By an overwhelming margin -- 409 to 2 -- the U.S. House of Representatives passed new legislation on Thursday aimed at making the Internet safer for children. The Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online (SAFE) Act was sponsored by Texas Democrat Nick Lampson, one of the founding members of the House Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus.

Among other things, the legislation imposes significant fines on Internet service providers (ISPs) that fail to report evidence of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. According to a press release from Rep. Lampson's office, ISPs would be fined $150,000 per incident per day for first offenses, and $300,000 per incident per day for second and succeeding offenses.

"We are not trying to make these (Internet providers) spies on what they put out there," Lampson said in the statement, "but there are plenty of ways information can be gleaned from what you see on the Internet and if that is illegal, we want it reported to law enforcement."

The requirements of the legislation, if it takes effect, could impose significant regulatory burdens on affected sites. In addition to reporting possible violations to NCMEC, ISPs and covered sites would be required to preserve the images themselves (normally itself a violation of federal law), as well as preserving information about when the images were accessed and any available information about the individual who downloaded them.

As it is currently drafted, the legislation applies not merely to photographs of minors engaged in sexual activity (which is clearly child pornography), but also more subjective material, including photographs of minors in provocative poses and sexually explicit cartoon drawings depicting minors. Many question whether ISPs should be put in the uncomfortable position of determining whether borderline material should be reported, much of which may not even be criminal.