California Will Let Family Vloggers' Grown Kids Pull Paid Videos. Miss the 10-Day Deadline and It's $3,000 a Day.

A family vlogging channel's back catalog has always been treated as an asset that keeps earning. In California, from 1 January 2027, the children in it get the right to take it down.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1247 on 30 September. Tubefilter's James Hale brought it to wider creator attention on 1 November. The bill text sets out how it works.

Who it covers

The law creates a "child influencer": anyone "at least 18 years of age who is featured as a minor in paid content on a social media platform." The "vlogger" on the other side is a parent, legal guardian or family member who posted content featuring that child "constituting at least 30 percent" of what they shared, and who "received compensation" for it.

There's no earnings floor. California's 2024 Child Content Creator Rights Act, also from Senator Steve Padilla, only makes vloggers set aside 65% of a child's proportionate share of earnings when they make at least $1,250 a month. As the law firm Nixon Peabody notes in an October 27 client alert, SB 1247 "does not condition this removal right" on that figure. Tubefilter reads "compensation" to include ad revenue, brand deals, Super Chat tips and merch.

There's no cutoff date either. The right applies to any paid content featuring the requester as a minor, however old it is.

The clock and the penalty

Platforms must offer "a clear and conspicuous mechanism" for requests. If a request doesn't go straight to the vlogger, the platform has three business days to pass it on. The vlogger then has 10 business days to delete the content or edit it "in such a way that the child influencer is no longer featured." (Tubefilter's summary says 10 days. The statute says business days.)

Miss that deadline and the grown child can sue for actual damages, statutory damages of "$3,000 for each day that a vlogger is in violation," an injunction and attorney's fees. By Posthype's arithmetic, a month out of compliance is $90,000 before actual damages, and a year is $1.095 million. The text sets the penalty per day, not per video.

What the text leaves open

The 30% test has no stated time window or platform scope. It says only "the person's content shared on social media platforms." That leaves a creator who posted mostly kid content for five years, then pivoted, unsure whether they qualify.

The 2024 law, per Nixon Peabody, applied to vloggers "residing in California." The SB 1247 definition doesn't mention residence. How a California court treats a family that lives elsewhere hasn't been tested.

The biggest gap is licensed footage. Nixon Peabody points out the law "does not expressly address every downstream use of content after a vlogger licenses or transfers rights to someone else." That covers libraries sold to streamers, clips in brand campaigns, and back catalogs held by buyers. The firm tells studios, brands and agencies to write SB 1247 requests into their contracts now, including who handles a takedown and who pays for it.

What this means for creators and buyers

If you run a family channel, check which of your paid videos feature a child heavily enough to count toward 30%, and set up a way to act within 10 business days. If you're licensing, buying or running ads on family vlog footage, ask who must comply when a request lands and price that risk into the deal. A request can arrive years after the footage was filmed, and the law sets no cap on how far back it reaches.