From what you have said it sounds like “broad brush stroke” censorship, which will block not just what it’s stated aim is but a good deal of free speach as well.

Which is obviously just another freedom the NY AG is keen to “put on a war footing”

It is perhaps timely that this week three large ISPs in the USA have announced that they have decided to block access to child sexual abuse image newsgroups [...]

It is perhaps on-topic to note that Peter Whoriskey’s story in the Washington Post, which you linked to above (as reprinted in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune) omits some details of the agreement with the NY Attorney General.

TimeWarner will drop ALL Usenet service.

Sprint will drop the entire alt.* hierarchy.

Verizon will limit Usenet to the “big 8″ only.

See Declan McCullagh’s most recent report. There also has been confirmation by the Associated Press, by Wired, and by others.

According to the NY OAG press release above, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said:

“… I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry.”

Do you comprehend the model that the NY AG is commending?

Some child sexual abuse image sites have been run by the police (mainly the FBI I believe) to see who visits them. However, I don’t believe this is true of 2500+ sites a year (the current rate). So I think has a minor effect on the stats.

Also, I don’t think financial fraud victims play any part in the removal of phishing sites — the victims never notice the site is fake!

Although I think you are probably correct in your view point above (I will read the paper over the weekend).

There is a (very small) posability there is another reason for some of the child abuse sites not being rapidly dealt with.

That is unlike the majority of the other sites you mention which are run by criminals and visited in the main by non criminals, these sites are being both run and visited by criminals.

So there is a (very small) possibility that some sites are being used indirectly to track down the criminals that visit them (say via ISP IP logs).

Which begs the question have you seen any evidence either way on this point?

As for INHOPE I have been left with the impression in the past that they where more of a “politicaly active lobying organisation” (I may be doing them an injustice). Which might account for why they take little preventative action as it is not realy in their interest to do so (if they solve the problem then there is no need for high profile political activities etc).

With respect to the Police there is also another angle, as most will acknowledge they are very resource limited. And as has been noted in one or two newspapers recently there appears to be bonus scheams of around 15K for senior officers if their subordinates meet certain government set targets.

So this begs the unseamly question of,

Who are the victims of the respective site types and what leverage do the victims possess and with whom?

To be horibly blunt children of sex crime have themselves little or no leverage and therefor there is little incentive to act quickly (sadly this is true for the child victims of most types of abuse)

Whereas victims of fraud / impersonarion against a financial institution are generaly adults and make a lot of noise to the financial organisation.

Also as you have noted it is in the financial organisations interest to get the sites taken down as quickly as possible.

Therefore in effect you are not realy comparing like with like (as the lack of action on fake pharma sites tends to confirm).

So perhaps the metric to use is in what direction the avarage take down time is going and at what rate is it changing against time.

Then ask what the best way is to influence the process so that the metric moves more rapidly in the required direction.