New Net-safety laws mulled

Lawmakers are vowing to take legislative action against child exploitation online, CNET reports. “At a hearing [Tuesday] before the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, politicians served up a dizzying slew of suggestions about what kind of new federal laws should be enacted. The ideas were all over the map,” but new anti-child-porn legislation seems to be top-priority, CNET adds. The article describes some of the other ideas lawmakers are talking about: e.g., outlawing some hotlinks; monitoring what Americans are doing online; a child-porn database and associated ISP filtering, as in the UK; ISP records of who’s assigned what IP address; “search and destroy” bots on P2P networks; restricting Webcam use; regulating search-engine advertising; and a government definition of child pornography.