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

California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 525 posts

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#41

Post by big85 »

cortesoft wrote: post #8

As a dad of two younger kids (7 and 10), I have been incredibly frustrated with the way age restrictions are handled across various services. Really, my main complaint comes down to: I completely disagree with what these services choose to restrict for kids and what they allow. They block my kids from doing things I have no problem with them doing and they allow things I would never want my kids to do in 1000 years.…

> I don’t want someone else choosing how I control what my kids do. Give me tools to control it myself

I agree. Parental controls have been the norm for thirty years. The adult who owns the device should have control over it, not Microsoft or California.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#42

Post by delusional »

Bender wrote: post #3

The only device mandates that should be taking place is for the default installations of web clients should be checking to see if parental controls are enabled. This only impacts the major browsers. An intern at each browser company could add this check in minutes. If they are enabled and the person logged in is on a regular account (not admin or power user of sorts) then the base installation of web clients must che…

A) Aren't you targeting a completely different problem than this law? It's my understanding that this law targets the collection of the age from the user. What the user agent does with that signal is a different problem, and seems to already be solved, except for the definition of "actual knowledge" which they are trying to establish here.

B) How would your RTA header intersect with content rating in different jurisdictions? What if the content is illegal for children in Turkey but legal for children in Kentucky?

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#43

Post by salawat »

pessimizer wrote: post #17
Bender wrote: post #3

The only device mandates that should be taking place is for the default installations of web clients should be checking to see if parental controls are enabled. This only impacts the major browsers. An intern at each browser company could add this check in minutes. If they are enabled and the person logged in is on a regular account (not admin or power user of sorts) then the base installation of web clients must che…

Absolutely trivial and totally comprehensive solution, enabling adult content blocking at the account level, device level, network level, and the ISP level. Could even be expanded to any sort of content blocking, if you want to allow households to restrict access to vaccine critique or criticism of the king without violating the First Amendment or rooting everyone's devices. The problem is that the point is to root e…

No. That requires information disclosure to a third party. The point is enabling device admins better control over local device behavior. We're trying to keep conscientious parents able to do their thing. Not further enable the ability to manage the populace with official registries. If a kid can figure out how to install their own OS without their parent's help, odds are the kid is with it enough to start dipping their toes in the deep end. Or at least until they out themselves in front of their parents. In that case though it's a home problem, not a rest of the Internet problem.

It's still a stupid unconstitutional law, but I see what the aim is, even without strawmanning it.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#44

Post by TylerE »

trollbridge wrote: post #4
kgwxd wrote: post #2

No, not exemptions! Drop the stupid-ass law all together.

Kind of interesting - basically exempts any OS that’s under an MIT or GPL licence… … doesn’t that excuse Android and possibly XNU, too?

No, Android is Apache 2.0.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#45

Post by pwg »

neilv wrote: post #32

Who is actually writing this very concerning California Internet legislation, which will ultimately affect the entire nation and world? Did someone write California Internet legislation without consulting any California Internet companies? Did some California Internet companies write California Internet legislation? Did some other party write California Internet legislation?

If you go take a read through the CA bill text that "became law", you'll quickly realize that whomever did write it must live in a very narrow bubble where the only "computers" that exist in the world are tablet style cell phones, the only OS'es that exist in the world are Android and iOS, and the only way anyone installs any software on the only computers that exist is via an "app store".

Meanwhile, while the overall writing clearly indicates the author has a very narrow view of "computers", the definitions of the terms is so broad that every computer, even the tiny embedded CPU in your microwave oven, might just need to ask your age before it allows you to do anything.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#46

Post by zarzavat »

zeroCalories wrote: post #22

[flagged]

Young children should be supervised when they access the internet.

Adolescents are not going to be defeated by such easily bypassed technical measures.

These laws are a trojan horse for control of the adult population. The relative anonymity and freedom of the internet is a threat to those who spend their lives seeking power over others.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#48

Post by big85 »

zeroCalories wrote: post #22

[flagged]

A better question - how do you imagine age verification is going to protect children from being groomed? Age verification will force services to assume everyone is a child until proven otherwise. Now it will be harder to tell adults and children apart online. Next, adult content will be harder for adults to acquire, pushing people into black markets, where illegal content will be easier to find.

I appreciate that people are concerned for their children, but we can't keep signing away basic rights and freedoms just to allay parents' anxiety for another few years.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#50

Post by cucumber3732842 »

zarzavat wrote: post #30

A cynical person might suspect that the reason they are doing this is so that Linux developers don't have standing to challenge the law on 1st amendment grounds...

Nah, you're not cynical enough.

This is the classic "what we're trying to do is bullshit on a fundamental level so we're gonna just exempt random things until it becomes a niche issue and we can just do what we want and from there we'll just close all those exceptions over time" move.

Give it 5yr and you'll have idiots in the comments talking about how the "linux loophole" was a mistake and should be closed.

Source: history

Post reply on HN