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Speak for yourself. This is impacting open source and is fundamentally against the open source ethos. Governments demanding computers enforce age is as dumb as

Speak for yourself. This is impacting open source and is fundamentally against the open source ethos. Governments demanding computers enforce age is as dumb as governments demanding books, pen, and paper enforce age. This is unrelated to industry. This is idiots running the government.

dpe82 8mo ago
I'm probably missing something, but when I read the California statute I didn't understand it to be anything like "computers enforcing age" - more like, when you create an account it needs to ask your age, and then provide a system API by which apps can ask what bracket the account holder is in. This seems better than the current solution of every app asking independently? Again, I'm probably missing something but it strikes me as pretty trivial to comply with?
- ball_of_lint 8mo ago
  The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we can compute at all. But on this specific point - It's a bellwether. They're doing this to lay the groundwork and test the waters for compulsory identification and/or age verification. Getting MacOS and Windows and Linux and etc to implement this WILL be used as evidence that compulsory identity verification for computer use is legally workable.
  - ball_of_lint 8mo ago
    And if the implications of that aren't clear - that would either be unenforceable or be in effect a government rootkit+DRM on every device.
  - charcircuit 8mo ago
    >The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we can compute at all. You could say the same thing about restaurants. "The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we can cook at all." When you are selling a product to the public, that is something that people have decided the government can regulate to reduce the harms of such products.
    - hellojesus 8mo ago
      What if you aren't selling a product, like open source linux distros?
      - labcomputer 8mo ago
        Last time I checked, health code regulations still apply to kitchens serving homeless people for free.
        kortilla 8mo ago
        They don’t apply to recipes nor what you make in your home, which is what open source operating systems are equivalent to.
    - ball_of_lint 8mo ago
      I think it's a bit more analogous to the government telling you what you can cook in your own kitchen. Sure I might have some friends over, maybe even some strangers, but it would be quite overbearing to hold my personal kitchen to the same standard as a restaurant. And there's not really a clear+observable difference between the two on the internet. The biggest difference between the NYT and my cousin's blog is scale, which is pretty hard to know up front - HN itself frequently DDOSes tiny websites.
- akersten 8mo ago
  Being "trivial to comply with" is completely disjunct and not at all an argument against "this type of law is fundamentally at odds with the liberty and self-determination that open source projects require and should protect." It's a shot across the bow to open-source, it's literally the government telling you what code your computer has to run. It is gesturing in the direction of existential threat for Free software and I am not exaggerating. It's purposefully "trivial" so you don't notice or protest too much that this is the first time the State is forcing you to include something purely of their own disturbed ideation in your creative work.
  - gzread 8mo ago
    Free software is already mandated to do a lot of things, like not defraud the user. If you make a bitcoin wallet that sends 5% of your money to the developer without asking I'm pretty sure you'll be prosecuted, so the government is compelling you to ask the user for consent to do that. When you make food you're compelled to write the ingredients. We tolerate these because they are obvious and trivial, but pedantically, food labelling laws also violate the first amendment.
    - akersten 8mo ago
      > Free software is already mandated to do a lot of things, like not defraud the user. Surely you recognize the difference between "you cannot go out of your way to do crime" and "your software must include this specific feature"?? > When you make food you're compelled to write the ingredients. Well, the point about how this affects open source is that under a similar California law, every home kitchen would need to be equipped with an electronic transponder whose purpose is to announce to the world what ingredient bucket you used for tonight's casserole.
      - gzread 8mo ago
        Which part of the California law announces your browsing history to the world?
        8mo ago
- brabel 8mo ago
  If that’s true, I think the law is fine. There are good solutions for anonymous disclosure of information about you, the most mature being Verifiable Credentials, which is an open standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifiable_credentials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifiable_credentials You can disclose just a subset of a credential, and that can be a derived value (eg age bracket instead of date of birth), and a derived key is used so that its cryptographically impossible to track you. I wish more people discussed using that, but I suspect that it’s a bit too secure for their real intentions.
  - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
    In general, any proposal to use government ID for "age verification" over the internet is going to end in someone using it for mass surveillance, and it's probably not wrong to suspect that as the intention to begin with. There is no benefit in doing that because parents already know how old their kid is. They don't need the government to certify it to them, and then they can configure the kid's device not to display adult content. Involving government ID is pointless because the parent, along with the large majority of the general population, has an adult ID, and therefore has the ability to configure the kid's device to display adult content or not even in the presence of an ID requirement if that's what they want to do. At which point an ID requirement is nothing but a footgun to "accidentally" compromise everyone's privacy. Unless that was the point.
    - gzread 8mo ago
      The California and Colorado laws don't involve any ID.
      - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
        And those are better than the ones that do involve ID, which also exist, but not as good as the thing where the service tells your device the rating of the content instead of the user telling the service their age.
        8mo ago

dpe82 8mo ago

I'm probably missing something, but when I read the California statute I didn't understand it to be anything like "computers enforcing age" - more like, when you create an account it needs to ask your age, and then provide a system API by which apps can ask what bracket the account holder is in. This seems better than the current solution of every app asking independently? Again, I'm probably missing something but it strikes me as pretty trivial to comply with?

