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California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

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

#411

Post by greyface- »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #387
greyface- wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what GP was talking about: entrenching a preference for one style of licensing over another. We all know what set of licenses the FOSS zealots would prefer for us to release code under, and those who release license-free or public domain software anyway typically do it with full knowledge of such arguments.

> entrenching a preference for one style of licensing over another. Sure, that's true. The intent of the law is to give a special carve-out for, in essence, Free and Open Source software. It seems clear that it was deliberately written so as not to include proprietary freeware, say. > We all know what set of licenses the FOSS zealots would prefer for us to release code under, and those who release license-free or pub…

> Like what?

djb's software is the canonical example here: qmail, djbdns, etc. Widely used; distributed without explicit license until 2007, and placed in the public domain thereafter. No legal disputes ever arose from this.

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

#412

Post by tbugrara »

inigyou wrote: post #336
BoxwoodSeed wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm confused. Parental controls for internet use have been around for decades.

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

#413

Post by throwaway19567 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #305
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 bill doesn't exempt Linux-based systems by name, if that's what you're thinking. It exempts any operating system that allows users to "copy, redistribute, and modify the software". It's a bit arbitrary in the sense that Microsoft and Apple could dodge the requirement by simply becoming open source, but that's not going to happen so it's not really a problem.

> It's a bit arbitrary in the sense that Microsoft and Apple could dodge the requirement by simply becoming open source, but that's not going to happen so it's not really a problem.

Considering macOS is already built on an OSS kernel (Darwin), and that Apple no longer charges any money for OS upgrades, I could imagine a world where Apple just shuffles some components around and announces macOS is now fully open source. Just so happens to require a lot of Apple chips with proprietary firmware, but hey that's for security reasons. Trusted enclave and all that. Nothing to see here. We'll take the exemptions for FOSS now please.

(Of course the real reason Apple won't do this is that they already have almost all of their user's ages via Apple ID, and being a trusted age-auth intermediary actually plays to their core strengths really well.)

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

#414

Post by fodkodrasz »

some_random wrote: post #205

Hope you all are excited for the most important parts of the internet to be completely unusable by default on Linux in a few years.

Most if the "important" parts of the internet are unusable already by default, without an ad blocker.

As long the government sites, banks, etc. work (who already know my personal detail due to the nature of their services and the contract we have), nothing of value is lost, tbh. Including this site and this comment.

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

#416

Post by teddyh »

smalltorch wrote: post #395
teddyh wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t say. Here are some things to radicalize you: • 2012: https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-w... > • 2003: https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ > • 1997: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html.en >

2003 deserves its own thread that's a great write up.

It has been submitted many times, but was only really discussed in 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4337626>

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

#417

Post by MaxBarraclough »

greyface- wrote: post #411
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> entrenching a preference for one style of licensing over another. Sure, that's true. The intent of the law is to give a special carve-out for, in essence, Free and Open Source software. It seems clear that it was deliberately written so as not to include proprietary freeware, say. > We all know what set of licenses the FOSS zealots would prefer for us to release code under, and those who release license-free or pub…

> Like what? djb's software is the canonical example here: qmail, djbdns, etc. Widely used; distributed without explicit license until 2007, and placed in the public domain thereafter. No legal disputes ever arose from this.

Of course Bernstein isn't about to file lawsuits against his users, given his motives, but (prior to the public domain dedication) he might have stood a chance in court if people were downloading and using his copyrighted software without a licence. Under modern copyright law, all rights are reserved 'by default' (at least in the US). I'm not sure if a case like that has ever ended up in court, but I can't imagine any corporate lawyer signing off on acquiring and using software in that fashion.

An absence of lawsuits is not the yardstick for success here anyway. It's possible the public domain dedication deterred adoption compared to using a permissive FOSS licence. Consider Google's caution about public domain software for instance [0]. It could also be possible for software to be adopted but, if tested in future, this could be found to be legally murky.

If your intention is to make the code available to all, to do with as they wish, there's no legitimate reason to release it to the public domain rather than just using a permissive licence. If anyone with a deep knowledge of copyright law disagrees on this point, I'd be interested if you could post a link.

I'm not clear if you're doubting the correctness of what I said in my previous comment. I'm not making this stuff up, I already gave sources. The Creative Commons CC0 licence was created purely to address the legal complexities of the public domain. [1][2] (For other reasons of legal nuance, Creative Commons licences should not be used for software works, [3] but the point stands.)

[0] https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/thirdparty...

[1] https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/

[2] https://creativecommons.org/2008/04/16/cc0-betadiscussion-dr...

[3] https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm...

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

#418

Post by greyface- »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #417
greyface- wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like what? djb's software is the canonical example here: qmail, djbdns, etc. Widely used; distributed without explicit license until 2007, and placed in the public domain thereafter. No legal disputes ever arose from this.

Of course Bernstein isn't about to file lawsuits against his users, given his motives, but (prior to the public domain dedication) he might have stood a chance in court if people were downloading and using his copyrighted software without a licence. Under modern copyright law, all rights are reserved 'by default' (at least in the US). I'm not sure if a case like that has ever ended up in court, but I can't imagine an…

> I'm not clear if you're doubting the correctness of what I said in my previous comment.

I don't dispute any of the factual or legal claims you've made. I even agree that a FOSS license is probably the best choice if the author's goal is to protect the user from the scenario where they turn evil and renege on their gift of code to the public.

In situations where I'm the author, this isn't always my goal. You know that Bernstein isn't going to go after his users, and I know that I'm not going to go after mine. Most users aren't going to be concerned about this possibility, either. Those who are concerned about it are likely to be for-profit corporations or their lawyers, and I'm not losing any sleep over making them nervous or losing them as users. I don't care to over-formalize things by invoking or even acknowledging IP law in my act of publication.

Each author's motives and goals are going to vary. It's not reasonable to enforce that "maximize assurances provided to user" is always at the top of the list for everyone.

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

#419

Post by flavionm »

red_admiral wrote: post #382
inigyou wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because let's say you have a website like Reddit with a mixture of 18+ and 13+ stuff. Something that's 18+ but not explicit gets really popular. Pornhub will now livestream congressional debates, someone posts a link to this, and it gets fifty zillion upvotes as people can't resist commenting "wtf". Now you have a dilemma: do you show it on the front page or not? If you show this on the front page and it's 18+, it'll…

Haven't paid video streaming services solved that one already? Admittedly not with age verification, but you can set up child accounts. I presume Disney+ is ok here as they want to be in the family-friendly market but also offer content meant for young adults.

That's exactly what the law will do, but on the device. The parents will input the child's age during device setup, and then every service will query the age range based on that and work in "child account" mode.

Without any requirement for verification, it'll be completely up to the parents to decide what their child will see, while the services will only get the minimum information needed. It'll basically make parental control easy, but still in the parent's control.

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

#420

Post by flavionm »

angiolillo wrote: post #396
inigyou wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because let's say you have a website like Reddit with a mixture of 18+ and 13+ stuff. Something that's 18+ but not explicit gets really popular. Pornhub will now livestream congressional debates, someone posts a link to this, and it gets fifty zillion upvotes as people can't resist commenting "wtf". Now you have a dilemma: do you show it on the front page or not? If you show this on the front page and it's 18+, it'll…

> If you show this on the front page and it's 18+, it'll lock children out of the front page I don't understand why you think this is true when I specifically described a label that is applied to "an individual section" of the page. To be more explicit: Today, each post on the Reddit front page appears in its own container element. If an 18+ post's container element could have some kind of "adult-content" attribute s…

Won't that effectively leak the user's registered age bracket anyway? And if so, what advantage does it has over the current law?
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