U.S. flagged as hub for Web child abuse

The United States is reportedly the worst nation for hosting child-abuse images online, according to a BBC news story this week.

The article cited a survey from the Internet Watch Foundation, a U.K.-based digital "hotline" for reporting illegal material posted to the Web, including images of child abuse, obscene content and pages that incite racial hatred. Of 14,000 sites reported to the IWF in the first six months of the year, 5,000 contained images that depicted child abuse. Of those images, 51 percent originated from a source in the United States, according to the IWF survey. Countries that followed included Russia at 14.9 percent, and Japan at 11.7 percent.

The reason the U.S. ranked so high, according to the IWF, is because it is home to the most Web traffic and the most Internet service providers in the world. And while these ISPs are acutely aware of mounting concern about child abuse online--in June, Microsoft, Yahoo and others announced plans to address the issue--their efforts may not circumvent new laws. The U.S. attorney general has proposed legislation that ups the ante for ISPs to report images of child abuse.

For example, a bill now in the U.S. Senate stipulates fines of $150,000-plus to providers of electronic communication service that do not report an instance of child abuse images.

On a positive note, if the United States is the largest source of Web traffic, it also likely plays host to the most sites advocating child protections.