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Store birth date in systemd for age verification

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Re: Store birth date in systemd for age verification

#71

Post by wpm »

bitwize wrote: post #20
miohtama wrote: post #2

This should be the time for open-source developers to use their common sense to decide whether we should push back. If California wants to create its own Protect the children operating system, it should bear the cost and responsibility for this alone, and not export any of the sketchy political agenda to the wider open source community.

It's the law. If you live in the United States, and a minor in California uses your OS that didn't check age, you could be liable for up to $2500 per occurrence. That can add up quickly if California schoolkids discover your OS does an end run around the law. When ruin is the alternative, compliance becomes non-negotiable.

Except systemd isn't an OS. xdg-desktop-portal is not an OS. None of these projects need to flop over and acquiesce to this overreach.

Re: Store birth date in systemd for age verification

#72

Post by wpm »

tylerritchie wrote: post #43
dirtikiti wrote: post #37

"protecting" children by providing specific ages to data harvesters. as per usual, liberal policy doing the exact opposite thing they claim it does.

for the california legislation there were no "nay" votes. it's disapointing this performatively protective stance permeates both dominant right-of-global-center parties in America, but it is "all of them"

Well yeah: Meta wrote the bill, Meta greases palms in their home state, Meta gets their bill unanimously passed.

Re: Store birth date in systemd for age verification

#73

Post by jmclnx »

coldacid wrote: post #68
jmclnx wrote: post #32

Interesting solution and I really expected systemd would be were this age validation would be placed if distros what it. But if this becomes a thing in Linux for the distro I use (doubtful), I will abandon Linux after 30+ years. I am rather confident OpenBSD will ignore this law and I expect other BSDs will to. If not, back to DOS :) Note, I have a BSD on a coupld of old laptops for testing reasons. I test what I wri…

You can always use a distro that doesn't use systemd or roll your own. Sure you lose the GNOME desktop environment, but if you ask me that's a net positive.

I agree, but this could be an issue with all distros based in the US. From my reading of these laws, I think the CA or NY or IL law could easily morph into a US National Law. So all US based distros may need to do something.

I saw an article that supporting these laws could cost a distro maintainer up to 10000 USD per year. Sadly I lost the link, but the article made a lot of sense to me. So, many small distos cannot afford even 1000/year, I think this law could kill almost all small Linux distros. That will probably leave only RHEL, SUSE and Ubuntu, maybe Debian, but they would need funds donated to them from Ubuntu.

If the distro is in another country like OpenBSD, they could just ignore the law(s). That of course assumes the "other" country does not replicate what is happening in the US.

Right now I am hoping these laws are declared unconstitutional, but to be honest, with support by companies like meta and twitter, I expect we will see a national law sometime in 2027.

So in the US, we could be looking at locked down OS, unless you want to break "the law".

Re: Store birth date in systemd for age verification

#74

Post by iamnothere »

jmclnx wrote: post #73
coldacid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always use a distro that doesn't use systemd or roll your own. Sure you lose the GNOME desktop environment, but if you ask me that's a net positive.

I agree, but this could be an issue with all distros based in the US. From my reading of these laws, I think the CA or NY or IL law could easily morph into a US National Law. So all US based distros may need to do something. I saw an article that supporting these laws could cost a distro maintainer up to 10000 USD per year. Sadly I lost the link, but the article made a lot of sense to me. So, many small distos cannot…

I also recommend looking into Radicle, which can be used to develop git-based projects (including issues etc) in a distributed manner. It even works over Tor. In the future development of truly free software may become more risky.

Re: Store birth date in systemd for age verification

#75

Post by ameixaseca »

From the pull request:

> Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.

The Brazilian law does NOT require this. This is a misconception, and likely based on an understanding of California's law being extrapolated to the Brazilian law.

They are almost complete opposites.

The Brazilian law (Lei 15.211/2025) puts the burden of age verification on *providers* of web platforms, app stores, or dumb terminals. Not on operational systems.

It also mentions "reasonable measurements" - which vary according to the type of content, platform, etc - and which are much less strict that anything written in California's or UK's laws regarding the same subject. It is far more based on individual risk assessment and purpose of the platforms themselves.

In all fairness, the Brazilian law is the most friendly to open source and the status quo. Even though I'm also worried about the long term results of this legislation, I'm somewhat relieved by the way it turned out.

Re: Store birth date in systemd for age verification

#76

Post by bitwize »

ameixaseca wrote: post #75

From the pull request: > Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. The Brazilian law does NOT require this. This is a misconception, and likely based on an understanding of California's law being extrapolated to the Brazilian law. They are almost complete opposites. The Brazilian law (Lei 15.211/2025) puts…

I'm not sure how you would translate sistemas operacionais de terminais which is covered by the law, but to me it reads "terminal operating systems". If a terminal has its own OS, it is probably not "dumb" in any meaningful sense, and no one really uses terminals anyway except for retro enthusiasts. Even people still using, like, VM/MVS on a mainframe are connecting via a PC running a 3270 emulator.

Lei № 12.965 (2014) defines a terminal (which applies in Lei 15.211) as any internet-connected computer or device.

Re: Store birth date in systemd for age verification

#79

Post by wolvoleo »

lyu07282 wrote: post #53
mzajc wrote: post #9

Tangentially related, but does anyone know what Poettering's "cryptographically verifiable integrity" endeavor[0] is about yet? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572

I assume all along that trusted computing is where this age verification stuff is planned to lead to eventually: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing#Criticism

Trusted is such a misnomer. I would trust my computer a lot less if it would answer to them.

Re: Store birth date in systemd for age verification

#80

Post by wolvoleo »

treesknees wrote: post #30
zeratax wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is no verification happening though

Because systemd isn’t an operating system. It’s just providing a mechanism for the OS to store/lookup the user’s birthday. It’s up to individual distros to do the verification (should the law stand and OS vendors choose to comply)

True but I'm very much opposed to building the underpinnings for this stuff. If you build it they will use it.
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