Since people aren’t reading the article and the headline is misleading. The law requires:
- The OS ask the user their date of birth on account creation (kinda like the Steam date of birth prompts)
- The OS provide an API that returns which of four age brackets the user fits in
- Companies notified by the OS that the user is under age may be liable
It was explicitly written by the authors not to mandate ID or facial recognition checks. You can lie about your date of birth. This basically creates a standard set of parental controls for parents configuring kids devices.
I think that this might actually help with the whole discord facial recognition issue in places other than the UK by allowing them to offload the issue to parents setting up devices rather than collecting kids biometrics.
Yeah I think this is pretty reasonable. If parents set their kids up on adult accounts that’s on them.
its impossible to enforce. ca suck
No matter how hard they try, you can’t legislate parenting.
That would be a completely unworkable law since devices may not even have internet connectivity, or a user interface. And even if they did, it would have a chilling effect on software development in California.
I deploy dozens of servers at once using automated systems. How old am I supposed to pretend each box is?
The headline is misleading. They are only required to ask how old you are and are not required to verify you aren’t lying
Even if they could enforce it which I highly doubt, this law is clearly a “Fuck you and your free software”.
Like if a “too young” user have the skills to update the OS to change or even remove the age verification, who will be responsible? Yeah I don’t know either, but both will be bad.
I mean, they could already just lie about their age like kids have been doing since the existence of adult websites. Even the facial rec stuff is easily fooled by a video game model. Just has to be able to be manipulated so you can do the head turns or whatever they ask of now.
You guys are asking the wrong questions.
How is Linux going to do this? There’s no server for the os to send the information to report the age of its users, no way of forcing its user base to comply and no single person or entity to fine, arrest or otherwise force into compliance.
They made a law they cannot enforce.
How is Linux going to do this? There’s no server for the os to send the information to report the age of its users
The law doesn’t require sending the data anywhere, so that’s not a problem.
no way of forcing its user base to comply and no single person or entity to fine, arrest or otherwise force into compliance.
The law doesn’t require anything of users, it requires something of OS providers. OS providers have addresses and entities to fine.
The law doesn’t require anything of users, it requires something of OS providers.
For a FOSS OS, any user with root access would be considered an “OS Provider” under the definitions provided in this law. With FOSS, there is no real distinction between “user” and “developer”.
You are right, it just says whoever “controls the OS”, which is very vague. Even without going to open source, a user still controls the OS even on Windows or macOS. To a lesser degree of course, but in the same way a driver controls a car even if they can’t or won’t try to modify it.
The windows user uses the OS. The windows user does not control the OS. They only have access to the functions that Microsoft has provided. The Attorney General of California won’t be able to argue that the sysadmin is the OS Provider of a Windows installation. The OS Provider of Windows is Microsoft.
The Attorney General of California would easily be able to argue that the OS Provider of a particular Linux instance is the sysadmin of that instance.
They only have access to the functions that Microsoft has provided.
And a user of Ubuntu only has access to the functions that Canonical has provided.
Unless they have root access and modify the OS. Or they have administrator access on Windows and modify the OS. Which is the case for both by default. I don’t really see the distinction. There is clearly a provider company behind both, and in both cases the user could add this age check functionality by themselves by installing an utility that provides it.
And a user of Ubuntu only has access to the functions that Canonical has provided.
That is not at all accurate.
Administrator access to Windows is not at all comparable to root access on Linux. Windows “root” access is held solely by Microsoft, and granted only to Microsoft employees and contractors. They are the only ones with the capability of changing Microsoft’s binary blobs.
Canonical doesn’t restrict root access. Everyone who installs Ubuntu has root access by default.
Suppose Canonical adds this capability to Ubuntu. Suppose I take an Ubuntu install, and remove this capability. Who is the provider of the resulting OS, Canonical, or me? Obviously, I am responsible for the changes; I am obviously the OS Provider in this scenario. What I am saying is that I was the OS provider before I made the changes. For FOSS software, the end user fits the OS Provider definition that California creates with this law.
What does the comparability of root/admin access change in this situation?
Suppose Microsoft adds this capability to Windows, and you edit the registry to disable it. How is that any different?
