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Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
141–150 of 263 posts
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power. I think this is why the thing judges hate the most is people admitting when the law gives them an unfair advantage. A rule that unjustly benefits someone is fine as long as they don't break kayfabe. Big Brother loves you, that's why you can't install apps on your phone, it's to protect you from harm. The incidental monopolization, censo…
I agree, but that's the uncharitable interpretation. The charitable one is that intent matters. Those in power being threatened tends to strongly correlate with societal instability and a distinct lack of public safety. I may not always agree with the status quo but I don't want to live in Somalia either.
"Intent matters" is the dodge.
There is an action you can take that does two things. One, it makes it marginally more expensive to commit fraud. Two, it makes it significantly more expensive for your existing customers to patronize a competitor. If you do it, which of these things was it your intent to do?
The answer doesn't change based on whether you announce it. You can fully intend to thwart competition without admitting it. And, of course, if the only way you get punished is if you admit it, what you really have is not a law against intending to do it but a law against saying it out loud. Which is poison, because then people knowingly do it without admitting it and you develop a culture where cheating is widespread and rewarded as long as the cheaters combine it with lying.
Whereas if the law is concerned with knowledge but not "intent" then you'd have a law against thwarting competition and it only matters what anyone would expect to be the result rather than your self-proclaimed unverifiable purpose.
But then it's harder to let powerful people get away with things by pretending they didn't intend the thing that everybody knew would be the result. Which is kind of the point.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#143I wonder why Texas did not start by targeting NSFW / porn apps specifically, like other states. I also wonder why smut literature (the best selling category of books on Amazon) seems to get a free pass.
The app stores already block porn on their own initiative. > I also wonder why smut literature (the best selling category of books on Amazon) seems to get a free pass. It's popular with women and basically invisible to men.
And being long-form written text, likely invisible to minors as well.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#144Judge Robert Pitman said that it violates the First Amendment and is "more likely than not - unconstitutional." The Act is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book. We enjoy 1A protections of speech and assembly. When we consider our rights,…
Judges are struggling to find the analogies known to them from the world of 70's. Apps are not like books only. They are like movies, sports, tools, postal mailbox, pet, friend, bank, money, shop, cab and anything you can imagine. When movies require age-restriction, apps can do so too.
And which movies, when broadcast on TV (i.e. viewed inside people's homes), verify the age of everyone watching before continuing? Your analogy is just as flawed.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#145What also gets glossed over is the privacy tradeoff: to "protect minors," you end up collecting more sensitive data about everyone, including adults downloading trivial apps
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#146Judge Robert Pitman said that it violates the First Amendment and is "more likely than not - unconstitutional." The Act is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book. We enjoy 1A protections of speech and assembly. When we consider our rights,…
Age gates at the App Store level aren't a narrow restriction, they're a universal checkpoint
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Judges are struggling to find the analogies known to them from the world of 70's. Apps are not like books only. They are like movies, sports, tools, postal mailbox, pet, friend, bank, money, shop, cab and anything you can imagine. When movies require age-restriction, apps can do so too.
And which movies, when broadcast on TV (i.e. viewed inside people's homes), verify the age of everyone watching before continuing? Your analogy is just as flawed.
When movies are broadcast on TV, they must first be censored according to the FCC's rules. Of course this only applies to broadcast, not cable, but cable doesn't get broadcast into people's houses without them signing up for it.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#148> we are concerned that SB2420 impacts the privacy of users by requiring the collection of sensitive, personally identifiable information to download any app, even if a user simply wants to check the weather or sports scores. Avoiding the collection of user data in the first place (if it's possible) is exactly the correct approach to user privacy.
Soo the strongest form of privacy protection isn't better storage or better policies, it's simply not creating the data in the first place
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#149I spend well over a month now on the topic to implement the different half cooked APIs into our apps. The chance that this gets overturned or blocked was high but we had to race anyways. I’m curious what this means for similar legislations in others states line Utah and Louisiana that where planned to get into effect later this year. I very much saw the irony that Texas of all regions tried to restrict the Wild West…
My guess is that Utah\Louisiana will either pause, copy-paste the same approach and hit the same wall
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#150Judge Robert Pitman said that it violates the First Amendment and is "more likely than not - unconstitutional." The Act is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book. We enjoy 1A protections of speech and assembly. When we consider our rights,…
As a UK subject, with a government that has begun implementing the online safety act, prosecuting people for tweets that clearly weren't inciting violence and getting rid of jury trials for cases with fewer than five years sentences, I look on with envy at your constitutional protections of the individual.
American constitution is underappreciated. It ensures peace but faces profoundly undeserved hatred in return.