State Representative Brad Paquette has introduced legislation intended to prevent children from accessing adult content on the internet.

Paquette tells us House Bill 4429 would require the use of a decision-based age verification mechanism with adult sites. He says the “decision-based age verification mechanism” goes back to when someone purchases and registers a device like a cell phone. Paquette tells us when you register such a device, the service you’re using, whether Verizon or AT&T, already knows the age of the user. This legislation would require that websites check that information before granting access.

“The device, one of the pieces of data that gets sent to websites and applications is the age,” Paquette said. “So all of us right now, already our device is sending our age, if it’s registered to us, to the website that we go onto. So this is something that is already available to websites.”

Paquette says other states, like Texas, have tried requiring adult websites to verify the ages of individual users. That hasn’t worked so well.

“It didn’t have a device verification, but the website had to find out the ages right when they were having the IDs being sent in. Most notably, Pornhub, I guess, stopped having their website there. So, this will approach that, but in a much easier fashion.”

Paquette says this would be automatic and faster.

A bill identical to his House bill has been introduced in the Michigan Senate by Democratic state Senator John Cherry. Each would implement the mechanism to verify age via device operating system, share age ranges with sites and apps requiring verification, and allow parents to implement parental control and require guardian consent for a minor’s downloads.

Paquette’s bill is now before the House Committee on Communications and Technology and he hopes for a hearing soon.