Delaware General Assembly

Signed 8/7/15

The General Assembly has ended, the current status is the final status.

SB 68

6/9/15

Blevins

Rep. Schwartzkopf

Sen. Henry, Lopez, Marshall, Peterson
Reps. Briggs King, Keeley, Lynn, Matthews, Miro, Osienski, Viola

AN ACT TO AMEND TITLE 6 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO ONLINE PRIVACY AND PROTECTION.

This bill creates the Delaware Online Privacy and Protection Act, which expands the legal protections available under Delaware law to individuals, in particular children, relating to their online and digital activities. First, the bill prohibits the operator of an Internet service directed to children from marketing or advertising on its Internet service certain products or services deemed harmful to children. When the marketing or advertising on an Internet service directed to children is provided by an advertising service, the operator of the Internet service is required to provide notice to the advertising service, after which time the prohibition on marketing and advertising the specified products or services applies to the advertising service directly. The bill also prohibits an operator of an Internet service who has actual knowledge that a child is using the Internet service from using the child’s personally identifiable information to market or advertise the specified products or services to the child, and also prohibits such an operator from disclosing a child’s personally identifiable information if that operator has actual knowledge that the child’s personally identifiable information will be used for the purpose of marketing or advertising a specified product or service to the child. Second, the bill requires the operator of an Internet service to make its privacy policy conspicuously available on its Internet service if the Internet service collects personally identifiable information from Delaware residents for commercial purposes, and it requires the operator to comply with that privacy policy. The bill directs the Consumer Protection Unit of the Department of Justice to promulgate rules and regulations identifying the information required to be disclosed in privacy policies, and making publicly available specific language for privacy policies that will serve as a “safe harbor” for operators, and states that any such rules and regulations must give primary consideration to the need to promote uniformity of the law among other states with respect to privacy policy requirements. Third, this bill protects the personal information of users of digital book services and technologies by prohibiting a commercial entity which provides a book service to the public from disclosing personal information regarding users of the book service to law enforcement entities, governmental entities, or other persons, except under specified circumstances. Among other things, the bill allows immediate disclosure of a user’s book service information to law enforcement entities when there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury requiring disclosure of the book service information, and requires a book service provider to preserve a user’s book service information for a specified period of time when requested to do so by a law enforcement entity. The bill also requires a book service provider to prepare and post online an annual report on its disclosures of personal information, unless exempted from doing so. The bill gives the Consumer Protection Unit of the Department of Justice the authority to investigate and prosecute violations of the acts. This bill becomes effective January 1 following its enactment into law. The Act is substituted for Senate Bill No. 68 and differs from Senate Bill No. 68 by (1) revising proposed new § 1204C(a) to clarify that the restrictions on marketing or advertising applicable to an operator of an Internet service directed to children apply only to the operator’s Internet service directed to children and not to other Internet services the operator may have which are not directed to children; (2) revising proposed new § 1204C(b) to clarify that the intent of this subsection is that the restrictions on advertising to a child contained in the subsection apply when the operator has actual knowledge as to which specific user of the Internet service is the child; (3) revises proposed § 1204C(d) to clarify the obligations of an operator of an Internet website, online service, online application, or mobile application directed to children where marketing or advertising is provided by an advertising service; (4) deleting firearms training courses and BB guns from the list of products and services to which the marketing and advertising restrictions apply; (5) replacing "sexually-oriented material" on the list of products and services to which the marketing and advertising restrictions apply with a definition based on the definition of material "harmful to minors" in Delaware's obscenity statute; (6) adding a new subsection to proposed § 1204C to clarify that the marketing and advertising restrictions do not apply to the incidental placement of products or services embedded in content, such as in movie clips or television shows, as long as the content was not distributed primarily for the purposes of marketing and advertising a prohibited product or service; (7) replacing proposed § 1205(b) with a new subsection directing the Consumer Protection Unit of the Department of Justice to promulgate rules and regulations identifying the information required to be disclosed in privacy policies, and making publicly available specific language for privacy policies that will serve as a "safe harbor" for operators, and states that any such rules and regulations must give primary consideration to the need to promote uniformity of the law among other states with respect to privacy policy requirements; (8) revising proposed § 1206C(a) to clarify the circumstances under which a book service provider may disclose a user's book service information to a person that is not a government entity; and (9) revising, adding, or deleting certain definitions.

N/A

N/A

Takes effect upon being signed into law

N/A

View HTML View PDF