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California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
- anigbrowl 19d agoWeird how the people who habitually complain about government are conspicuously silent when it delivers something they wanted.
- lmm 19d agoWhat a pointlessly provocative and unproductive thing to say.
- edot 19d agoYeah, this is fantastic. Should be top of the page. I’m honestly shocked, I’ve fully internalized that everything is corrupt and beholden to big corporations. Somehow, a victory! Looks like the Linux Foundation and EFF pushed back, but they’re not exactly big. Good job, California lawmakers!
- zoobab 19d agoNot a victory, Android is still covered.
- qmarchi 19d agoHard to argue that it's open source...
- catlikesshrimp 19d agoGraphene should qualify. That would be a good incentive for kids to learn to root a mobile device and run graphene on it.
- harvey9 19d agoI used the web based installer and it was so easy that we would be complaining the kids are not really learning anything by doing it!
- epihelix 18d agoYou actually don't root a GrapheneOS device (sadly, imo, but this is one of GrapheneOS's peculiarities. If you want root, Lineage is your friend.)
- gmueckl 19d agoAOSP itself shouldn't be.
- roenxi 19d ago> Good job, California lawmakers! Is this serious or sarcasm? They passed a horrible law, now its an internally contradictory horrible law because apparently it isn't important enough to consistently enforce. So, you know. Why legislate it? There isn't much of an angle here that reflects well on Californian lawmakers, they're still supporting this authoritarian trend of de-anonymisation and rolling back free communication on the internet. They're just going to come back for linux later once the idea of legally mandated PII on account registration is normalised. Although I do see this "In addition, lawmakers inserted a new provision prohibiting anyone from requesting an age signal from an OS provider or app store unless required by law" so we seem to be entering a wild space where they're going to try and micromanage this in a weird way.
- 1718627440 19d ago> now its an internally contradictory horrible law because apparently it isn't important enough to consistently enforce Law is not an abstract code, but an incremental sometimes futile approach to shape society. They only want a way to hold big corporations accountable to exploiting children. They don't actually intend the effects on the consumer, so they tried to fix on easily changeable effect: "Don't worsen the privacy for people who want it." If you are using e.g. MS Windows, you have given up everything already. They do a lot of "telemetry" and for example everything you typed into MS Word is already licensed to Microsoft.
- roenxi 19d agoSo what makes kid users on linux so special that they don't need nanny state protection? Are the Californian legislators just throwing them to the wolves? Or are the protections being put in place here not actually important? Seriously, what is the message here supposed to be about the kids using linux? And why are they so different from kids using Windows or Mac? Are there other safety features we can exempt kid linux users from?
- 1718627440 19d agoThere is no corporation that spies on the user at the OS level. There is a sysadmin (likely the parent), whose responsibility is that already.
- squigz 19d agoIndeed, this is very generous of them, and we should be thankful.
- catlikesshrimp 19d agoSounds more like they did their job well, not that they are generous.
- missinglugnut 19d agoWhat do you want people to say? "Yay, the terrible law that threatened to make free computing illegal has an exemption for Linux. Now we only have to deal with unwanted mandatory age verification on all our non-linux devices. I'm so happy."
- anigbrowl 18d agoYes, learn to take a win when you get one. This is a very basic skill in politics.
- antonvs 19d agoIt delivered an arbitrary exception to a stupid law. If all someone wanted was an exception for Linux, they don’t understand the problem with this law.
- cwillu 19d ago“California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law — software distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses are exempt”
- antonvs 18d agoAre you really missing the point that badly? If you allow this pandering to satisfy you, you’re essentially supporting an age verification requirement for all other computing systems. So you didn’t think the requirement itself was a problem, you just wanted to make sure it didn’t affect you?
- cwillu 18d agoIt's not an exemption “for linux”, and claiming it is and then accusing people who point out that it's very clearly not of missing the point is something else. Good day.
- antonvs 18d agoWhat you’re doing is called derailing. I used the same language as in the OP title. Why aren’t you responding to that? You’re missing the point because you weren’t responding meaningfully to what I was saying, you’re using someone else’s choice of language to derail. > Good day. And here comes the passive aggression, true to form.
- deleted 18d ago[deleted]
- Pavilion2095 19d agoThe age verification requirement wasn't dropped, what are you talking about? Linux getting an exemption isn't a win.
- anigbrowl 18d agoIt is absolutely a win. If you can't see it as a win because you didn't get everything you wanted at once, then you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of disappointment. Big wins in politics (and most other things) are made out of a succession of smaller wins. Getting unanimous passage of something in a messy legislature is actually quite rare.
- throwawayqqq11 19d agoThis is not wanted, its duct taping a bad idea even further and i half-wish MS/apple/co sue against it. This may cause lawmakers to bounce back in the wrong direction though.
- Frannky 19d agoA lot of people are not stupid. Age verification is a backdoor for control. I read and did not even bother to comment, it's like yay, that horrendous thing they were trying to do now it's not applied to everyone. I'm also sorry for California, such a beautiful place and full of wonderful people. I hope it will recover one day.
- carodgers 19d ago"Delivers something they wanted" is the most bizarre way possible to phrase "followed through with the majority of a reprehensible agenda and were forced to carve out an exception due to technical constraints and massive blowback."
- PowerElectronix 19d agoThey shouldn't need to pass this if they didn't pass age verification at all. This is not a good thing, it's a very small patch for a very bad thing.
- colordrops 19d agoThey didn't "deliver something we wanted". They decided NOT to fuck us over. I guess we should thank them for that?
