BOISE, Idaho—Members of an Idaho Senate committee killed a proposed bill Wednesday that would have made it a legal requirement for mobile devices to have parental controls or porn filtering software enabled at the point of sale.
Senate Bill (SB) 1158, dubbed the Children’s Device Protection Act, would have required device manufacturers to sell their products with internet filtering already enabled as a measure to protect children from accessing age-restricted material like adult content.
Noting concerns of enforcement efficacy, a simple majority of the Senate State Affairs Committee voted five against, and four in favor of advancing SB 1158.
If it were advanced, companies like Apple and Samsung could have been held liable for civil penalties if a device was activated in Idaho state boundaries without internet filtering. Fines for violation of the law would have been between $5,000 and $50,000 with a tenuous enforcement scheme that gave the Attorney General’s Office power to police the sale of mobile devices, like phones and tablets, throughout the state.
Ironically, the legislation, which was introduced by Republican state Sen. Kevin Cook, was considerably strong during the hour-long hearing.
Idaho Press reports, via the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, that 16 witnesses spoke in support of the bill during the hearing. Only five spoke in opposition.
One noteworthy opponent of the bill was Amy Bos, director of state and federal affairs for the tech trade group NetChoice, who called the filtering bill a “slippery slope toward broader government intervention in private family matters.”
NetChoice, which represents companies like Netflix and Google, has long opposed similar bills and age verification proposals focused on porn and social media.
Another noteworthy opponent was Fred Birnbaum, a lobbyist for the hard-right Idaho Freedom Foundation.
While he expressed the typical right-wing concern over the adult entertainment industry, he noted that the legislation shouldn’t go after device manufacturers but rather the “purveyors of pornography.”
