Bipartisan legislation aimed at curbing the spread of online child pornography would remove legal protections for tech companies that fail to police the illegal content.
The bill, sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., won’t be easy to pass, some experts tell The New York Times.
Despite some strong support, the bill faces opposition from the tech industry, which considers the reforms too broad, and a threat to its offering services like encryption, and from some victim advocates who view it as too narrow to successfully fight online harms, the Times reported.
“This won’t be an easy bill to pass,” Paul Gallant, a technology policy analyst in Washington, told the Times.
“Everyone in Congress supports reducing child exploitation, but there’s a broad recognition that these platforms and the American economy have benefited tremendously from lack of liability over user content.”
According to the Times, tech companies in 2019 reported nearly 70 million images and videos related to online child exploitation. They are obligated to report the material when they become aware of it on their platforms, but they aren’t required to go looking for it.
Companies are generally not responsible for content uploaded by their users, because of a 1990s-era provision in the law known as Section 230.
The new bill, called the EARN IT Act, would offer an exception to that rule. Companies that don’t follow the recommended standards would lose civil liability protections for that type of content, the Times reported. The legislation would also lower the bar for suing those tech firms.
“The industry received this sweetheart deal when they were in their infancy struggling to stay alive, and now they are these behemoths that have incredible impact on the lives of ordinary people,” Blumenthal told the Times. “They have an obligation to the most vulnerable among us, mostly children who are criminally and cruelly abused, to take some action.”
Graham told the Times it's vital to “put some guardrails on tech companies,” while recognizing the benefits the industry had brought.
“Our goal is to do this in a balanced way that doesn’t overly inhibit innovation, but forcibly deals with child exploitation,” he said.
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