- sbuttgereit 19d agoI habitually complain about government... so let me help you out with this. The original issue with the law was never that those poor open source developers were going to have to bear the burden of complying with the law, but that the law itself was a bald-faced invasion of privacy by an overbearing troupe of people in power (i.e., government) so shit-sure of their superiority over the simple common folk they govern (i.e., you and me) that they aren't even embarrassed by their own arrogance. I would suggest that what "we wanted" is no such law at all. What would be weird, and worthy of comment, is if those of us that complain about government were actually satisfied by an exemption which only applies to pretty damn tiny slice of the market. If anything, that wasn't a victory for privacy or common sense, but rather a concession that they had foolishly created a law that they wouldn't have been able to enforce as broadly as they thought they could get away with... or if they tried to enforce it they'd have to contend with the optics of the big hand of government yet again crushing individuals whose only real crime was their altruism rather than just some giant corporation. So it isn't weird at all that "we're" silent. This isn't a win. Pointing out that the law had unintended consequences, including with Linux, et al., wasn't a statement of objective but rather a simple show that the law was rife with thoughtless unintended, or perhaps simply unspoken, consequences. The legislature's act here didn't restore privacy nor did it remove bad outcomes: if anything it now just raises questions about equal protection under law, at least on some practical level. It raises the question why some users of computers need such protections as age verification and others don't, and why the licensing terms of the OS are a valid proxy for that need... taking for granted that the stated purposes of the law are the real ones, of course.
- jchw 19d agoWhen people pointed out the consequences this would have for open source, that did not mean what they wanted was an open source exemption. It was just meant to demonstrate just how poorly conceived the law is that nobody at any point even thought about this before it was signed in. Frankly the consequences for open source are not even at the forefront of concerns about what these rushed regulations will do to the world.
- Suzuran 18d agoGreat, now every website can block those operating systems since they can't participate in the age assurances the websites will be required to use.
- rexthonyy 15d agoCool
- gafferongames 19d agoNow do FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD... =p
- throw-qqqqq 19d agoThose are also covered. > software distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses are exempt
- kennywinker 19d agoThe law just says open source OS’ don’t count. It does not mention Linux by name - nor does it specify which licenses.
- Calvin02 19d ago[flagged]
- kersplody 19d agoCool now let's exempt hobbyists from the 3-D printer must certify you are not printing gun parts pending legislation.
- rgmerk 19d agoA quick search suggests that 3D-printed guns being used in crime is an actual, for-real, and growing problem. I take it that you wouldn't be OK with somebody building a uranium enrichment facility in their backyard for their hobby reactor. So there is a line to be drawn on where people's freedom to tinker ends; it's just a question of where you draw it. Personally, I think given there is an actual documented, non-isolated problem with 3D printed guns being used for violent crime, there's a debate to be had that's more sophisticated than "REGULATION BAD".
- tancop 19d agoMy position on anything is "REGULATION BAD" when it's against individuals and non commercial/open source projects, "REGULATION GOOD" for massive corporations, and "REGULATION MAYBE GOOD NEEDS NUANCED DEBATE" for anything in between.
- rgmerk 19d agoNon-commercial projects and individuals can do bad stuff too. I agree the bar is a lot higher for those projects than massive corporations, but I think it's a pretty arguable case that "people are using 3D printers to make guns with features that would otherwise be illegal, and they are being used in crimes in some number" clears that bar.
- xyproto 19d agoWhat do you mean by regulation? Laws that could lead to a fine or jail time, or the enforcement of laws through ie. the police?
- 1718627440 19d agoIndividuals can do a lot of bad stuff too? "Mark Zuckerberg" is still an individual.
- hardwaresofton 19d agoAGPL…?
- catlikesshrimp 19d agoCan someone the exemption for browser extensions and other contained software? My best guess is that the OS > Browser are reporting the age already, and the browser extensions will also use that "signal". Is this close enough? " third carve-out excludes storefronts distributing extensions or add-ons that run exclusively inside a host application, which takes browser extension stores out of scope."
- odo1242 19d agoIt’s saying that, for example, Chrome on Linux isn’t required to ask for the user’s age in order to filter extensions
- ghssds 19d agoAnd now a bunch of OSI-Approved licenses get to have special rules applied to them, entrenching them and killing further innovation.
- greyface- 19d agoThe bill exempts: > a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software which at least doesn't choose specific winners and losers among licenses. It does disfavor license-free and public domain software, which isn't great.
- pritambaral 19d ago> It does disfavor license-free and public domain software, which isn't great. Public domain software is free to "copy, redistribute, and modify", so ... where's the disfavour?
- greyface- 19d agoIt only applies to software distributed under a license. Public domain software isn't distributed under a license. It's in the public domain; no license is needed.
- thorbutt 19d agoCan you name an OS that's licensed as public domain?
- greyface- 19d agohttps://www.pdos.org/ https://www.pdos.org/ Public Domain Operating System
- AlecMurphy 19d agoTempleOS
- cm2187 19d agoExcellent. From now on all kids will become linux natives. The decade of the linux desktop is coming!
- glitchbot 19d agoSystem 76, framework and a pinebook I am covered.
- thelastgallon 19d agoLinux phones, Linux gaming machines, Linux on Desktop and Laptops, Linux VR/AR, Linux watches, etc.
- close04 19d agoAnd then the exception will evaporate overnight.
- shuwix 19d agoOne gotta love politicians and their "solutions" and their longevity.
- shevy-java 19d agoPrecisely. Courts will find that the situation where Linux users are exempt from the law, whereas Windows users have to submit their ID and any other personal data, can not be maintained, so Linux users will also be forced to give up their ID before being able to access the internet. This will also first come via commercial distributions (perhaps it can not be enforced by independent linux users, but the law need not necessarily work for 100%, could be 95%, and the rest are declared as breaking the law).
