Matheson pushing Net porn-tax act

WASHINGTON — As stories of Internet child pornography linger in Washington, Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, is trying to get more support for a Internet pornography tax bill he introduced last year.

Matheson's "Internet Safety and Child Protection Act" would levy a 25 percent tax on Internet pornography transactions and create a new Internet Safety and Child Protection Trust fund, which could receive an estimated $3 billion annually to finance tougher law enforcement, better blocking and filtering technologies and greater educational efforts to keep children safe online, according to Matheson's office.

Matheson's bill has 10 co-sponsors, and Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., who introduced the bill in the Senate, has nine.

"The dark side of our technological advances is the way criminals — in horrifying numbers — are able to use them to prey on children," Matheson said. "My legislation — HR3479 — is all about giving law enforcement the tools it needs to combat this terrible assault on innocence."

Last week's arrest of Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian J. Doyle for preying on a detective posing as a 14-year-old girl online coupled with Tuesday's congressional testimony from 19-year-old college student detailing his five years as a child porn subject have bought the world of Internet porn into the limelight.

At a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Justin Berry described how he used a Web cam starting when he was 13 years old and — over the course of five years — showed his new "friends" found on the Internet everything from himself shirtless to having sex with prostitutes in Mexico.

The House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a second hearing on Internet pornography on Thursday.

---

E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com