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California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

tomshardware.com

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Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#331

Post by somat »

Aside 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.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#332

Post by televisionsaval »

foresto wrote: post #319
vdfs wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a big win for linux users

Until adoption expands beyond Facebook to services that we want. Or to things that we need, like medical care, government interactions, and financial services. People shouldn't have to choose between safety features like those in Graphene OS and participation in society.

It would be frustrating, but the group that is excluded from online services today tends to be low status and may benefit greatly when a tech elite with connections, status and special interest groups finds itself excluded.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#333

Post by BoxwoodSeed »

inigyou wrote: post #273
huimang wrote: post #62

So 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

Why does birthdate trigger y'all so much, but physical location (literally the field right before it, that you can see in the diff context) doesn't? Shouldn't we be protesting even harder against systemd tracking our physical location?

There's little use protesting free things. But you can run Linux without systemd entirely. Void is a pretty good experience, for example.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#334

Post by suburban_strike »

picofarad wrote: post #246
snackoverflow wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the comment was in reference to the frequency of school shootings in the United States vs the rest of the world.

457 deaths in US history. 1200 deaths a day from diarrhea in India. Put it in perspective.

The real elephant in the room is that 60% of our school shootings are streetside minority violence spilling into schools, not angry white incels mowing down classmates.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#335

Post by BoxwoodSeed »

inigyou wrote: post #263
DoctorOetker wrote: post #256

nobody 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…

The 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.

I disagree. The proper thing is to not have this at all in any shape or form.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#336

Post by inigyou »

BoxwoodSeed wrote: post #335
inigyou wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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.

I disagree. The proper thing is to not have this at all in any shape or form.

So the proper thing to do is show hardcore porn to little kids? That's your take?

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#337

Post by cwillu »

antonvs wrote: post #309
cwillu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law — software distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses are exempt”

Are 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?

It'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.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#338

Post by amelius »

charcircuit wrote: post #158
amelius wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah most OSes contain open source code, but that doesn't make them open source as a whole.

But 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.

I 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.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#339

Post by 13415 »

gspr wrote: post #253
13415 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

Of 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.

This 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.

Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

#340

Post by samus »

hirako2000 wrote: post #252
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH, OS based parental filters are the optimal solution here, especially if implemented in a proper way. Kids don't buy phones and computers, parents do. When setting up the account for the first time, the parents could set the account to be an "underage one", all the apps, browsers, etc., would get the USER_IS_UNDERAGE flag and filter content according to that. No need for every site to ask and verify the age, just…

Exactly like GDPR shouldn't have mandated millions of websites to pop up a consent form, as a global browser setting could would have set consent as a user preference. But the objective of these regulations aren't what it says on the tin.

The GDPR doesn't directly mandate cookie banners though. It wants consent from users prior to processing their data.

Also, the browser flag that indicates no consent already exists: https://globalprivacycontrol.org/faq

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