News Organizations, Digital Rights Groups Blast California Kids Safety Code
News organizations and civil liberties groups are urging a federal appellate court to preserve a block on California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code — a 2022 law that, if allowed to take effect, could result in the widespread use of online age verification.
The law “should be struck down in its entirety because its age-verification scheme violates the First Amendment rights of all internet users,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Wikimedia and other digital rights groups say in a friend-of-the-court brief filed last week with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The New York Times Company, Reuters, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and others argued in a separate friend-of-the-court brief that requiring news sites to estimate users’ ages “violates the First Amendment and would impair minors’ and adults’ ability to access public interest news and information.”
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