I can see the argument for something like iOS. But on Windows you would be able to add or remove such functionality. What is the difference that makes the user the OS Provider on Ubuntu but not on Windows, in your eyes?
Let’s say you own a computer store in California, you sell Windows laptops, and you setup your preinstalled Windows image with the registry edit made, because customers don’t like the silly age prompt. How are you not the OS Provider?
Which is why we all should aspire to join linux, and reject newsome and other greasy california politicians cynically playing us for the billionaires.
What if banning Linux is part of the Agenda? And what will they do for the servers? I am declaring my pc a server as of right now…
How do you want to do this? Linux is a kernel the world relies on. It powers your car, your fridge, your satellite, your phone, the entire Internet, the army, etc. Nothing comes close to Linux in market share. The distros are built upon the kernel. System76 may have to comply, but the other maintainers don’t give a flying fuck. They could even write a small line somewhere on their repo that says “this distro is not allowed in California” and call it a day.
From what I understood, it’s a requirement for a local API (for apps to use) and could be implemented during user creation.
It will be a slippery slope and IANAL, just my interpretation.
Our president is fucking children, and you’re telling me I gotta verify my date of birth to run Linux, in the name of “Protecting the Children”?
Get the fuck outta here.
They’ve gotta know if you’re fuckable.
You’re antifa if you run Linux anyway.
I would like to think I’m antifa no matter what I run.
What are you if you run Mac Os then? Dyslexic Autistic Vegan Attack Helicopter.
A mark.
Is this only for Californians? Only Americans? Or everywhere?
The Californian law only affects California.
Individual OS vendors might decide to implement it in a way that affects other places as well, e.g. in the past, Valve decided they’d rather not implement age verification for Germany and just stopped selling all porn / super violent games in Germany. Maybe they’ll now implement it for Germany and California.
Couldn’t they make it locationally dependent?
Then they would need to know where you are as well.
That’s not an issue, IP addresses allow localization to some degree
Probably only Californians. Or at least IPs out of California.
For example, PornHub (Canadian company) is completely open to me, being Canadian. But if my VPN puts me in a state that has banned porn (Virginia for example), the site don’t let me on.
I’m sure it’s much like that. If you are in California or your IP is based out of it, the OS will require age verification.
Ah, I see. Not too worried about this then
It only made sense to the clueless fuckhead politicans.
No doubt in response to Europe making its choice for software open source. Expect targeted attacks on FOSS to increase
How the hell are they going to enforce this?
My birthday is 01.01.0001
01.01.1970
Greetings Jesus!
microslop and or palintir stink all over this, mroe than likely its the latter.
Microslop was created by a pedo
The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age, setting AB 1043 apart from similar laws passed in Texas and Utah that require “commercially reasonable” verification methods, such as government-issued ID checks.
What even is the point of this then? To make shitty parents feel better?
The point of it is actually the exact opposite. With this law the parent would set the age of their child. And if they decide to lie and their child is affected then they could be fined.
The other thing it does is if a platform decides to ignore the age range of a user and it affects a child then they could be fined. But as long as they do best effort then it really only affects the parents.
It also prevent platforms from requesting additional ID verification unless they have confidence that the age bracket of that user is incorrect.
The ONLY way this is even remotely OK is if the OS is set to 18+ all other age verification laws are satisfied and I don’t have to provide even more intrusive information to random companies.
There is absolutely no reason for an OS to know a users age. At this point it is certain that they can escalate this into including gender or even race.
The children or even the teens have no meaning in this law - they are simply used as sugarcoating for the cyanide pill that’s aimed at the populace.
I agree until this law there was no reason for my os to know my age. This law creates that reason.
Any law can be bad if we take into account the imagined future possibilities. Should we outlaw electricity because it might be used in some way to make nukes?
If lawmakers try to issue further requirements for ID or facial scans then we can fight that. But until then there is nothing in this law that affects me outside of needing to enter a number less than 2005 when I setup my OS.
If you don’t have any kids then you literally can’t be fined under this law.
Should we outlaw electricity because it might be used in some way to make nukes?
No, because there are lots of good uses for electricity. What is the good use of this bill?
It prevents apps from asking for additional ID verification. I’d rather my os ask me for a number I am able to lie about than to have to send my ID to 30 different apps and data aggregators.
