6 ms·

Colorado Amended SB051 (Age Verification Bill) to Exclude Open Source Projects

227 points by ki4jgt 5mo ago

floxy 5mo ago
(5)(a) "COVERED APPLICATION" MEANS A CONSUMER SOFTWARE APPLICATION THAT IS ACCESSED THROUGH A COVERED APPLICATION STORE AND THAT MAY BE RUN OR DIRECTED BY A USER ON A DEVICE. (b) "COVERED APPLICATION" DOES NOT INCLUDE: (I) A SOFTWARE APPLICATION THAT DOES NOT PROCESS USERS' PERSONAL DATA; OR (II) AN APPLICATION FROM A FREE, PUBLICLY AVAILABLE CODE REPOSITORY.
- vegadw 5mo ago
  That wording could be interesting, because it's ambiguous if free is applicable to the repository or the project. Presumably, the latter. This means you could absolutely do source-open but not open-source and still get around it.
  - fc417fc802 5mo ago
    Well it says code repository not artifact repository. But it doesn't prohibit obfuscation or transpilation and more generally doesn't appear to specify anything beyond "free and publicly available". I really get the feeling that the people who wrote the law don't have a clear idea of what they're trying to say here and that any court decision is going to be a roll of the dice.
- fc417fc802 5mo ago
  On the one hand, I'm absolutely against blanket age verification laws like this one, think there are better ways to solve the stated problem, and believe that the current crop of legislation is being pushed by bad actors for nefarious purposes by means of pandering to public mania. On the other hand, I do appreciate that a possible unintended consequence of the out provided by (5)(b)(I) could be that PII (along with user generated content in general) becomes similarly radioactive to if the US had passed a GDPR equivalent. Either that or it's used as a justification for every single online service to require government ID in order to interact with it "because liability". Unfortunately I assume the latter is somewhat more likely at this point. Also is it defined precisely what it means to "process users' personal data"?
  - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    > there are better ways to solve the stated problem Call your representatives. There is overwhelming demand for age gating social media (based on, honestly, good evidence). This will be implemented based on who calls in. If the status quo of technical people being hopelessly nihilistic continues, it will be written in the stupidest ways possible.
    - MBCook 5mo ago
      Of course we could make predatory algorithms illegal. Or just algorithmic timelines/discovery algorithms. Nah. Can’t stop the money. Let make brain destroying scams and ad spam legal as long as you’re over 18.
      - fc417fc802 5mo ago
        TL;DR We need age verification laws to prevent minors from accessing the addictive stream of toxic sludge rather than outlawing its manufacture and distribution.
        ethin 5mo ago
        How exactly would you do this without, you know, violating the first amendment? Algorithmic feeds are nothing without the content. People get toxic sludge because they signal to the algorithm that they like that.
        fc417fc802 5mo ago
        Presumably by outlawing the types of algorithms used with the legislation carefully limited to a particular context rather than anything being authored by an individual. Right to express oneself preserved, government regulates a harmful product, business as usual. As far as this specific Colorado legislation goes (which is concerned with the ability to comply with their previously passed data privacy law) I think it's not entirely bad but I have two issues with it. First, it reverses the problem. Services should be sending an age-appropriateness (or even just general content classification) signal to the device for local processing, not the other way around. If you're going to mandate that OS creators do anything it should be to implement a certain baseline level of (interoperable!) functionality as far as parental controls are concerned. Second, the entire thing should be predicated on some metric such as MAU or revenue or combination thereof not on the exceedingly vague idea of a "free, publicly available code repository".
- dlcarrier 5mo ago
  So if your service is proprietary, but your client is open source, it looks like your're free to go. As someone that relies on third-party clients to get usable interfaces, if this gets widely adopted it would be great news. It would end the cat-and-mouse game from companies trying to force users onto first-party clients.
  - Yokohiii 5mo ago
    Most proprietary services would process user data. It's also naive to believe that a fraction of open source in a companies pipeline would give them a free pass for everything.
    - KAMSPioneer 5mo ago
      But the text says "or," not "and." So by my interpretation if you process user data but are available via "free, public" repo, you're not covered. I presume "free" is defined elsewhere in the text, and that it approximates "open-source."
      - floxy 5mo ago
        >(3) THIS ARTICLE 30 DOES NOT APPLY TO: (e) AN OPERATING SYSTEM PROVIDER OR DEVELOPER THAT DISTRIBUTES AN OPERATING SYSTEM OR APPLICATION UNDER LICENSE TERMS THAT PERMIT A RECIPIENT TO COPY, REDISTRIBUTE, AND MODIFY THE SOFTWARE WITHOUT ANY PLATFORM-IMPOSED TECHNICAL OR CONTRACTUAL RESTRICTIONS IMPOSED BY THE PROVIDER OR DEVELOPER ON INSTALLING ALL MODIFIED VERSIONS.
        KAMSPioneer 5mo ago
        Aha, thanks! So I think that raises the question of whether e.g. RHEL is affected. Technically it could be argued that they don't add any additional restrictions, but I wonder if Colorado will see it that way.
        ChucklsTheBeard 5mo ago
        [dead]
denimnerd42 5mo ago
hopefully if each state starts crafting dumb laws like this they all get banned via commerce clause due to infeasibility of compliance
- cyanydeez 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- tzs 5mo ago