- lern_too_spel 19d agoThis law does not require non Linux users to give up their ID to use the Internet, so why would they make Linux users do so?
- gspr 19d agoRest of the headline: "software distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses are exempt" And then further into the text it's clarified that there also isn't a specific list of open licenses, as the terrible headline would have you believe, but instead a description of what is considered open With the caveat that I haven't read the actual legal text, this seems to be an eminently sensible law (it'd be better if it weren't needed, but here we are). In summary: not a Linux exemption, and not an exemption for a specific list of licenses either.
- 13415 19d agoI don't consider that sensible at all. The law is supposed to protect children. It's hypocritical to exempt certain operating systems from the law, and, to be honest, I'm astonished this is legal/constitutional in California.
- SoftTalker 19d agoAgree, I think the law will be challenged on that basis, and ultimately thrown out. Millions of taxpayer dollars wasted, when they could have been actually solving the problem by making platforms responsible for the content they distribute.
- iamnothere 19d agoThe law didn’t protect children before, and it continues to not protect children now, so there’s no change. This law was never going to succeed at those aims.
- gspr 18d agoOf course the underlying law is idiotic. What I meant is that if we take the law as a given, then the exemption we are discussing here are very good and sensible. I wish they weren't needed, but given that they are, the language seems sensible.
- 13415 18d agoThis issue should be independent of whether or not you think the law is idiotic. The exemption is unwarranted and likely illegal no matter what you think about the law because it's unjust to exempt some operating systems and include others.
- conartist6 19d agoI love that Microsoft is committing a crime by continuing to let me use Win10
- LogTrim 19d ago[dead]
- phendrenad2 19d agoI'm starting to warm up to this law. So many loopholes. Nothing to worry about. I think California's incompetence has finally progressed from "proposes bad laws" to "proposes and botches the implementation of bad laws"
- arjie 19d agoIf you had an agent in the legislature wouldn’t you prefer exactly one of this form? My ideal representative is able to command support from diverse interests and subtly damages those opposed to me while subtly advantaging the principles I believe in - making compromises necessary to move incrementally to a state more aligned with what I wish it to be. The reality is that many people want bad laws. Without the support of those people one does not get elected. This use of people for power while de-facto disenfranchising them is pretty widespread already. For instance, some half of California and Texas are responsible for their strength in the electoral college while simultaneously being entirely disenfranchised when electing the President. Good technique.
- tzs 18d agoWhat loopholes?
- nottorp 19d agoLinux? Or also BSD, ReactOS, hobby OS #24562 etc... ?
- deaddodo 19d agoThey include the majority of OSI licenses, including BSD. So the majority of BSD variants are included.
- throw-qqqqq 19d agoYes also BSD and friends. From TFA > These amendments redefine the term “operating system provider” to exclude any person or entity that distributes an OS or application “under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software.” Any software distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses satisfies that test, which removes the likes of Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, and the BSD family from AB 1856’s scope.
- rwmj 19d agoIt's kind of weird though. Is VxWorks (a proprietary embedded OS used on some of the Martian rovers) going to require it in case some underage Martians try to use Facebook?
- nottorp 19d agoI'm sure they have a feature that also asks for species. Martians being longer lived than humans, they come of age at around 42.
- inigyou 18d agoThat depends. Will some kid be caught accessing Facebook from a Martian rover, triggering a court case? Remember, the law only cares about things that actually happen.
- miniwark 19d agoAccording to the article: "it's any OS or application “under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software.”" The article then explicitly cite "Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, and the BSD family". There is also another exclusion for libraries and software from a packages managers like apt and pacman. So from my understanding ReactOS, hobby OS but also CP/M, FreeDOS, Haiku or Collapse OS...
- rbbydotdev 19d agothis bill fixes nothing. if you wanted to prevent harm from the internet you would start with proper privacy laws. but we all know why that will never happen
- yyny 19d agoPrivacy laws don't prevent foreign entities from influencing elections and making children addicted.
- gonzalohm 19d agoAnd age verification prevents influencing elections, how?
- rbbydotdev 19d agoCambridge Analytica? The addictions are from these free platforms which do so to harvest your data
- AlienRobot 19d agoThis is a reach. Children can't vote. If that was a real concern you would be banning adults from social media.
- inigyou 18d agoWe should do that. Unfortunately adults have these pesky things called freedom, and rights. We should also ban them from smoking cigarettes.
- anon-3988 19d ago> if you wanted to prevent harm from the internet you would start with proper privacy laws Explain how a privacy that protects you and me will somehow not protect a pedophile. How does that work? I am FOR privacy. I don't think it can be done. I do not want to have any information at all stored anywhere, encrypted, decentralized or otherwise. Nada. Its just text. I want to just be a number in everyone database. I want to be able to spawn millions of numbers that will never be related to each other. My ideal privacy world is a world where bots thrive. Just go to face to face discussion if you care so much about who you are talking to.
- russellbeattie 19d agoLaws need to be managed like software: There should be a process for testing, user feedback, quick patches for bugs or conflicts, and regular updates to fix issues. If you think about it, both laws and software are called "code". The problem is our legal system is still based on the waterfall method. Lawmakers try to plan for everything, laws meant to solve one problem face feature creep and create a thousand others, then no one wants to touch anything after launch for fear of making things worse or because that one guy uses the temperature of his CPU as a quick-key and refuses to change his workflow. Anyways, no law is perfect and never will be, and neither are the fixes.
