Sponsors
The bill makes it easier for platforms and authorities to remove or regulate obscene and harassing visual content to protect children and victims, but does so with broader, more subjective definitions and without an intent requirement—raising substantial risks of overbroad censorship and increased compliance/legal costs for creators and small platforms.
Children and families: the bill gives platforms and parents a clearer statutory definition of visual obscenity, helping services remove explicitly obscene images from view.
Broadcasters and carriers: the bill updates a cross-reference to reduce ambiguity in enforcement of certain Section 271 obligations, making regulatory expectations clearer for telecom and media providers.
Individuals (targets of obscene harassment): by removing an intent requirement, the law can cover a broader set of communications, potentially enabling quicker removal or enforcement against harassing obscene messages.
Tech workers, creators, and students: the revised obscenity test uses subjective criteria (prurient interest, lack of serious value), increasing the risk that lawful expression will be censored or removed.
Internet users and platforms: eliminating the intent requirement narrows speech protections, meaning communications could be prosecuted or taken down even without proof the sender intended harassment.
Small online businesses and platform operators: broader obscenity rules and greater enforcement uncertainty raise compliance costs and legal risk for small services trying to avoid hosting content that might be judged obscene.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Adds a three-part statutory definition of "obscene" for visual depictions to the Communications Act and removes an intent-to-harass/abuse requirement from one communications offense.
Introduced May 8, 2025 by Mary E. Miller · Last progress May 8, 2025
Adds a new, statutory definition of “obscene” for visual sexual depictions into the Communications Act and updates related cross-references. It also removes a limiting phrase that had required an intent to abuse, threaten, or harass in one federal communications offense, widening the scope of that prohibition. The change creates a three-part test for obscenity (prurient appeal, depiction of sexual acts or lewd exhibition with an objective intent to arouse, and lack of serious literary/artistic/political/scientific value), cites federal definitions of "sexual act" and "sexual contact," and adjusts internal statute numbering and a cross-reference to reflect the new definition.