ball_of_lint 8mo ago
The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we can compute at all. But on this specific point - It's a bellwether. They're doing this to lay the groundwork and test the waters for compulsory identification and/or age verification. Getting MacOS and Windows and Linux and etc to implement this WILL be used as evidence that compulsory identity verification for computer use is legally workable.
- ball_of_lint 8mo ago
  And if the implications of that aren't clear - that would either be unenforceable or be in effect a government rootkit+DRM on every device.
- charcircuit 8mo ago
  >The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we can compute at all. You could say the same thing about restaurants. "The government really shouldn't be telling us how/what we can cook at all." When you are selling a product to the public, that is something that people have decided the government can regulate to reduce the harms of such products.
  - hellojesus 8mo ago
    What if you aren't selling a product, like open source linux distros?
    - labcomputer 8mo ago
      Last time I checked, health code regulations still apply to kitchens serving homeless people for free.
      - kortilla 8mo ago
        They don’t apply to recipes nor what you make in your home, which is what open source operating systems are equivalent to.
  - ball_of_lint 8mo ago
    I think it's a bit more analogous to the government telling you what you can cook in your own kitchen. Sure I might have some friends over, maybe even some strangers, but it would be quite overbearing to hold my personal kitchen to the same standard as a restaurant. And there's not really a clear+observable difference between the two on the internet. The biggest difference between the NYT and my cousin's blog is scale, which is pretty hard to know up front - HN itself frequently DDOSes tiny websites.
akersten 8mo ago
Being "trivial to comply with" is completely disjunct and not at all an argument against "this type of law is fundamentally at odds with the liberty and self-determination that open source projects require and should protect." It's a shot across the bow to open-source, it's literally the government telling you what code your computer has to run. It is gesturing in the direction of existential threat for Free software and I am not exaggerating. It's purposefully "trivial" so you don't notice or protest too much that this is the first time the State is forcing you to include something purely of their own disturbed ideation in your creative work.
- gzread 8mo ago
  Free software is already mandated to do a lot of things, like not defraud the user. If you make a bitcoin wallet that sends 5% of your money to the developer without asking I'm pretty sure you'll be prosecuted, so the government is compelling you to ask the user for consent to do that. When you make food you're compelled to write the ingredients. We tolerate these because they are obvious and trivial, but pedantically, food labelling laws also violate the first amendment.
  - akersten 8mo ago
    > Free software is already mandated to do a lot of things, like not defraud the user. Surely you recognize the difference between "you cannot go out of your way to do crime" and "your software must include this specific feature"?? > When you make food you're compelled to write the ingredients. Well, the point about how this affects open source is that under a similar California law, every home kitchen would need to be equipped with an electronic transponder whose purpose is to announce to the world what ingredient bucket you used for tonight's casserole.
    - gzread 8mo ago
      Which part of the California law announces your browsing history to the world?
      - 8mo ago
brabel 8mo ago
If that’s true, I think the law is fine. There are good solutions for anonymous disclosure of information about you, the most mature being Verifiable Credentials, which is an open standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifiable_credentials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifiable_credentials You can disclose just a subset of a credential, and that can be a derived value (eg age bracket instead of date of birth), and a derived key is used so that its cryptographically impossible to track you. I wish more people discussed using that, but I suspect that it’s a bit too secure for their real intentions.
- AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
  In general, any proposal to use government ID for "age verification" over the internet is going to end in someone using it for mass surveillance, and it's probably not wrong to suspect that as the intention to begin with. There is no benefit in doing that because parents already know how old their kid is. They don't need the government to certify it to them, and then they can configure the kid's device not to display adult content. Involving government ID is pointless because the parent, along with the large majority of the general population, has an adult ID, and therefore has the ability to configure the kid's device to display adult content or not even in the presence of an ID requirement if that's what they want to do. At which point an ID requirement is nothing but a footgun to "accidentally" compromise everyone's privacy. Unless that was the point.
  - gzread 8mo ago
    The California and Colorado laws don't involve any ID.
    - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
      And those are better than the ones that do involve ID, which also exist, but not as good as the thing where the service tells your device the rating of the content instead of the user telling the service their age.
      - 8mo ago