The US intends to replicate the UK's success in removing child sex abuse images from the internet.
Late last month, representatives from US Congress met to discuss how they could follow the UK's lead in tackling such web-based atrocities.
"We're trying to get content removed to reassure consumers and give the victims of those crimes reassurance that someone is trying to get their images removed so they're not repeatedly being victimised," said Peter Robbins, chief executive of the IWF, speaking at a Nominet-sponsored UK stakeholder event on the Internet Governance Forum, held in London this week.
"There's an initiative driven by the internet industry that is having a significant impact in Europe and the US where we list all the URLs we collect and provide them to the ISPs and mobile operators who block access.
"The UK was the first to adopt this technology and project and, two weeks ago, our opposite numbers in the US appeared before a US Congress Committee and agreed to provide a similar service to registered ISPs, which is obviously something we were not expecting."
The IWF handles more than 30,000 complaints each year, the majority of which can be traced to countries outside the UK. But despite trying to crackdown on non-UK hosted images its efforts to completely wipe out the activity has faced a number of barriers.
"The US has been the single largest source of illegal child sex abuse images recorded and it has been that way since records began," added John Carr from NCH.
"And, despite the heroic efforts of the IWF to get these images taken down it was not happening."
Carr believes that the US' plans to emulate UK strides in combating such images on the net will start a chain reaction where other countries follow suit.
"What happened in Congress [at the end of September] was hugely significant. There, the head of the sister body of the IWF announced: 'We intend to replicate the British approach to dealing with child sex abuse images on the internet.'
"Now that the Americans have announced they intend to replicate the British system it promises great things and I think we can expect many other countries to fall into line."
