1. United States
2. Md.
3. Letter

Sen. Mike Lee has introduced the SCREEN ACT, a bill which claims to "protect children", yet is nothing more than an unjust restrictions on freedom of speech. While the stated goal is to protect children from "obscene" materials, the enforcement mechanism listed will do nothing but enable self-appointed puritans to sue anyone whom they believe is spreading any sorts of media they disagree with - such as information about LGBT people. It is of my opinion that it should not be the government's responsibility to protect children from media that their parents find objectionable. If a parent desires to stop their child from accessing pornography on the internet, or any other types of objectionable things, like violence or political extremism, there are countless parental control options already available, with most devices having such systems already built in, ready to be enabled at a moment's notice. Many adult websites already mark themselves plainly as such, using systems such as the Restricted to Adults marker, which places a small piece of data on the page which can be read by a browser to block the page as needed. Additionally, adult websites already use "age gates" to prevent users from being exposed to any obscene content against their will - anyone viewing the content already plainly agreed that they wanted to see what they were about to see. To push the responsibility of age verification away from the parents who purchased the device for their child, and onto the creators of the media, is plainly ridiculous. If a bar served alcohol to someone underage, you would blame the bartender, not the brewer. In the same way, we should not blame the publishers of adults-only content, who create their content to be seen by other adults. The responsibility to prevent harm should be on the person who provided uncensored internet access to the child in the first place - that being, in almost all cases, their own parents.