SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Internet safety was the main topic during Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary meeting.

Specifically, two bills that seek to require internet sites to verify the ages of people who want to look at pornography, were discussed in length. Senate Bill 18 and House Bill 1053 were heard in a joint hearing. Both bills would seek to require age verification by websites containing material that is harmful to minors, and to provide a penalty therefor.

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In a vote of 5-2, SB18 was tabled and HB1053 passed to the floor with a do-pass recommendation in a vote of 7-0.

The Senate floor will be HB1053’s last stop, if it is passed it will then be sent to the governor’s desk. Both bills call for more strict age verification for websites hosting obscene content which could include verification by:

(a) A state-issued driver’s license or non-driver identification card.

(b) The individual’s bank account information.

(c) A debit or credit card from the individual that requires the individual in ownership of the card to be at least eighteen years of age.

(d) Any other method or document that reliably and accurately indicates if a user of a covered platform is a minor and prevents a minor from accessing the content of a covered platform.

Both bills also outline penalties for platforms that violate the law.

HB1053, brought forth by Republican Rep. Bethany Soye, calls for providers to face Class 1 misdemeanors for a first violation and Class 6 felonies for subsequent violations, as well as injunctions and civil penalties of up to $5,000 per incident. It also would require the attorney general to send written notice to an alleged violator, who would then have 90 days to comply with the age-verification requirements or be taken to court.

SB18 brought forth by Republican Sen. Steve Kolbeck is somewhat different. The committee bill would require that at least 33 and 1/3% of the website be considered harmful to a minor, while Soye’s new bill sets a vaguer threshold as “a website for which it is in the regular course of the website’s trade or business to create, host, or make available material that is harmful to minors.”

SB18 provides for similar penalties to HB1053, but this version would allow either the county prosecutor, known as the state’s attorney or the attorney general to take action against a suspected violator.

Soye said her bill won’t be able to stop everyone, but it is meant to ensure businesses actually have something in place for age verification.

Kolbeck, speaking on SB 18, pointed to the 33% as the main difference between the bills, adding the committee came up with SB18 because it is similar to a Texas bill that passed previously. 

Proponent for both bills Annie Chestnut-Tudor, policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center, said even with filters children still have numerous ways to access obscene content.

“Better safeguards are needed and fortunately, they exist. Age verification is the only technical solution that will consistently and reliably keep kids off pornography websites,” Chestnut-Tudor said. “19 states have laws very similar to South Dakota’s bills.”

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley spoke as a proponent for both bills saying across the nation, attorneys general pushing for legislation, testifying to committees just like this saying we need to act and we need to act to protect children.

“I’m just here to say as attorney general, I support and welcome the enforceability provisions for the attorney general which are simply if on the website of it if there’s a violator,” Jackley said. “I have to give them a 90-day notice if they don’t correct it, it’s a misdemeanor if it continues on, it’s an enhancement to a class 6 felony to me that seems reasonable.”

Opponent of the bills, Ben Sherman, said there are already ways around such as VPNs, smart browsers, and smart DNS servers.

“This bill would establish the state doing what is normally the parent’s responsibility,” Sherman said. “Whether that’s traffic danger, consumer products, television content. Why should this be any different?”

Lobbyist for the ACLU of South Dakota, Samantha Chapman, said this subject matter is best handled at the federal level.

“I think we need to be really really cautious and very serious even in situations where we think that we’re only targeting what might be pornographic or sexual based speech,” Chapman said. “With House Bill 1053, the lack of any kind of content threshold at all, in our opinion is and is akin to making an entire library off limits to minors if it contains a single shelf of adult material.”

Republican Sen. Jim Mehlhaff said it’s important to remember why the bill was brought forward in the first place.

“The priority is to protect kids from gaining access to harmful materials on the Internet, it’s not to protect tech companies who might be on the edge or produce material that may or not fall into that,” Mehlhaff said. “I think it’s pretty clear that Some of the examples brought up would not be ensnared by the language in this in House Bill 1053 so I would just move that we take it down to the floor and have a vote on it.”

Republican Sen. Tom Pischke said SB18 was too broad in some key areas.

“The idea that a nudity seen in Titanic may fall under that, and so that’s that I didn’t think that’s appropriate,” Pischke said. “I also agree with the prime sponsor’s argument about 33 and a 1/3 versus 30, how are we gonna distinguish between the two? So I think that for those reasons Senate Bill 18 is a little bit problematic.”