- 1718627440 19d ago> The problem is our legal system is still based on the waterfall method. It's not? It has been "agile" for centuries. It is constantly patched as someone wants to address some issue. It's rather rare for a completely new law to be written. > Lawmakers try to plan for everything It's not? They see one bug, e.g. children being exploited, now they tried it with a patch that is horribly broken and doesn't really work, so they patched it again, to remediate one issue, while they try to figure out more patches.
- zdc1 19d agoSoftware development is slower in larger, more political organisations (hello Change Advisory Boards) and larger/older/sprawling codebases. Most governments are huge, highly political, slow moving organisations. It seems to just come with the territory: slower rollout of changes, longer periods to observe the changes in the wild (throw in a few years to see how the law plays in legal cases/challenges), and suddenly you have fewer iterations to get it right.
- rfgplk 19d agoIt's also hilarious how poorly defined so many laws are. So many loopholes and bugs everywhere. Probably because most lawyers/politicians are effectively illiterate when it comes to logic.
- jjav 19d ago
- kennywinker 19d ago> (2) “Operating system provider” does not mean a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software. Where does MacOS and iOS fit then? The core of both those operating systems (darwin) is open source (APSL licensed).
- gmueckl 19d agoMacOS isn't Darwin and comes under terms that do not fit rhe criteria of the exception. Apple actually did go to some lengths in the past to ensure that all layers of MacOS contained bits that they could claim restrictive licenses on. A project like PureDarwin, however, can be freely distributed because it omits Apple's proprietary parts.
- kennywinker 19d agoMacos contains elements that are open licensed. Many linux distros contain elements that are closed source. Where is the line? This law describes as a true-false something that is not only true or false. This law is poorly written. Amending it didn’t fix that.
- card_zero 19d agoCall in a Reasonable Person, when the position of the line is in question.
- kennywinker 17d agoReasonable People were unavailable for comment - they are busy deciding your 3d printer is illegal.
- SahAssar 19d agoBasically all linux distros fully run without the closed source parts, they are only there to provide support for specific hardware. MacOS on the other hand cannot run at all without the closed source parts.
- huimang 19d agoSo is anyone going to revert the commits that jumped the gun on this? E.g. systemd's birthdate field https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954
- ccorcos 13d agoI'm confused why systemd would even do this? I'm not advocating for "breaking the law", but it's just completely absurd that this project would be prosecuted for anything... The general public as no idea what systemd even is and nor do they care. And 1st amendment free speech seems like enough to protect them. What am I missing here?
- sega_sai 19d agoThe PR mentions not just California but other states and countries, so I dont think California's exemption alone changes the situation
- maccard 19d agoMan that PR is a complete mess.
- methyl 19d agowhy?
- maccard 19d agoIt’s 150 comments of back and forth on a change which doesn’t have a concrete reason, the maintainers aren’t in agreement on what the right approach is wrt the field’s behaviour, and the person who submitted it is bouncing between saying he’s keeping it on topic and then adding scope where he believes it should be added. I also personally disagree with the change, I think the OP has gone ahead and implemented what they wanted but not considered the actual ways it will be used. The PR shouldn’t be merged until the laws have made a bit more progress and it’s clear what they’re _actually_ implementing.
- pipes 19d agoMy gut reaction to this is that there is something seriously wrong if special clauses are required. Why should open source get special treatment, to me that just highlights that the law is utterly ridiculous.
- roosterIllusi0n 19d agoTechnically opensource stays the same. The special treatment is for closed source OSes that get an additional legal protection for their datamining. We should not be passing laws that legalize the datamining of people.
- forestingfisher 19d agoIt’s about to get so much worse before we get any kind of meaningful change for the better. Buckle up
- bluebarbet 19d agoEmpty cynicism adds no value.
- ForHackernews 19d agoWhy shouldn't open source get special treatment? Public laws should recognize and incentivize public goods.
- red_admiral 19d agoWe got into this mess because people wanted Facebook to have age verification, and MZ decided to push the responsibility on to OSes. The result looks to me like Facebook will ban access from non-approved OSes like Linux. Android will still be allowed, GrapheneOS probably not.
- WD-42 19d ago> The result looks to me like Facebook will ban access from non-approved OSes like Linux Oh no! Anyways…
- johnnyanmac 19d agoFacebook was the excuse (and there's a no zero chance Meta funded the initiative themselves). The government's worldwide jumped on it so quickly partially becsuse they've been trying to find aan excuse to control the internet for decades. Never dismiss how quick they are to push stuff like this but how slow they are to enact actual positive change for the people.
- inigyou 18d agoBut California AB1043 is an anti-control law.
- johnnyanmac 18d agoIt's one of the better implementations, but it's still ultimately a law made to give controlling bodies more information about a previously anonymous activity. It's still a foot in the door.
- inigyou 18d agoIt makes it illegal for them to have as much information as they already have. Therefore it requires them to delete information.
- vdfs 19d agoThat would be a big win for linux users
- andai 19d agoI'm confused. If I was a kid, I can still get my cigarettes at the Linux store? (By analogy with eastern Europe where age checks are lax.) Or is the idea that the Linux store is not allowed to sell cigarettes anymore?
- johnnyanmac 19d agoTo use your metaphor, this is saying that a store needs to limit you to the kids section if it is told you are a kid at the door. The exemption here is because a park doesn't have doors to perform this check onto. (PS. I'd hope we were past trying to hamfist physical metaphors to describe the digital landscape. But alas).
