Podcast: Could expanding privacy law harm children?

A new report from the Progress & Freedom Foundation says that officials in some states want to pass legislation that would extend the Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) from covering children under 13 to covering teens until they're 18.

COPPA, which became law in 1998, requires verifiable parental consent before a child under 13 can provide personally identifiable information to a Web site that caters to children. Expanding the law to cover teens till they're 18, according to the report, would "require Web sites to obtain more information about both minors and their parents, which runs counter to the original goal of the Act: protecting the privacy of minors." Ultimately, say the authors, "this would actually make minors less 'safe online.'"

In this podcast, the report's co-author, PFF Senior Fellow Adam Thierer, explains the original COPPA law and why, in his opinion, the expanded law could have a chilling effect on the free speech rights of minors.

The podcast runs 11:30

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