Depending on liability for when the filter lets something through (which anything other than a whitelist would, and a whitelist probably would too), this bill might well be stupid. But the quoted provision seems fine? It's illegal to give minors drugs, alcohol, and porn as it is. Imagining some miracle filter existed, why wouldn't it be illegal to disable it for a minor without parental consent?
I'm big on free speech, but it gets real weird when people are against mandating parental controls exist and claim it's a form of censorship. Giving porn to children is already illegal[0], but little to nothing is done to enforce it on computers. It seems reasonable that people want to have consumer devices be capable of filtering, even if people more familiar with tech would know why that's challenging to do perfectly.
Edit: It sounds like they have to ask the user's age on setup, and if the user answers that they're a minor, activate the filter. And liability
> does not apply to a manufacturer that makes a good faith effort to provide a device that, upon activation of the device in the state automatically enables a generally accepted and commercially reasonable filter
So I'm not really seeing the issue. It just says parental controls have to exist on the device, and you can't go turning off someone else's kids' parental controls.
[0] Here's a federal law that carries up to 10 years in prison for knowingly providing porn to someone under 16 using the Internet. The law is almost as old as the web. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1470
I'm big on free speech, but it gets real weird when people are against mandating parental controls exist and claim it's a form of censorship. Giving porn to children is already illegal[0], but little to nothing is done to enforce it on computers. It seems reasonable that people want to have consumer devices be capable of filtering, even if people more familiar with tech would know why that's challenging to do perfectly.
Edit: It sounds like they have to ask the user's age on setup, and if the user answers that they're a minor, activate the filter. And liability
> does not apply to a manufacturer that makes a good faith effort to provide a device that, upon activation of the device in the state automatically enables a generally accepted and commercially reasonable filter
So I'm not really seeing the issue. It just says parental controls have to exist on the device, and you can't go turning off someone else's kids' parental controls.
[0] Here's a federal law that carries up to 10 years in prison for knowingly providing porn to someone under 16 using the Internet. The law is almost as old as the web. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1470