- andai 19d agoWell, maybe cigarettes were a silly metaphor -- can my kids still get their porn at the Linux store? Are the gore websites gonna have to ask for ID now? What about 4chan? Or is the whole point to get rid of all that stuff and just get everyone using Facebook instead? (They're the ones who pushed these laws right?) I'm honestly trying to understand what the big picture is here.
- johnnyanmac 18d agoYes, your kids will still find that dirty magazine under the park bench that the older kids discarded. And you can't stop that unless you're willing to employ a hundred park rangers who monitor every corner of a park at every time. So no one bothers. >Are the gore websites gonna have to ask for ID now? What about 4chan? Or is the whole point to get rid of all that stuff and just get everyone using Facebook instead? (They're the ones who pushed these laws right?) The idea is that this closes a loophole which a bunch of websites already bypass from several other kinds of laws that punish companies for breaking age verification laws (like COPPA). The obvious defense is "well I didn't know they were 12, they clicked a button saying they were 18". So now here's a mechanism that gives them more information they have to implement. For the range of who implements it, like always, probably goes top down. They won't cover every website under the sun, but getting the big websites will supposedly be good enough. Given how consolidated the internet is these day, maybe there is some kind of point there now.
- Artoooooor 19d agoNow do it with all open source licenses, not just the most popular.
- charcircuit 19d agoSo Android is exempted since it's opens source?
- enoint 19d agoPractically, the components of Android which mandate a user account are not distributed so that the user can modify them. The exemption does not apply.
- amelius 19d agoYeah most OSes contain open source code, but that doesn't make them open source as a whole.
- charcircuit 19d agoBut if Ubuntu bundles an Nvidia graphics driver that is not open source does that disqualify it? It's normal for there to be a mix of both open and closed source code in an os.
- enoint 19d agoA better example is: I install Debian and later, somehow, the Google Play Store. Maybe that’s the only way to get some driver. Who is responsible for asking my age: Debian or Google?
- inigyou 18d agoGoogle isn't allowed to, it was always Debian. If Debian doesn't, Google has to assume the most restrictive category, or deny service altogether.
- amelius 18d agoI think what matters is who is in control. You can always ditch the Nvidia driver and buy another card from a different company. Even if that one is not open source, you're the one in control.
- nullbio 19d agoThis is funny to me, because if the age-verification laws were supposed to be a stepping stone toward greater oversight on computing so that AI can be corralled in the future, seeing what is likely to come with billions of spam-bots and zero traceability, then this single decision alone completely undermines it.
- YayCommunism 19d ago[flagged]
- shevy-java 19d agoPeople celebrate too early. A court at a later time may find that this situation is unfair to windows users who have to submit to age sniffing. So this will easily be overturned at a later time - age sniffing will never be given up by the lobbyists groups paid for by Meta and others (and the USA also wants that information).
- type0 19d ago> the original definition of “user,” which read, “a child that is the primary user of a device,” and technically classified every device owner in California as a child. which technically makes California a "Nanny state"
- wseqyrku 19d agoHow Linux is relevant to age-verification again? What was the question exactly? Lawmakers unanimously are going to be sleeping when it gets dark at night.
- neuroticnews25 19d agoIt's an operating system, and they are making it mandatory for operating systems to collect user's age, it's mentioned in the article.
- deleted 19d ago[deleted]
- wseqyrku 18d agoAn OS should not be assumed connected to "collect" anything in the first place. (had to rewrite my slightly angry comment earlier, this was basically my point.)
- assimpleaspossi 19d agoI remember the good ol' days when our parents told us what we could and could not use or buy. If Johnny's parents let them do something, Johnny's parents would get admonished for it and we just wouldn't see Johnny anymore.
- phendrenad2 19d agoHey so uh... Did anyone notice the word "accessible" here? > Provide an ACCESSIBLE interface, at account setup,.. I wonder if the biggest effect of this bill will be that proprietary operating systems will have to have accessibility features built-in, and will be subject to ADA compliance lawsuits if it's deficient in some way.
- anon-3988 19d agoThis is technically good news sure, but its just a matter of time just like everything. "Everything already tracks you anyway, so what's one more thing?"
- jsdevtom 19d agoThe fact that these bureaucrats think they have a right to add age-verification to information is ludicrous in the first place. This should be as much non-news as 'Lawmakers unanimously decide death is legal'.
- lee_ars 19d agoLawmakers—contemporary and otherwise—have in fact decided many many times that the state can deprive you of your life as punishment for certain crimes.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 19d agoI believe what parent commenter is suggesting is that it would be ridiculous for lawmakers to call it a crime to die, say without verifying you are of the legal age to do so. It would be like declaring that breathing is legal: why does that need a proclamation?
- inigyou 18d agoThere is no age verification in AB1043. Anyone who says there is is a propagandist.
- rickcarlino 19d agoIllinois residents should consider forwarding this to their representatives.
- fleroviumna 19d ago[dead]
- gwerbin 19d agoThis is a victory only in a very perverse sense. The silver lining is that maybe this will push more people towards using Linux (maybe Haiku will have its day). And Linux itself lives on. But what a disaster of a policy, clearly just catering to lobbyists and not the best interests of Californians.
- doginasuit 19d agoI haven't checked the status in a couple months but Colorado had a similar carve out for open source in their legislation.
- some_random 19d agoHope you all are excited for the most important parts of the internet to be completely unusable by default on Linux in a few years.
- sph 19d agoGood. I’d rather have free computing than the modern web.
- inigyou 18d agoBut it's not free, this bill makes social media illegal on linux
- fodkodrasz 17d agoGood.
