Venable partner Mike Signorelli will present on the panel “The Race to Regulate the Internet: Should States or the Federal Government Set the Rules for Website Content, Child Protection and Personal Data Control” at George Mason University on May 8.
Join Mason’s Center for Assurance Research and Engineering (CARE), the Financial Technology & Cybersecurity Center, Mason’s School of Business, and a group of experts to discuss potential transformative changes in how the Internet operates and who regulates it.
Thirty years after the Internet became an everyday part of life, a battle has erupted over who has the right to set the rules for Internet activities. Should individual states be able to impose their standards on activities occurring in their locales, or should the federal government set the rules for a nationwide medium? The program will address a series of state initiatives that raise major First Amendment, state police power, and privacy issues:
- Florida and Texas laws intended to impose content-neutrality mandates on large social media platforms, which were the subject of oral argument before the Supreme Court in late February.
- Many states have enacted, or may enact, laws intended to protect children from adverse effects of social media or access to adult websites through parental consent or age-verification requirements.
- California set a course in October 2023 to empower its residents to generally prohibit data brokers from using data collected on them by making a single click on a delete button.
This battle is also playing out on a global basis as the UK, EU, and other international authorities seek to protect their citizens in a manner they consider appropriate.
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