for ISP's that don't report incidents of child pornography to officials. The bill was passed on Wednesday.

Bill H.R. 3791, passed 409-2, expands the reporting duties of Internet service providers with respect to violations of child sexual exploitation and pornography laws. The ISPs would have to inform the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children of the Internet identity and geographic location of suspected sex offenders and the time child pornography was downloaded. They also would have to preserve child pornography images for investigations and prosecutions. ISPs that fail to report incidents of child pornography would be subject to fines of $150,000 per image per day, up from the current $50,000. The penalty would jump to $300,000, double the current rate, for subsequent cases.

This means that ISP's will also be held responsible (to some degree) for the subscribers it carries. Time will only tell how effective this bill is at capturing online sexual predators.