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You have to wonder how much app stores rake in from the sticky fingers of children who automatically spend their parents real money restocking lives on iPad games, or indulging in the luxury of ad-free versions or buying a $30 super boosting power. Most parents of young children have a horror story of a few dollars, or in the worst case scenario, a few hundred, going to the makers of Subway Surfers.
But, under the Texas App Store Accountability Act, enacted Jan. 1, app stores in Texas will be required to verify the age of users, and minors will need parental approval for every single app download and purchase, whether free or not. Every single time.
It sounds good in theory, but online open market experts have already filed a lawsuit challenging the law for allegedly violating the First Amendment rights of software developers.
“We support online protections for younger internet users, and those protections should not come at the expense of free expression and personal privacy,” said the director of the Computer and Communications Industry Association’s (CCIA) Litigation Center, Stephanie Joyce. “This Texas law violates the First Amendment by restricting app stores from offering lawful content, preventing users from seeing that content, and compelling app developers to speak of their offerings in a way pleasing to the state.”
The law, written by Sen. Angela Paxton, easily cleared both chambers of the legislature. It’s easy to understand why, allowing parents to more carefully decide what their young children consume sounds ideal, but the CCIA says the new law has several flaws at several levels.
“In a misguided attempt to protect minors, Texas has decided to require proof of age before anyone with a smartphone or tablet can download an app,” reads the lawsuit. “At the same time, Texas seeks to compel app developers to rate the age appropriateness of their own apps and the millions of pieces of content available for in-app purchase according to Texas’ vague and unworkable set of age categories.”
Excessive Control
The first issue with the new law, Joyce says, is that parents are being forced into exerting an excessive level of control over their children’s app behaviors to their own detriment.
“Every time [a minor] wants to do something, the parent have to approve it,” she said. “How are working parents going to be able to field what are likely to be hundreds of inquiries from their minor children? Frankly, the word CCIA uses around the hallways is ‘micromanaging’. It’s not just enabling micromanaging, it’s requiring it.”
If inconvenience alone is not enough to convince the new law’s supporters, Joyce says, at the end of the day, minors still have rights. The app doesn’t just prevent children from making haphazard in-app purchases using daddy’s card information on file. It also prevents teenagers from being able to consume freely; things like audiobook downloads require parental approval each time.
“It is absolutely the fact that minors have First Amendment rights,” she said. “This statute infringes those rights.”
It’s Not Just Children’s Rights Possibly Being Violated
If your heart does not bleed for the teenagers who have to ask their parents if they can download the latest buzzy social media app, then perhaps the First Amendment rights of app developers will strike a chord.
“It is well established under federal law that what app developers do is speech,” said Joyce. “They’re speaking. It’s certainly speech. App developers absolutely have First Amendment rights.”
The CCIA says requiring app stores to verify the ages of all users for all content, not just that which may be explicit, would be like “carding” every single person checking out a book from a library.
“None of our laws require businesses to ‘card’ people before they can enter bookstores and shopping malls,” reads the lawsuit. “The First Amendment prohibits such oppressive laws as much in cyberspace as it does in the physical world.”
Privacy Concerns
This law wasn’t the only piece of age verification legislation that Paxton drafted. She also tried to pass a law requiring age verification for the online purchase of sex toys. Her husband, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, fought tooth and nail to protect a similar age verification requirement to access porn in Texas.
Age verification, particularly restricting media access and requiring the uploading of government-issued identification, is extremely controversial for its alleged privacy violations. Joyce says this law is no different.
“[Adults] can’t get an account until their ages, are determined, quote unquote, by the store,” she said. “To do [age] determinations, you have to put in personally identifiable information, and that can create privacy and security issues.”
Joyce notes that this particular law includes a provision that minimizes the use of personal data, but the CCIA is not sure it’s enough.
“It is not robust and does not require deletion,” she said. “It talks about minimizing what you take, but you have to take enough to determine age… the risk it established by requiring this age determination mandate, we’re not certain, to say that this one provision in the act is going to adequately address that risk.”
The CCIA maintains that protecting children is good, but that parental controls already exist. Introducing age-verification software and additional barriers does more harm than good.
“There are layers of tools in the internet stream that already exist and that parents already use,” said Joyce. “… CCIA’s position is how and what children and minors access on the internet is a question to be discussed around the dinner table, not the governor’s desk.”
