AN ACT concerning consumer protection; relating to internet content that is harmful to minors; requiring age verification for access to such content; providing for civil penalties for violations; establishing a civil cause of action for damages, attorney fees and costs.
Any commercial entity that knowingly shares or distributes material that is harmful to minors on a website and such material appears on 25% or more of the webpages viewed on such website in any calendar month, or that knowingly hosts such website shall verify that any person attempting to access such website, who is a resident of this state or who is located in this state at the time of such attempted access, is 18 years of age or older. It shall be a violation of this section to allow a person to access such website without verifying such person is 18 years of age or older. Such age verification shall be conducted through the use of:
- A commercially available database that is regularly used by
businesses or governmental entities for the purpose of age and identity
verification; or- any other commercially reasonable method of age and identity
verification
This language provides for harmful exceptions and is unnecessarily specialized. Here is an alternative.
Any person or commercial entity that knowingly shares or distributes material that is harmful to minors shall verify that any person attempting to access the material is 18 years of age or older. Such age verification shall not be solely based upon the attestation of the person attempting to access the material.
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Removes the exception for non-commercial entities.
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Removes liability on hosting providers who do not directly participate in the decision to distribute the material or the age verification process as part of their business such as CDN, ISP, and hosting providers.
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The phrase harmful to minors is codified in K.S.A. 21-6402 Section d Item 2.
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Removes constraints on how compliance is obtained to give organizations the freedom to explore the best solutions for their situation.
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Removes extraneous language regarding residency or persons within Kansas for two reasons:
- Kansas jurisdiction is already limited to the State of Kansas.
- There are numerous technologies available that make this requirement impossible to satisfy such as VPN and TOR technologies.
A provision is needed to protect the persons or entities which are providing the means of distribution, such as the cell phone provider, Content Delivery Network provider, internet service provider, or internet platform provider. The following addition is recommended.
Any persons or entities providing the means of distribution but not solely or partially determining who is able to access material harmful to minors is not liable for violations.