Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) Introduces Bill to Protect Children Online

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act, which would direct the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to issue a rule requiring all commercial pornographic websites to adopt age verification technology to ensure children cannot access pornographic content. Specifically, the SCREEN Act:

• Directs the FCC to issue a rule to require commercial pornographic websites to adopt age verification technology to ensure that users of the website are not children.
• Within the required rule, the FCC is required to:
  • Set a “more likely than not” verification standard for pornographic websites for the purposes of determining whether the user of a pornographic website is a child or not.
  • Allow pornographic websites to choose their method of age verification provided that it meets the FCC’s verification standards and prohibits a child from accessing the pornographic content on the website.
  • Permit websites to contract with third party age verification providers to carry out the verification requirements, and
  • Establish an audit process to ensure compliance with the rule as well as ensure no identifiable user data is shared with the federal government.
• Grants the FCC the necessary enforcement powers (both civil penalty and injunctive relief) to enforce the verification rule.