STOP CSAM Act of 2025

The bill updates federal court procedures to better protect children and former children who are victims or witnesses in abuse, exploitation, or kidnapping cases. It defines terms like “psychological abuse,” “exploitation,” and “covered person,” and makes it easier to keep their personal information private in court records and hearings. It also lets courts record child testimony on video, requires victim impact information in presentence reports, and authorizes $25 million per year for guardians ad litem to help child victims. The bill changes restitution rules so that courts must order restitution for a wider set of child exploitation and certain obscene visual depiction offenses. It refines what counts as “child pornography production” and “trafficking in child pornography” for restitution purposes. Courts may appoint a trustee or other fiduciary to hold and manage restitution money for victims who are minors, incapacitated, or living abroad, and it authorizes $15 million per year to support this system. For online service providers, the bill rewrites the duty to report apparent child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) CyberTipline. Providers must send more detailed reports within 60 days of gaining actual knowledge, including copies of apparent child pornography, related messages, technical data, and indicators of whether images are AI- or computer-generated, when that information is available. NCMEC must make reports available to specified U.S. and foreign law enforcement agencies. The bill creates criminal fines and civil penalties for providers that knowingly fail to report, fail to preserve material, or file false or incomplete reports, with higher penalties when individuals are harmed; these amounts go into a reserve fund for child pornography victims. The bill requires large providers (over 1 million monthly users and $50 million in yearly revenue) to file yearly public reports to the Attorney General and Federal Trade Commission about their child safety policies, reporting systems, tools, and trends. These reports must describe measures to protect children, support parents, design safer products, and track the prevalence and patterns of online child sexual exploitation. The agencies must publish these reports with required redactions to avoid revealing how to evade safety tools or commit crimes. The bill creates a new federal crime for interactive computer services that intentionally host or store child pornography or knowingly promote or facilitate certain child sexual exploitation offenses, with fines up to $1 million, or up to $5 million if the conduct risks serious injury or causes harm. It also clarifies and expands civil “private right of action” remedies for victims of trafficking and child exploitation offenses, including those depicted in child pornography or certain obscene visual depictions. A new civil cause of action (section 2255A) allows victims to sue interactive computer services and app stores that intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly promote, aid, or abet certain crimes, or host, store, or make child pornography available, with minimum liquidated damages of $300,000, possible punitive damages, and no statute of limitations. The bill states that nothing in section 230 of the Communications Act limits these new civil claims, though certain good faith compliance actions and use of encryption are not, by themselves, a basis for liability. It sets out defenses where providers remove content quickly, act in good faith but cannot remove it, or where removal would break encryption. It also provides for sanctions when parties or attorneys bring repeated bad-faith lawsuits or defenses in these civil cases. Finally, it includes a severability clause and states that existing federal, state, and Tribal child-exploitation laws and victim remedies remain in force and are not preempted if they are at least as protective of victims.