Many people say that we should put more responsibility on the parents for what their kids are allowed to do online. This law does that.
If your code is installed on a general purpose computing device that is provided to a child, you can be fined.
If you provide code to the general public without requesting an age signal from the receiver’s OS, you can be fined.
The attorney general of California might consider the JavaScript in your web page to be “content”. They might consider it to be an “application”. There is no clear distinction. If you request an age signal before providing content, you can be fined. If you fail to request an age signal before providing an application, you can be fined.
The more I read about this law, the less I think it will actually go into effect. It’s going to face a whole series of injunctions. The lawyers are going to bill thousands of hours, but the whole thing is going to be scrapped.
Sell data. profile people more accurately.
Moving towards removing anonymity on the internet.
IRL Community is dead in america, They know the only thing we have left to band together on against their Nazi regime is the internet. This is why they are trying to destroy anonymity.
Soon it will be “Linux is for criminals” (like they said with graphene).
Yup. Replacing cash with digital transactions and eliminating anonymity online.
Yep!! All their plan, laid out clear as day. But you’re the crazy person if you bring that up among normies!
OK Newsom, you’ve lost me. I enjoyed your chaotic responses to the drumpf but you’ve officially lost me.
Realize, this has always been him. He is NOT a liberal. He is a conservative who calls himself a democrat.
That’s called a liberal.
Government-mandated age verification stuff on private hardware is basically the opposite of liberal though
Those who call themselves liberal have been doing shit like this for so long that this rank hypocrisy is part of what it means to be liberal.
If liberals don’t like it, they should have had some integrity instead of ridiculing the concept as a “purity test.”
I wouldn’t even say conservative, social fascist who hates poor and trans people.
Yeah, a liberal.
Look up the word neo-liberal. Cause that is what you mean. Continually replying “Yeah, a liberal.”, you sound like a moron.
California! Uber Alles!
Are people finally ignoring his paid PR xitter team? It was annoying when my family bought into that trick. Newsom was always a POS.
Yup, a liberal.
He used to be married to the woman that also used to be Trump Jr.’s fiancé.
He is still overwhelmingly liberal and progressive. Calling him conservative is insane.
He is basically as conservative as you can be here in California while holding a state wide elected position and even that may not be true anymore with how things have shifted since the last governor election. Point is he is generally on the more conservative end of Californian politics, hell I know some Schwarzenegger style conservatives who are more progressive than him.
He’s not even making most of those responses to Trump. His social media manager is doing it. He’s still just another Howard Schultz. “I like the idea of equality as long as rich people don’t have to reduce the rate at which they become richer.”
Yikes
Why not parents responsible for their own goddamn kids? Stop interfering with the rest of our privacy for this bullshit. Parental controls have existed for decades. Fucking use them.
Because this isn’t about parenting or children, it’s about a creeping surveillance state
The new California republic seems to be the only people who see this coming
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.
When I got deployed to Vegas I thought there would be more gambling involved.
… That is literally what this law does.
When a parent creates the account for their child they specify the age. If the parent decides to lie or circumvent the system and it affects their child then they would be fined.
Just to be clear the law itself says absolutely nothing about actually verifying the age.
It also makes it mandatory to include this feature in every OS. It means you’ll be sending telemetry about who you are to anyone that wants it and you don’t have a choice. Fuck that. I don’t have kids, there’s no reason I should have to use an OS with this shit.
The law actually has a specific provision preventing both os providers and developers from sending your information to whoever they want.
And the OS is only allowed to send the minimum information that is required. Ie. your age bracket.
Send only the minimum amount of information necessary to comply with this title and shall not share the digital signal information with a third party for a purpose not required by this title.
Laws don’t prevent anything unless they are enforced. If the bill doesn’t also include how this will all be audited and incredibly harsh penalties for violating it that part might as well be toilet paper. I don’t care how minimal the data I’m sending them is. I want that amount to be 0. It doesn’t benefit me to give them anything so I shouldn’t be forced to do it.
Wake me when that actually leads to enforcement penalties. This law is vague enough as it is, no company is going to get slammed for “accidentally” skipping a user permission check, and having their FunPad app offer up your age info to one of Palantir’s long fingers.
