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

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

#491

Post by voakbasda »

otterley wrote: post #430
DennisP wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't claim it's a magic unassailable defense. I claimed, contrary to the previous comment, that it's a valid defense. Maybe the courts will carve out a new exception for some particular type of code, maybe they won't, but what they certainly won't do is laugh at you for defending your code on free speech grounds. Just because a legislature passes a law doesn't mean the courts will agree that the law is valid unde…

This may be a matter of semantics. To me, a “valid defense” is a defense that always prevails—for example, that truth is a defense to a defamation claim in U.S. law. The rest, I call “possible defenses.” Another possible definition, one you may have meant, is that there's a set of "invalid defenses" that could not possibly work, and the remainder are "valid" even if they might not prevail.

The courts are not deterministic. There will never be a universally valid defense, because crimes are not fungible. There can always be circumstances that change how the facts are interpreted.

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

#492

Post by kube-system »

DennisP wrote: post #425
otterley wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Junger v. Daley held that source code is speech for the purpose of First Amendment analysis in the Sixth Circuit. (The question has not yet been presented to the Supreme Court.) But the inquiry doesn't stop there. First Amendment jurisprudence doesn't stop at asking the question "is this speech?". That's just a threshold question. If the answer is "no," then the case is analyzed one way. If the answer is "yes,"…

I didn't claim it's a magic unassailable defense. I claimed, contrary to the previous comment, that it's a valid defense. Maybe the courts will carve out a new exception for some particular type of code, maybe they won't, but what they certainly won't do is laugh at you for defending your code on free speech grounds. Just because a legislature passes a law doesn't mean the courts will agree that the law is valid unde…

> And the bar for compelling any particular speech is generally quite high. Apple could not be compelled to put a backdoor in an iPhone, even though the suspect was the San Bernardino shooter, and this did not result in Apple losing their ability to sell iPhones. The courts may well hold that you can't compel a Linux distro to implement a particular feature either.

That's an entirely different situation because Apple couldn't have complied with silence. A product compliance requirment doesn't typically count as compelled speech because you can comply with silence.

For instance, COPPA is a very similar law, and it is not compelled speech, because nobody is forcing you to write software that checks if users are 13 or older. You can comply with COPPA by simply not writing software that collects data from users that are under 13. You are not being compelled because you literally have the option not to do it.

That is exactly the same in this case.

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

#493

Post by kube-system »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #487
kube-system wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s always been the case for things distributed on the internet. It’s irrelevant in terms of evaluating one’s personal compliance with the law.

> It’s irrelevant in terms of evaluating one’s personal compliance with the law. That's precisely what I discussed: the case where this person fully complies and ceases distribution (but the distro doesn't cease being distributed by others).

So what? That's how all laws work. What if I don't rob my local convenience store, but someone else does?

Don't make the mistake of logically getting caught up on the idea of laws "preventing crime". They never have, and they never will. The deter crime by providing for penalties when someone breaks the law.

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

#494

Post by kube-system »

hellojesus wrote: post #455
kube-system wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

What is this bill blocking that kids want so bad that they'd go through the trouble to do that... and lose blue bubbles with their friends?

The ability to receive specifically unsolicited DMs from adult strangers?

Opting in to behavioral tracking?

This bill doesn't block social media for kids... I expect their response to be simply that they keep using social media on their phone the way they already do.

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

#495

Post by otterley »

lrvick wrote: post #466
otterley wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 recen…

Totally reasonable take for a pragmatic career lawyer. But I am not a lawyer or a politician and I could not care less if I lose political points with people trying to exert control over the function of software on peoples private devices under some obviously bullshit "save the children" narrative. I am an active FOSS maintainer who wishes to protect the privacy, security, and sovereignty of users of community owned…

> But I am not a lawyer or a politician

Neither is Prof. Bernstein. The observation is not oriented to lawyers or politicians; it is oriented towards how to succeed when judges and politicians make the rules.

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

#497

Post by Groxx »

genewitch wrote: post #446
Groxx wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone chose "most recent" when implementing "most recent", and then that decision automatically controls what is shown next. They could have chosen "most recently liked" or "most liked" or "minimum MD5 checksum" or "alphabetical" or "most liked in past 24h" or "likes / hours * followers / followee_ratio * poster_birthdate_days_diff(admin_birthday) * tfidf_rank_matching_books_published_in_1885" - all of those would…

oh, you're a pedant and didn't read what i wrote at all, so i will confer the exact same respect for your thoughts.

Or I just disagree with your premise (there are lots of Bad Influences from chronological sort, and I'm far from the only person who considers it "an algorithm" in the social media sense because of that), and you're looking for reasons to dismiss things you disagree with.

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

#498

Post by thewebguyd »

shevy-java wrote: post #470
thewebguyd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I have read this before, and while I do not disagree, I am about 100% convinced that this is NOT confined to merely facebook doing bribes. The reason I say this is because you can see many different countries all becoming victim to age sniffing. While in theory a single huge corporation could do that, I am pretty certain that this is NOT only facebook pulling the money-string here.

Oh yeah, of course Meta isn't the only one pushing for it, they are just one of the largest contributors in support of these legislations, generally. More specifically, it's governments coming up with these laws. Meta's lobbying is trying to make sure the laws stay focused on the app store's & OSes, rather than requiring social media and individual websites/services doing the age gating. Facebook does not want to police itself or its content.

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

#499

Post by gh02t »

genewitch wrote: post #212
LPisGood wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m unfamiliar with systemd’s haters or why this would give them a valid point. Could you please elaborate?

systemd is a massive blob of code that infects every part of a system and all of its subsystems. It completely changed the way system administration was done, the way init scripts work, and added tons of things to init that some argue aren't necessary, like dhcp and DNS. Newer linux folks like it because they're used to it, people who don't like it use devuan, gentoo, or one of the others that still lets one use open…

> Newer linux folks like it because they're used to it, people who don't like it use devuan, gentoo, or one of the others that still lets one use openRC or whatever else.

This is a bad generalization. Counterpoint, I've been using Linux as a daily driver for like 25 years now (and have also used other Unixes/likes fairly extensively). I have my gripes with systemd, but I personally prefer to use it over OpenRC etc. I don't think I'm alone, either, as distros like Devuan are pretty far down on usage lists. There are plenty of Greybeards out there who dislike systemd enough to use something else, but I suspect there are at least as many out there who like it or don't care enough to use an alternative.

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

#500

Post by otterley »

iamnothere wrote: post #486
lrvick wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who needs to dox me? I am a using my legal name on here and am super easy to look up. This law is stupid and I gleefully and openly mock it and those that think it is enforceable under my well known public identity. No one should take these unenforceable overreaches seriously. People will be jailed for not putting age verification code in software as soon as they will for piracy, or owning a 3D printer without gun-de…

Historically, mockery is also the best weapon against authoritarianism. It demonstrates that the state can’t control every aspect of citizens’ lives, especially their beliefs and attitudes. And if the state attempts to exert control, the mockery can be moved towards the subtle, forcing ever-more ridiculous actions like banning people from holding blank sheets of paper (China, UK). This demonstrates weakness, which en…

Historically, armed conflict has proved to be the best weapon against authoritarianism, not mere mockery. The American Colonies had to fight a war to gain independence from Britain. The Third Reich was defeated by Allied soldiers. The Japanese emperor was defeated by nuclear bombs. Dictators in Algeria, Cuba, Vietnam, Angola and Mozambique, and Libya were all toppled by armed uprisings--the list goes on.

The "blank paper protests" might have been effective at persuading the Chinese government to undo some measures, but that government is no less authoritarian and repressive than it ever was.

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