FSC Hails Demise of California’s AB 3080 Age-Verification Bill

“The Free Speech Coalition was active in its opposition to AB 3080, testifying against the bill in committee hearings, meeting with legislators, and rallying allies, industry members and fans to speak out against the bill,” FSC noted in the statement. “In June, following extensive discussions with Assm. (Juan) Alanis, and the introduction of several amendments addressing FSC’s key concerns, FSC withdrew its formal opposition to the bill. However, privacy and civil liberties advocates including Electronic Frontier Foundation, FIRE, ACLU and Woodhull Freedom Foundation remained actively opposed.”

FSC Executive Director Alison Boden said the organization thanks “Assm. Alanis for working so earnestly with us throughout the life of this bill.”

“We completely agree with the need to keep minors from accessing age-inappropriate content without unintentionally blocking millions of adult consumers,” Boden added. “We continue to believe this is possible and look forward to working with him and other members of the Assembly in future sessions.”

In the statement, FSC noted that bills placed in the Senate Appropriations “suspense file” are “held until the state budget has been prepared and are then considered in relation to available revenue.”

“California’s ongoing budget deficit makes bills placed in suspense unlikely to move forward, effectively killing them,” FSC added.

In explaining the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s opposition to AB 3080, EFF’s Joe Mullin wrote earlier this summer that if the bill were to pass “it would make it illegal to show websites with one-third or more ‘sexually explicit content’ to minors.”

“These ‘explicit’ websites would join a list of products or services that can’t be legally sold to minors in California, including things like firearms, ammunition, tobacco, and e-cigarettes,” Mullin added. “But these things are not the same, and should not be treated the same under state or federal law. Adults have a First Amendment right to look for information online, including sexual content. One of the reasons EFF has opposed mandatory age verification is because there’s no way to check ID online just for minors without drastically harming the rights of adults to read, get information, and to speak and browse online anonymously.”

Mullin noted that EFF had submitted an amicus brief on the issues observing that “collecting ID online is fundamentally different—and more dangerous—than in-person ID checks in the physical world.”

“Online ID checks are not just a momentary display—they require adults ‘to upload data-rich, government-issued identifying documents to either the website or a third-party verifier’ and create a ‘potentially lasting record’ of their visit to the establishment,” Mullin added. “The more information a website collects about visitors, the more chances there are for such data to get into the hands of a criminal or other bad actor, a marketing company, or someone who has filed a subpoena for it. So-called ‘anonymized’ data can be reassembled, especially when it consists of data-rich government ID together with browsing data like IP addresses.”