- dunder_cat 19d agoI testified against the equivalent of this bill in my state. One of the things I mentioned is because of a non-trivial monetary fine per infraction [1], as someone who would potentially need to implement this, I would have no idea how to reliably differentiate a computer that was simply out-of-date/implementation has bugs from willful non-compliance vs Open Source [2]. It just felt like the bill had the goals it had when it was created, and the broader cloud of "gee, if people implement this a certain way, it could have unintended consequences" was completely ignored. But don't worry, one of the co-sponsors proclaimed. near the end of the hearing, that they had a Masters Degree in Computer Science and worked on operating systems in their career, so they made sure to let us know that we were over-reacting. The other thing that really pissed me off was it was rumored my states bill was going to get an open source exemption. However, they waited until the end of the hearing to introduce all of the amendments, including the Open Source exemption. The proposed amendments were not publicly visible on the bill page or the page about the committee meeting for that day. This ended up being an excellent strategy to sway other committee members [3], since they could just hand wave the bulk of us as "concerns resolved". It was quite illuminating to also see media lobbyists come in and verbatim just state "hey did you get our proposed amendments?" and then without much reading of them at all, they were ratified during that session. Lesson learned: the moment there was a rumor of amendment, I should have made a considerable effort to get my hands on that text ahead of time since for the implementation concerns I raised, I was still unhappy. I'm not quite sure though how much of a difference it would have made though, since at least 30 other people fell into the same trap. Anyhow, hopefully my long-winded Sunday morning post was useful to someone in the future either when dealing with compliance, a version of the bill in their own states, or the federal government's attempts to do a similar thing. I confess that I have been lazy and not remotely done any due diligence on that federal bill (https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/all-info https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250... / HR-8250: Parent's Decide Act). I encourage others to be better than me and contact their representatives, assuming it isn't already on the fast track to becoming law. [1] at least, for smaller businesses -- big tech won't care! I think it was something like $6,000/pop, which is chump change for big tech and will be negotiated during settlement talks. [2] Okay, you can check the user agents. But who wants to need to maintain or pull in a list of enforceable user agents! What happens if someone is spoofing the UA and suddenly they end up in my list of "must check" UAs (or inversely, !(not must check)). How long does one reasonably wait for the API call to time out? What about running the app on Wine? And most importantly, what if someone that doesn't care about Linux ("okay claude make my website legal no mistakes") is in charge of implementing this logic, or the library that people will end up using for compliance. [3] Assuming they cared. The vote was largely amongst partisan lines, some people had clearly looked checked out the whole time, despite the abnormally high numbers of their constituents being there that day.
- _pdp_ 19d agoBecause Linux is not an OS.
- grumple 19d agoThis law is still worthless. A burden on those who follow it, an excuse to attack those who don't, and completely ineffective at best. You think every child doesn't quickly learn to click "I'm over 18"? I've been doing that since I was 13. "Protect the children" is the most common refrain of fascists across the political spectrum. It's used, uncritically, to attack your rights, to take away your power, with a fragile appeal to morality. Just like the war on terror. And the war on drugs. And the war on poverty. Funny how all of these efforts have failed while increasing government interference in our lives. We never get the rights back, and we don't improve the situations on any of the above. A reminder that the fear mongering around children is just that. It is the safest time for children in history: https://www.chadaldeman.com/p/the-world-is-safer-than-ever-so-why https://www.chadaldeman.com/p/the-world-is-safer-than-ever-s... https://www.unh.edu/ccrc/trends-child-victimization https://www.unh.edu/ccrc/trends-child-victimization
- nirui 19d agoWow, you guys are really REALLY naive aren't you. They made it sound like it, but this is not a victory at all, this is a temporary strategic compromise to silence the most sensitive/foreseen privacy advocator for now. But they will not stop here, instead they'll keep advancing the mechanisms, opinions and laws, so one day when the pieces aligned, they can come back to turn this tap off while having people lied to their side. Forced age verification needs to be abolished completely and people who advocated for it punished to the point that their political career ends, this should be the baseline. But of course, based on my understanding of everything, no, nobody will do anything effective against it. Everyone will just be "Yeah... they forced a component on my system that could act as spyware to monitor me, then have me pay for it without give me any control. But guess what, I will accept it because they said it's good for the future of mankind", like a peasant would. This is the tax you paid ended up for you, you know?
- TheSkyHasEyes 19d agoNo need to comment with guns ablazin' :D California law don't represent the planet. That's their tax problem in their country. Now, if I am the naive one in this story please educate me. After all, this website is excellent at this and I learn so much from the commentary.
- layla5alive 18d agoCalifornia making this law is but one domino, but if you can't or won't see the bigger picture of the cascade of dominos, then yes, you are the naive one. And there is a need to comment with guns ablazin', this is existential for humanity on a long enough time horizon.
- inigyou 18d agoIt also makes it illegal to use social media if you're on linux
- layla5alive 18d agoThis should be the top comment (minus the first line which, while not untrue, probably doesn't help the message) We need solidarity to push back against this. The corporate and government systems we have built are the original paperclip maximizers. They/collectively "we" are creating an enclosure around all of humanity... Systematically eliminating privacy, liberty and freedom. Increasingly, the matrix has all of us, and it didn't even need to put us in scifi stasis pods - turns out fiat currency + inflation/infinite growth + resource scarcity + digital markets + internet + smartphones/IoT/devices is already a pretty effective matrix substrate.. Wake up, people...
- alexfromapex 19d agoNow if the guy that just created his own renderer for SwiftUI can port it to Linux instead of WASM we can have a Linux Mac replacement analog we just need someone to port the Metal GPU API over to Linux.
