The Tennessee House will debate a bill on Thursday that regulates children’s involvement in online content creation.
The State House will deliberate on Senate Bill (SB) 1469, which allows children to receive money they generate from their own online content creation or from appearing in someone else’s content.
State Senator Page Walley (R-Savannah) introduced the bill proposal. State senators passed the bill by a vote of 29 to 2, with two abstaining earlier in March.
In SB 1469, minors are considered part of content creation if they appear in at least 30 percent of the monetized content within a 30-day period. Also, content creators need to earn at least $0.10 per view and $15,000 per year for minors to qualify as a content creator worker.
This criterion needs to have been met at “any time during the previous 12-month period,” the bill proposal says.
Minors who appear accidentally in online content creation or in background appearances are not considered online content creators, the bill proposal says.
If content creators are between the ages of 14 and 17, they will receive 100 percent of the earnings they generate themselves, whereas if they are featured in someone else’s content, they will receive a portion of the earnings via a trust account.
The content creator will need to keep records until the minor turns 21, the bill proposal says, including information on revenue generated by the minor, the total amount deposited into the minor’s trust account, and the total time the minor engaged in content creation.
The original bill proposal would have prevented kids under 14 from appearing in monetized content, with violators facing a $2,000 fine per violation. However, this part was removed from SB 1469.
The bill proposal does not explicitly state how minors under 14 who meet the criteria for content creator workers would be compensated.
SB 1469 allows minors to take legal action if their trust funds are mismanaged or not paid appropriately. Courts can award actual damages, punitive damages, and attorney fees.
A minor over 14 years old can ask content creators to remove content featuring them, the bill proposal states, adding that the content creators have 30 days to comply with the request.
If content creators fail to meet the request, minors can sue them, SB 1469 says.
On top of this, the bill proposal prevents online content creators from making or distributing content of minors for profit or “intent to sexually gratify or elicit a sexual response in the viewer.”
If this does occur, SB 1469 permits minors to sue content creators for damages and recover legal costs.
The bill proposal says social media platforms that engage in content creation need to create a “risk-based strategy” to prohibit the sexualization of minors from being monetized.
Platforms must “ensure that information about the social media’s content policies, settings, and best practices for content featuring minors are publicly available,” according to SB 1469.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at zschmidt1717@gmail.com.
