The SAFE Act was approved by a vote of 409-2.

The new law would require Internet service providers to preserve child pornography images as evidence and report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children the following: the online screen names of suspected child predators, their locations and the the times when the images in question were accessed.

On a weird note, cartoon porn featuring depiction of minors has also been tagged as illegal.

While it may sound acceptable at first, the law does slip up two times. First of all, free Wi-Fi providers (including individual users) would be forced to keep an eye on what is everyone else doing on the network, which basically is a big fist right in the mouth of user privacy.

Second, the ISPs (regardless of their size) might become the subjects of some hefty fines. If an incident is not reported, then the ISP is charged $150,000 per image per day, and that’s only the beginning. The second time the ISP fails to keep an open Big Brother-type eye on its customers, the fine will be double.

The bill still has to be approved by the Senate in order to become a law and optimists still hope that someone would take the time and further brush the document a bit.