- Noaidi 19d agoDoes not matter? Can they just say that if a website cannot determine your platform is Windows or MaCOS you can not get access to any particular website? Sure, you can set up your laptop with Linux, but you can't surf the web. I am wondering how much this could hobble GrapheneOS... I find it hard to believe these people would just create a huge loophole for only smart kids to get through rather easily.
- a-dub 19d agoi still think this should be solved at the protocol level. if you want to access the adult stuff, you have to staple a non-identifying zk-proof-of-age to your http/spdy/etc requests, otherwise it all just operates as usual.
- bspammer 18d agoOr even better, just a “User is a child” header.
- BoxwoodSeed 18d agoThe default state should be adult. Kid devices should have something special on setup that makes them kid devices. Or even better, don't have anything like that at all anywhere other than in front of the screen. I really don't see how it is a good thing for a six year old to interact with the Internet in any way.
- a-dub 17d agothis is exactly what these weird operating system age tracking laws are codifying which is terrible. it forces consumer operating systems to become trusted computing bases that don't work for the consumer. upgrading to adult content when a credential is provided at the protocol level rather than forcing the operating system to track the state means that consumer operating systems don't have to be secured against their own users.
- quicklywilliam 19d agoIMHO a blacklist would have been better than a whitelist
- AlienRobot 19d agoI wonder what is the reasoning for this.
- pessimizer 18d agoIt was written for them by very smart people to quiet resistance to these laws, and to make sure there's no possibility that there's a price to be paid by anyone at the ballot box. Most of them probably neither understand or even read it, they are voting for it because they were told to by the same people who told them to vote for age verification.
- mindslight 19d agoThis seems like a hollow victory. "No signal" will quite soon become a vanishing minority of users, and websites will simply reject anybody that isn't providing the signal. These laws mostly just prime the pump to get the corpos over the activation energy of coordinating a conspiracy to make browsers start doing this on their own. I'm not an attorney and haven't read these laws, but here is an interesting question: if Linux is exempt from legally needing to supply a user's age for verification, but websites require an age to be presented as a condition of access, can browser developers on Linux send a pre-programmed age for interoperability purposes and be legally in the clear? It seems legit to me. Of course, since the whole point of these laws is to absolve Faceboot (the laws' sponsor) of liability, Faceboot (et al) will then move on to demanding remote attestation to make sure users are on proprietary operating systems that are legally required to send a faithful signal. I do wonder if there is an angle here for pushing back against the ever-growing surveillance industry. What if instead of sidestepping the age requirement by choosing an "old enough" age, we chose "too young" ages instead. A signal saying "I am 12" and all the COPPA requirements start to apply, including to embedded ads. Probably easy enough for most sites to flat out reject access. But some sites can't / won't - think government sites that currently embed corpo-surveillance crap like recaptcha etc, or sites that serve neutral content and don't care themselves but use cloudflare. Or perhaps browser extensions could even mix and match which signals they send where - "over 13/18" to the main site, "under 13" to the subresources, etc? I suppose by the time you've gotten there you might as well just be running best-in-class adblock extensions that work based on lists of hostile sites. But I think there might still be a core of an interesting aspect to a well-known way of telling websites that you're under 13.
- DoctorOetker 18d agonobody is worried about about the arbitrarian aspects? What if you are interested in developing your own OS (a task that would have been monumental but may become trivial with LLMs in the future)? Why is the proper level the OS? Why not the browser or the hypervisor? Or perhaps manufacturer should remember your age? What if hardware is resold? We would need a hardware cadastre! A global hardware cadastre would unite all jurisdictions in a power bloc eventually. It starts with daily computer/laptop, then domotics, then digital door locks, and before you know it the bloc-global hardware cadastre becomes authoritative, and the reference for property ownership. Is there even a proper level?
- inigyou 18d agoThe proper level is actually the device. The government doesn't care about how you arbitrarily divide the device software into components - only how they are non-arbitrarily provided by different people.
- BoxwoodSeed 18d agoI disagree. The proper thing is to not have this at all in any shape or form.
- inigyou 18d agoSo the proper thing to do is show hardcore porn to little kids? That's your take?
- cowboylowrez 17d agoThe proper thing is to strictly outlaw kids using the internet. There is nothing of value for kids on the internet, and even if there were, there are technical means of allowing users to use applications without generalized and ungated internet access, for instance roblox could be distributed through an age vetted app (including vetting adults too), the app could get internet access but disallow general internet browsing to arbitrary hosts.
- deleted 18d ago[deleted]
- inigyou 18d agoThis is a silly idea since California's law was actually well-thought-out. This will actually force social media to ban Linux clients, since the social media can't be compliant in that case. The operating system won't provide an age signal and the social media isn't allowed to ask for one on its own. I also want a permanent ban for anyone who calls the California law "age verification". It does not verify age. Period.
- nojvek 18d agoI would love to see an entire generation of kids who don’t post on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the likes. Social media from Meta and AI generated videos are a net negative to society.
- enoint 18d agoSure, but what about LinkedIn?
- jiveturkey 18d agoI think you're misreading it. It doesn't ban Linux from providing age collection and verification. It makes it a choice, rather than mandatory. I would expect that Linux users want access to age-verified apps just as much as other users, so such a signal will be available. Also, you're being overly pedantic on the language used. It transfers liability away from the service, more easily allowing operation in about half of the states. "age verification" is a fine lay description.
- inigyou 18d agoAge verification implies that age is verified, which is a complete and total lie
- iamnothere 18d agoNobody cares about the distinction except pro-age gating activists. I don’t want any law that requires specific behavior from the OS, whether it’s verification, attestation, or something else.
- kevin_thibedeau 18d agoAll Android phones then too, right?
