Children's Online Safety. Two recently proposed bills, if passed, would require "Internet Access Providers" to provide parental controls to Maryland households. Senate Bill 550 - Online Child Safety Act of 2009 was proposed on February 5th and had its hearing today. The Online Child Safety Act is positioned as a consumer protection measure and would amend commercial laws to provide that a failure to offer parental controls that meet the acts' standards to internet access subscribers in Maryland is an unfair and deceptive practice. The standards require the parental controls to prevent children age 18 or younger from accessing the internet, particular websites and categories of websites that the subscriber selects to be blocked. Senate Bill 893 - Protection of Children from Online Predators Act of 2009 proposes a similar measure but adds criminal measures aimed at online sexual predators, including preventing a convicted online sexual predator from accessing the internet and a safe harbor for interactive service providers from civil liability from wrongly blocking access.
My take--Both bills seek to bolster the ailing Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) which suffers from Constitutional enforcement issues. SB 550 requires ISPs to do mo more than provide subscribers with a link to parental control software vendors. This bill expects parental controls to work on older teens. Best of luck with that one. I rely on my older teens to fix computers. They're more likely to block ME from sites I'd like to see, like their Facebook pages! SB 893 takes that requirement and raises the bid by profiling an online sexual predator as someone 4 or more years older than a 16 year old who prompts the teen to expose or touch "private parts" online. A surprise is that SB 893 appears to exempt mobile applications. Many teens do everything from their phones, looks like a loophole to me.
