Canada’s privacy commissioner and government official warn that Senate bill proposing to prevent minors from accessing ‘sexually explicit material’ online could apply to streaming platforms streaming like Netflix.
Philippe Dufresne, the country’s privacy commissioner, and Owen Ripley, deputy minister at Canadian Heritage, think lawmakers should significantly narrow the scope of the bill.
They were the first to testify before a parliamentary committee responsible for studying the bill proposed by independent senator Julie Miville-Dechêne.
“The bill is very problematic for several reasons, in particular because of its far too broad scope of application, both in terms of regulated services and regulated content,” Mr. Dufresne declared Monday evening.
For example, the legislation would require sites like Pornhub to verify the age of users so that minors do not access sexual material.
However, experts like Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in Internet and e-commerce law, point out that the technology to verify age does not yet exist and that the project of law raises significant privacy concerns.
Supporters of the bill argue that its goal, which is to protect minors from sexual and violent content, is important enough for it to pass and that these technical details should be worked out through a process regulations later.
But Geist says policies on how to manage technology should be created based on real capabilities, not “technological fairy dust.”
“It is fundamentally flawed in its current form and it cannot be fixed without a complete overhaul,” says privacy lawyer David Fraser.
“The technology to enable large-scale age verification simply does not exist. »
He also echoed concerns about the potential scope of the bill, saying “sexually explicit material”, as defined at the moment, could mean it would apply to search engines, social media giants , e-book publishers, and even streaming services.
“There are significant concerns about freedom of expression,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.
At the committee Monday evening, Mr. Ripley offered his own interpretation, according to which, as written, the proposed law would require services like Netflix to verify the age of their users.
“Imposing age verification requirements for this range of services and content would have significant implications for how Canadians access and use the Internet,” he said.
Edit the bill
Mr. Dufresne raised similar concerns and recommended that lawmakers change the language used to target websites providing “sexually explicit material” for commercial purposes.
Mr. Fraser added Tuesday that it is likely that companies will consider what complying with such a law would cost them and simply choose to remove Canadians’ access to their content rather than face liability.
Mr. Fraser pointed out that Pornhub began blocking access in Texas earlier this year after the state introduced its own age verification laws, as others before it have done.
The company’s owners said it’s one of the options they’re considering while they wait for lawmakers to decide what to do with the current Senate bill.
“It is not designed to keep children safe. It’s not designed to keep adults safe,” said Solomon Friedman, partner and vice president of compliance at Ethical Capital Partners, owner of Pornhub’s parent company Aylo.
“It is designed to impose the morality of a handful of ideologically motivated legislators on the rest of Canadians,” he added.
Its owners oppose the bill and are instead pushing for device manufacturers to take responsibility for ensuring minors don’t access these sites, rather than the platforms themselves.
Mr. Friedman said his company asked committee members to give Pornhub executives an opportunity to appear to discuss the legislation and its potential impacts.