Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

linuxstans.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 569 posts

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#261

Post by otterley »

DennisP wrote: post #239
otterley wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no "PGP decision." You're making that up.

Maybe try google before making statements like that. The decision was Bernstein vs. US. Prior to that, export controls prevented PGP source code from being exported from the US. Advocates printed it in books and exported those, which helped clarify the issue. Bernstein was a math student who made his own encryption software. The government tried to make him register as an arms dealer, and he sued in 1996, with the ba…

It is you who needs to do your research. That was not PGP. The Bernstein case was about Snuffle.

In that very same case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said:

"We emphasize the narrowness of our First Amendment holding. We do not hold that all software is expressive. Much of it surely is not. Nor need we resolve whether the challenged regulations constitute content-based restrictions, subject to the strictest constitutional scrutiny, or whether they are, instead, content-neutral restrictions meriting less exacting scrutiny. We hold merely that because the prepublication licensing regime challenged here applies directly to scientific expression, vests boundless discretion in government officials, and lacks adequate procedural safeguards, it constitutes an impermissible prior restraint on speech."

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#262

Post by busterarm »

DennisP wrote: post #239
otterley wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no "PGP decision." You're making that up.

Maybe try google before making statements like that. The decision was Bernstein vs. US. Prior to that, export controls prevented PGP source code from being exported from the US. Advocates printed it in books and exported those, which helped clarify the issue. Bernstein was a math student who made his own encryption software. The government tried to make him register as an arms dealer, and he sued in 1996, with the ba…

That wasn't PGP, it was Snuffle.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#263

Post by xp84 »

marak830 wrote: post #181
xp84 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why then did this completely leave out verification? Parents want and accept the out-of-box declaration idea. It requires no ID, no face scans, no "ID dot ME" or whatever. As parents we are more than able to open the box before giving our kids a laptop or phone and entering their DOB, and also able to see with our own eyes if the kid suddenly turns up with a second cell phone that they bought and configured as an adu…

I would argue the reason is so people can make arguments like yours. Step 1: get easily passed, simple looking laws passed to 'protect the children' Step 2: 'oh look at all these people bypassing the law. It's so simple for a child to watch porn with this.' Step 3: increase the requirements bit by bit on the verification By letting something simple pass, they can claim it's not thst bad, and anyone who argues against…

Can you back that up?

> Step 2: 'oh look at all these people bypassing the law. It's so simple for a child to watch porn with this.'

This would be a demonstrably stupid argument. A parent who simply opens the box and does 5 minutes of setup before giving their child a new $300-2000 device, and maintains the most basic awareness of any rogue devices (i.e. ask questions if a new phone appears) is all it takes to make sure no "bypassing" takes place in your home.

Anyone claiming "all these kids are bypassing it" would be lying, unless the law isn't even being enforced or sites aren't cooperating. And no law can overcome those problems.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#264

Post by hnlmorg »

lrvick wrote: post #244
hnlmorg wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a lawyer and even I know that argument would never hold up given the plethora of other laws that have been implemented through software. Not to mention copyright and patent claims too.

Being afraid and hoping you are never forced to add code to a project you do not want to add is letting the chilling effects work as designed. We need to all loudly and publicly say "Fuck off, I will defend my rights if needed", so they understand how expensive the fight is going to be. Fear is power. Do not give your enemies power.

People don’t disagree with your moral position. The problem is you’re bringing a butter knife to a drone fight.

There are more effective ways protest this law than posting punk-rhetoric on a nerd forum for a project that will likely fly under the governments radar anyway.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#265

Post by xp84 »

quotemstr wrote: post #190
xp84 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the law? It actually imposes very (in my humble opinion) good rules on the content providers, specifically social media. We know why social media is addictive - the personalized feeds are highly optimized to extend usage time, with no amount of time being "good enough." Social media sites would be banned from using this type of feed, limiting it to feeds of content you've subscribed to or requested only.…

Controlling my information consumption is not a legitimate function of the state. If algorithmic feeds get a lot of use, it's because people like them . Is that so hard to comprehend? That your preferences are not universal? And that you shouldn't use the government to bludgeon people into accepting the kind of information feed you, personally, would prefer for them? What gives you the right to do so? What you callin…

Great, let's legalize recreational fentanyl too, since 'whatever people seem to like' is good for society.

In this case, unless you're a child, nobody's trying to control what content you consume. And if you are a parent and want to make sure your children can continue to consume the most addictive possible social media, by all means lie about their age. The law does nothing to stop you from doing so.

