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

451–460 of 529 posts

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

#451

Post by otterley »

DennisP wrote: post #435
otterley wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all! I think these laws are dumb and I don't want my state to pass one. But when I play, I play to win. Openly thumbing one's nose at the courts and the state is rarely a winning strategy. The way to win is through the democratic process: persuading elected officials to take your side. That, in turn, requires persuading the public to take your side.

On the contrary, civil disobedience involves openly thumbing your nose at the state, and it has a long history of successes. Going to the courts instead of the legislature is another strategy that often wins. This is how Bernstein ended export restrictions on cryptography, by suing the government on constitutional grounds rather than trying to persuade legislators.

1. Civil disobedience has worked when the timing and circumstances are right, and there is a just cause and clear pattern of oppression that engages the sympathies of a broad swath of people. That is rare. Most of the time, civil disobedience has been ineffective. Remember Occupy Wall Street? Black Lives Matter? The violence that coincided with them was a major turn-off for most Americans. About the only one in recent memory that was successful was gay rights, and even that was a result of evolving social mores and media portrayal, not disobedience. It required a tremendous amount of patience: the Stonewall uprising was in 1969; All in the Family had TV's first portray of an openly gay character in 1971; and the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized gay marriage was in 2015--46 years after Stonewall--and even that was a 5-4 decision.

2. Openly thumbing your nose at the law is not going to serve you well in court. What did Prof. Bernstein do when he was threatened with legal sanctions? He lawyered up and took his counsel's advice. His communications throughout the process remained factual and respectful even though his disagreement was clear. He did not go onto Hacker News and prejudice himself by saying things like "Illinois legislators can eat shit" and "I dare someone to try to take me to court over this." He was patient, let his lawyers do the talking, and did not get the judge pissed off at him.

Civil disobedience, as with the legislative and judicial processes, works through the power of persuasion. If you fail to persuade, your mission fails.

These processes involve emotional and imperfect people, not deterministic logical machines, and success ultimately requires making them happy (or at least not making enemies out of them). The system might not work, but you have to work the system.

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

#452

Post by otterley »

iamnothere wrote: post #429
otterley wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I see you’ve moved on to personal attacks, failing the “friendly advice” angle.

"Don't be an Internet Tough Guy" is among my friendly advice. People can see right through it, and it often works against you.

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

#453

Post by twothreeone »

RealWed5 wrote: post #379
twothreeone wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 189 active legislative bodies to choose from; it's hard to imagine, but yes in the worst case they all fall in lockstep on this issue and none of them provide this kind of freedom. The obvious next step is to buy a remote island (better yet: some foreign body in Space) and form "Freedom (tm) Republic".

Remember that "pirate" guy buying an oil rig and building "freedom" crypto / torrent "country" there, with Datacenter running on the rig? That did not end well. Another case is Kim DotCom. And just look at the "success" of UK's freedom. TBH, we all are f...d.

Yeah. This is basically why we need to "accelerate"..

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

#454

Post by blurbleblurble »

otterley wrote: post #404
iamnothere wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, fine, but what you fail to recognize that taking a loud public stance against tyranny provides cover for people who are too scared to stand up for their beliefs. Successful civil rights activism took place in an environment where people were being arrested, beaten, and even killed for standing up for what is right. You could even argue that this created fertile ground for the success of the movement. Failures of…

Comparing the "oppression" of a programmer who is forbidden from distributing an OS that fails to ask the user's age to the actual suffering of Black people in the U.S., who were regularly discriminated against and even lynched, is ridiculous. You'll never persuade ordinary people of this, that way.

Since when was surveillance disconnected from civil rights? Since never.

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

#455

Post by hellojesus »

kube-system wrote: post #376
taneq wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work with data on a server outside of the jurisdiction, that’s freely available to download and re-upload? The ‘local legal presence’ thing might work, but then what if they only distribute it on (say) a thumb drive, sent outside the jurisdiction, which is then uploaded by a third party? This whole thing seems unenforceable (or worse, arbitrarily enforceable).

A court will care about what you do in the jurisdictions where it has power over you. What anyone else does is their problem, not yours. Some oddball Linux distro really has no relevance to the larger picture that lawmakers are trying to accomplish though. The vast majority of kids are using iphone/android/mac/chromebook/windows. Basically zero are using esoteric container images to access TikTok.

But wouldn't this type of law drive youth to using more exotic distributions to get around the issue? It's not far fetched to think that kids will just live boot from tails or another distro to visit socials and circumvent this rule. Plus with unlocked pixel bootloaders it would be trivial for them to petition their parents for a pixel, hard reset it, unlock the bootloader, install grapheneos via the web installer, and then be on their way. If parents don't know how to monitor their kids I doubt they'll notice grapheneos not being base android.

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

#457

Post by hellojesus »

wtallis wrote: post #370
EvanAnderson wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The adtech companies need human verification so they can keep selling ads. Age verification is a way to get that under the radar because normal people are pissed off about "the children" and "the social media". You've also got cultural warriors who would love to censor speech on the Internet championing it, too.

This kind of age signalling with no verification whatsoever does not help the adtech companies at all.

This is step one. The next step is to say that it's not working and we need hardware attlestation or some such nonsense.

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

#458

Post by hnlmorg »

iamnothere wrote: post #437
lrvick wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least one person understands my intentions. You made my day.

There are more of us than it appears, but we usually don’t speak out. Thanks for making a stand.

We get their intentions. We just disagree with the effectiveness of it.

Posting rhetoric on an anonymous message board is not making a stand. If and when they’re doxxed by US media outlets, and slapped with life-changing court orders, with their work and families directly affected by their decisions; then they’re making a stand. But until that point, their words are as meaningless as their view of this law.

Eg I can confidently say I’m not going to comply with this law either. But you have no reason to assume that will make any difference nor that I wouldn’t fold the moment I’m put under the slightest amount of pressure.

If people really wanted to make a stand then they’d be drumming up support in real life, not anonymously. They’d be speaking to government representatives. They’d be raising financial support for lobbying change.

I’m old enough to have lived through multiple iterations of unpleasant laws being passed and each time a movement against it has been online-only, that protest has achieved nothing. So I know the real reason this maintainer is speaking as boldly as they are is because they know the government hasn’t heard of them nor their distro. Ie it’s a “making a stand” by doing exactly nothing. But it will also achieve exactly nothing too.

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

#459

Post by otterley »

DennisP wrote: post #428
kube-system wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, then let me rephrase: > If "free speech" was a valid defense to any legal compliance laws that affect software, then any software company would raise this defense this rather than comply.

And in fact, Apple in 2016 went to court rather than comply with the government's order to put a backdoor in the iPhone, and they argued their case in part on free speech grounds. Whether other companies do the same depends on what they consider the most profitable path, including legal fees and risk.

Don’t read too much into the Apple case. There was no precedent set by that. The FBI withdrew their demands after they found a different mechanism to obtain what they needed.
Post reply on HN