- pessimizer 18d ago> In addition, lawmakers inserted a new provision prohibiting anyone from requesting an age signal from an OS provider or app store unless required by law. That closes off potential abuse of the age API that could have led to it being used as a general-purpose data collection channel even when age verification wasn’t required. Honestly hate all this. This is just a "geeks shut up" law. Excluding things that are not part of commerce (FOSS) probably even gives it some protection from constitutional challenges. And the quoted part above indicates that it is purely a government ID system - run the thought experiment where you were a conscientious person in 2005 deciding to start a social network, and this law had been passed in 2004. You wouldn't be allowed to use it to exclude children. And where will it be "required by law"? Since the pretense was to target social media and porn was just a bit of moral backwash, it will be required by law on arbitrary sites that allow any users to post. Geeks will shut up because they love how specific it is. And even as GrapheneOS is being banned already from being able to use websites and services, they'll be shocked when their unattested FOSS machines aren't allowed on the network at all. It passed unanimously because it means absolutely nothing, and politicians were getting shit from their rich loudmouth programmer constituents who will go back to spending time on their YIMBY activism.
- jiveturkey 18d agoWhat's to prevent Apple from making iOS and macOS free to "copy, redistribute, and modify"? The OS is free already, and the platform does cryptographic signature verification before allowing its installation. macOS already automatically finds local caching servers, which amounts to redistribution capability baked in. They can just claim that the user is free to turn off SIP and "modify" the binary bits, or that kernel extensions amount to modification.
- techteach00 18d agoSo someone said something I think sarcastically that deserves a fresh comment. "From now on all kids will become linux natives. The decade of the linux desktop is coming!" I teach technology K-8. So I have a front row seat to observing how the next generation navigates this new digital wasteland. Due to the aggressive censorship and locked nature of their computing experience at school, think Go Guardian, they have become experts at using Google workspace to make art, comics, communicate with one another in class etc. My point, the next generation really will become adept at using Linux IF the system is so locked down that it's all that's available. Humans adapt to their environment, no matter how harsh.
- gsquaredxc 18d agoI somewhat agree and somewhat disagree. If your students haven’t completely disabled GoGuardian, they are only working within the system. At least when I was a student working on this problem, I spent some time writing some software that would selectively disable and enable GoGuardian features, but my peers were not. I’d imagine similar exists today, a “good enough” approach beats out a technically sound one. “Unblocked” games or websites rely on a brute-force “what are they going to do about it” ideology that doesn’t work when the person you are disagreeing with isn’t a 50 year old man that lacks motivation. If it can’t be explained in a minute, it’s probably unlikely any more than one in one hundred actually do it. As hopeful as I’d like to be about this, I’d doubt the next generation gets adept at anything more than lying about their age online.
- ThinkItThru 18d ago[dead]
- BoxwoodSeed 18d agoI still think it is a better idea to ban children from the Internet altogether, but without enforcement. Then the parents can decide and if things go south, the parents are to blame and not whoever runs a website.
- somat 18d agoAside from the fact that it is a stupid law, there should not be any sort of exemption. I have not read the other proposed laws in this category but after reading the California law, I found it was so vague that my interpretation is that any operating system where the owner, well... actually owns the system is already in compliance. The law requires a mechanism where the OS can provide owner age data to applications. All operating systems where the owner is in control already provide a mechanism to supply data to apps, on most (mac, windows, unix, dos even) systems this is the file api, So to be in compliance with the law the owner can make a file that an application could access with the required info. No, there was nothing there about when an application needs this data, or even, like so many people assume, that it has to be out of the control of the owner. The CA law was so vague and pointless, my only conclusion is that it is a sort of frog boiling scheme. Test the waters to see if they actually have jurisdiction.
- Cider9986 18d agoSo GrapheneOS is exempted–that's good they won't bother them, GrapheneOS wasn't gonna add it nayway.
- beanjuiceII 18d agowhat a whacked out thing to celebrate, this law is a disaster
- laughing_man 18d agoThat's great and all, but what they should have done was just scrapped the age-verification stuff entirely. You can't really justify having that kind of restriction on Windows and MacOS but not on Linux.
- tomkarho 18d agoCall it cynicism or paranoia but whenever something gets passed unanimously especially when it's tech related (lawmakers are notoriously aloof when it comes to tech in general let alone knowing anything about Linux or licenses) there's bound to be a shoe about to drop. Either somewhere else this exemption is rendered moot (which is why it passed so easily) or something else is going on.
- cucumber3732842 18d agoI can already hear next year's useful idiots breathlessly screeching in the comments about the "linux loophole". It does have a pretty good ring to it, I'll give them that.
- fyredge 18d agoThis is not the way. You can't legislate away gray area content to children, what you can legislate is algorithmic recommendation of such content. Regulate algorithmic recommendation, revert back to chronological timeline of people / groups of interest and 99% of the problems will be solved. Won't be profitable for social media giants though
- klm127 17d agoI am in favor of age attestation at the OS level. Children accessing adult content is a serious problem, and "are you over 18" prompts are not a serious solution. OTOH Id verification for every adult website is extremely invasive and lets random verifiers get all kinds of PIID. But the OS attestation exposed with a browser hook means a parent can say "this computer user is under 18" and every adult content provider can restrict their content without having to ever touch even a birthdate. Thats not to say there isn't ambiguity in these laws but the principle is sound and the idea is better than alarmists have made it out to be. If this becomes "every OS has to ID verify with the government", the slippery slope anti-attesters tout, then I'll join the protests, but as long as it's age attestation, I'm for it. To me, this looks like a lot of pro privacy energy being totally wasted on something that is not actually invasive.