741–750 of 768 posts
"For the purpose of....covered application stores." I'd like to see that definition. My OS doesn't have an "application store", so I doubt it's impacted by this law.
"For the purpose of....covered application stores." I'd like to see that definition. My OS doesn't have an "application store", so I doubt it's impacted by this law.
I believe that if you have a network stack and can download files from the internet--which would include software--that it counts. I don't want to re-read to find the part, but they seemed to imply that any system where you could download software from the internet and then run it.
> “Covered application store” means a publicly available internet website, software application, online service, or platform that distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing that can access a covered application store or can download an application.
To whittle down the the important part:
> “Covered application store” means > any [...] general purpose computing that can access a covered application store or can download an application
If you have a network stack, you can 100% connect to a "covered application store" and thus the OS falls under the scope of the law.
I figured California would have been against the age verification on the adult sites like Texas and some other states are doing but then they go and 1UP them and decide to require age verification on the whole OS
This is a weak read of the situation. I’d sure as fuck rather enter a date of birth or age profile on my computer than send my photo id to random websites to verify my age. One is clearly better from a privacy standpoint.
How is this an OS concern? Shouldn't age verification be a government concern to implement a system which does a privacy preserving verification? And until such a system exists, there should be no laws about online verification at all?
Why would a government be interested in "privacy preserving"? Their goal is the exact opposite.
(Local variations can exist)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That may not be the intent, but it seems like it would still apply. Many of the “app stores” on Linux are just front ends for the package manager in some way. I assume the people behind this don’t know things like apt or dnf exist, so it likely wasn’t considered.
There are a large number of things that the people behind this don't know about. That doesn't mean that they screwed up. It means that the law does not apply to those things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As others have pointed out, this is just a foot in the door. There's also a part of the law this article doesn't cover that requires EVERY application to query this information on every launch, regardless of whether or not the application has any age related limitations.
The term "application" is explicitly defined in the bill and has a far narrower scope than just the word "application" on it's own means.
> (c) “Application” means a software application that may be run or directed by a user on a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device that can access a covered application store or download an application.
If your device can connect to a covered application store, every application on your computer must follow this.
I've taken trips to California in the past for both personal and professional reasons. I'm seriously reconsidering whether I'll do that again in the future. What happens if I bring a laptop with an "illegal" OS without this unwanted "feature" into the state? Will I be denied access to public wifi in hotels and restaurants? Or will it grant me access, but snitch on me -- make a call to the state police to come deal wi…
This law only applies to people distributing an operating system. It has nothing to do with what you personally use.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So if you dutifully input valid ages for your computer users, now any groomer with a website or an app can find out who's a kid and who isn't. You just put a target on your kid's back. I'm not going to say that's impossible but the number of sites that do the right thing and reduce risk are going to vastly outnumber that. And 90% of those kids already have targets on their backs by virtue of the sites they visit.
What risk exists from sites that are doing to do the right thing? This smells strongly of I just made it harder for those that do the right thing and did nothing to solve any problem.
To be clear, I'm talking about sites for adults that are doing their best right now, but have no idea who is 18 and who is 8. If they have communication between users, it's not set up to be filtered and moderated in a way that protects an 8 year old. If they could cut out a big majority of 8 year olds with the flip of a switch, that would be a good thing.
That's a lot of risk that exists right now and could be reduced.
> This smells strongly of I just made it harder for those that do the right thing and did nothing to solve any problem.
There is no meaningful difficulty in storing two bytes of extra data on the OS account and turning it into a two bit flag that programs can access and pass on to websites. And for most websites that let users communicate it makes their job a lot easier, even if the flag isn't always right.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least they did not invent cookie banners.
Yeah, the commercial firms invented them all on their own just to keep tracking customers and oversharing whatever data they gather with random third parties while still getting to complain about stupid laws that require them to do so [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46521179