By contrast, having zero mechanism for the rest of the parents to control this, as is the current case, does impose your "do whatever feels good" values on the rest of the world.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#266

Post by dd8601fn »

thewebguyd wrote: post #46
bnjms wrote: post #27

So in red states porn is being used, and in blue states TikTok and Instagram are being used. Is anyone tracking who is behind the concerted efforts here? For example, which organizations, executives, lobbyists and politicians are valid and responsible parties?

Meta is one of the biggest ones pushing for this, because they don't want to be accountable so these types of laws pass the buck onto the delivery platforms (Apple, Google, other OSes) Meta is then funding/lobbying alongside a bunch of other conservative groups like Heritage Action, and the digital childhood alliance (also made up of a ton of other conservative lobbying groups)

> Separately, and for very different reasons, NetChoice, the trade group that counts companies like Google and Meta among its members, filed testimony opposing the same bill. Its objection was First Amendment law and the risk of exposing sensitive user data, not open source specifically. It’s an odd pairing: a digital rights nonprofit and the lobbying arm for the platforms the bill is supposed to be regulating, arguing against the same bill for opposite reasons. Illinois lawmakers passed it unanimously anyway.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#267

Post by trhway »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #143
bryanlarsen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RedHat/IBM does have an Illinois presence so will likely be compelled to add it to their distro, and will likely do it through systemd. So to avoid it getting into any consumer distro you'd have to ship a patch to remove it from systemd. This is probably all completely irrelevant to StageX since it's a distro designed to be used in containers, AFAICT.

IIRC systemd already started implementing some hooks for age verification API

how would it work in the age of everything virtual, from containers to VMs, even an OS instance running in a browser, with OS/kernels being spanned in sub-seconds and existing even for just one call with no user interaction. Are they going to inherit age bracket from supervisor/parent process? Which of course wouldn't work for AWS/GCP, and many other cases. It looks to me like it would require something similar to security labels implementation.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#268

Post by ibejoeb »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #70
skinfaxi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It started with showing ID at airports and now we have to take off our shoes. Slippery slope is the actual modus operandi of government.

That argument might work better if just recently we no longer have to take off our shoes.

Come on. Now you get face and body scans. That's not better. And when the machine randomly selects you, you take off your shoes anyway, and then they frisk you.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#269

Post by slg »

pwg wrote: post #105
kej wrote: post #58

I feel like all of these laws are being designed backwards. Content providers, like MPAA films, should have to identify what sort of content they are providing. Then I can give my kids a device configured to allow some or all of that at my discretion. Requiring my kids' devices to advertise their age (or their age "bucket", as if that was a meaningful difference) to protect them is not doing me or my kids any favors.

> Content providers, like MPAA films, should have to identify what sort of content they are providing. Then I can give my kids a device configured to allow some or all of that at my discretion. If the intent were to actually protect children, then this would be what was done. "Protect the children" is just a subterfuge to get electorate support for voting for the foundation for a "1984 thought crime" style monitoring…

Do folks realize how many people would need to be a part of this conspiracy to get these laws passed at the state level? Maybe some people actually want to do good and are just misguided. And responding to those people as if they are evil government stooges certainly isn’t going to help them find the light.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#270

Post by lrvick »

dooglius wrote: post #227
JoshTriplett wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will never show fear "never show fear" and "never engage intelligence" are two different things. Understand what people will do in response to your actions, and act accordingly to achieve the outcomes you want. Please by all means fight the law, and do so intelligently in a way that will actually help.

Can you be specific in how you think he is behaving unintelligently, and what you think that people will do in response to his actions?

No one is asking me to add code to stagex right now, so there is no actual legal situation I am in.

I am not even an owner of the project, I founded the project, but am now just one of many volunteer contributors. Are they going to mandate wikipedia volunteers alter pages to state guidelines as well?

We must not be afraid of stuff like this. It is blatant overreach I do not expect would stand legal challenge.

I am simply saying I would refuse to write code I do not want to write. I am honestly surprised people think this is such a scary thing to say.

The point of saying this publicly is not in order to harm or help my own defense of a court order from another state I will probably get.

It is to signal to legislators that if they decide to take this fight, it will be done with people not afraid to do it all in public to establish public trust. It is not even okay that people -think- it is possible for our FOSS projects to be altered or backdoored by any random state officials.

What next, asking Torvalds to add KYC to the kernel?

Post reply on HN