That is essentially what new legislation that passed by a landslide (409-2) last week says:

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including “obscene” cartoons and drawings–or face fines of up to $300,000.

That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user’s account be retained for subsequent police inspection.

When will they pass legislation to go after the actual companies that transmit these images? A couple weeks ago I was surfing around Flick (a favorite past time of mine that goes hand in hand with being a photography nut), when I stumbled across a page that had sexual images of a girl that appeared to be around 10-12 years old. I wasn’t given a notice that it maybe inappropriate content or anything, instead I was taken right to the page. I immediately reported these images to Flickr/Yahoo. Two weeks later and those images are still there and even more have been added. You still don’t get any warnings that the images maybe inappropriate (or illegal).

So when will our government focus on the enablers instead of the people who may accidentally stumble upon these images? I strongly believe in freedom on the internet, but I am also strongly against the exploitation of children online. Instead of focusing on the person who may click on the wrong Flickr or MySpace page, why don’t they impose tougher sanctions against these companies? If Yahoo or Murdoch faced steep fines over the storing of these images then maybe they will take more action instead of sending out automated responses.