Roundup: OS-level Age Verification Laws
Rich writes:
Hackaday reports that unnoticed by many, several jurisdictions, including California and Brazil, have passed age verification laws that require operating system providers to keep age records of users. The uproar has now also spread among many FOSS-covering creators.
The wording of the California law is vague, and the inevitable interpretation by courts might have the outcome of a mandatory cloud account connection for every computer use ("An operating system provider shall ... provide ... with respect to a particular user ... a digital signal"). It is unclear how server computing and community based distros could deal with this.
It appears that the large corporate distributions are willing to cave in, but it is entirely unclear, and has not been even touched within all the uproar, how grassroots distributions like Debian will be affected with their many mirrored repositories and no central user database.
System76 on Age Verification LawsAn Anonymous Coward sent in:
[...] Colorado's Senate Bill 26-051 and California's Assembly Bill No. 1043 require operating systems to report age brackets to app stores and web sites. A person who creates an account on a computer is supposed to be 18 or older and attest to the age of the user they're creating for themselves or their child. In practice, this means anyone under 18 isn't supposed to create a computer account on their own.
Most System76 employees installed operating systems and created accounts on their computer when they were under 18. They did this out of curiosity. Many started writing software. Some were already writing operating systems. I'm sure the story is similar at most tech companies. Limiting a child's ability to explore what they can do with a computer limits their future. Removing user limitations to the computer (proprietary software, locked-down platforms like Android and iOS) is why System76 exists.
If there is any solace in these two laws, it's that they don't have any real restrictions. There is no actual age verification. Whoever installed the operating system or created the account simply says what age they are. They can lie. They will lie. They're being encouraged to lie for fear of being restricted to a nerfed internet.
[...] It can get worse. New York's proposed Senate Bill S8102A requires adults to prove they're adults to use a computer, exercise bike, smart watch, or car if the device is internet enabled with app ecosystems. The bill explicitly forbids self-reporting and leaves the allowed methods to regulations written by the Attorney General. Practical methods for a bill of such extreme breadth would require, in many instances, providing private information to a third-party just to use a computer at all. Privacy disappears.
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