  This one is trivial to comply with. You have to add a couple fields or so to whatever gathers user info at account creation time. Personally I would find that non-trivial because nowadays those are usually GUIs and I haven't done any GUI stuff in ages. People who current write GUI apps for current OSes would have no problem. Then you need to use that data in a way that lets you provide an API for apps to check the age bracket of the current user. That part is easy, although some people will no doubt make it way more complicated than it needs to be (probably making it part of systemd or something ridiculous like that). What I would do is create a file in some standardized location for each age bracket. These files would be protect so that ordinary users cannot open them for reading. When an account is set up, an access control list entry would be added to the appropriate files that allows that user to open the file for reading. The API for apps to check if the user is in an age range they allow is to simply use the normal file access API to try to open the age bracket files corresponding to the age ranges they are checking for.
hungryhobbit 5mo ago
I foresee a wave of new porn-related open source applications in Colorado's future.
- fc417fc802 5mo ago
  So a FOSS app running a device local diffusion model specifically for porn would be free of age checks. From a technical perspective that's not all that different from, say, an ansible playbook or bash script or whatever to download a model from HF and configure a local inference stack yet I feel like it must be an unintended loophole.
- anigbrowl 5mo ago
  I'm actually OK if websites trend toward being endpoints and there's competition for frontends. The unification of the two by site owners has been a net negative for the internet.
jdgoesmarching 5mo ago
I know this is attached to a stupid bill, but I really like the general idea of special carve outs for open source projects.
- afaawfawf 5mo ago
  Of course you do. And farmers like subsidies for corn. That's a general idea for them too. And of course you're going to say the public benefits from open source projects and the farmer will say starving no good. Middle class see, middle class do but think they no do.
- alwa 5mo ago
  It does seem kind of elegant, doesn’t it, in terms of aligning incentives? Annoyed by the age gating, or feel it to be commercially burdensome? Open your source, and poof, no more mandate! Just trying to build and maintain a cool thing, and share it with the world? Never mind the compliance burden.
hunterpayne 5mo ago
Contributing to an open source project is one of the very few things on the net that I actually would want id verification on.
- giancarlostoro 5mo ago
  What for? That's kind of strange. Maybe if its a critical project, but for random projects that aren't like apache web server, nginx, or Linux Kernel, I don't care, heck I would argue if its a very very small change, and it has been scrutinized I don't care who it came from.
  - altairprime 5mo ago
    Raises the defensive bar for today-unaccountable slop and malware, at minimum.
    - giancarlostoro 5mo ago
      [dead]
mlinksva 5mo ago
Good development, along with the most recent changes to https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1856 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... A colleague is hosting a virtual session on these and other similar bills around the world in two days https://maintainermonth.github.com/schedule/2026-05-22-age-assurance-laws-and-open-source https://maintainermonth.github.com/schedule/2026-05-22-age-a... Or, now slightly out of date, read https://github.blog/news-insights/policy-news-and-insights/why-age-assurance-laws-matter-for-developers/ https://github.blog/news-insights/policy-news-and-insights/w... Added: I had not scrolled far enough on the front page, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214215 is on this blog.
doginasuit 5mo ago
As someone working on an open source project in CO, this is a welcome fit of common sense. How do these laws typically work in other jurisdictions, do they block non-conforming sites? Or does it open you up to lawsuits? Edit: It looks like these laws will be enforced by app stores primarily, because they have more significant liability. I'm guessing they won't take the effort to provide exemptions to jurisdictions with the open source carveout unless it is common.
vsgherzi 5mo ago
Good, California too now
HDBaseT 5mo ago
Boiling frog strikes again. "It's only for porn sites" to "its only for social media" to "its doesn't include open source projects" to "its only when you need an internet connection".
- Muromec 5mo ago
  That's how politics works actually. Something has to be done but also not upset X, Y, Z because they will be loud. It's quite okay situation when it happens I think.
  - NewJazz 5mo ago
    Yeah. I think a lot of us just look at computers and operating systems differently than these legislators. But we need to more effectively communicate our needs and side effects of their policies. And elect younger folk sheesh.
- zx8080 5mo ago
  It took almost 30 years for politicians to close down the openness of the internet. Not too bad.
calvinmorrison 5mo ago
will colorado be issuing arrest warrants for developers ?
- Cider9986 5mo ago
  The DOJ already has been prosecuting developers of open source tools. (https://www.therage.co/tag/tornado-cash/ https://www.therage.co/tag/tornado-cash/)
declan_roberts 5mo ago
This TOTALLY ORGANIC movement to suddenly please think about the children with required age verification in software makes me sick. Whoever is behind this needs to be exposed, tarred, and feathered.
- CamperBob2 5mo ago
  It's pretty well understood to be Meta, isn't it?
  - NotPractical 5mo ago
    Does anyone have a citation for this that wasn't written by Claude? It wouldn't surprise me, but I refuse to look through AI slop to check the accuracy of the report.
    - Cider9986 5mo ago
      It was written by Claude, the question is if it's accurate.
  - inetknght 5mo ago
    Meta and the spooks, yeah
  - nl 5mo ago
    Not as simple as that. Meta's well know campaign was actually to make the app stores (and maybe OSes) responsible for age verification, not apps. Google and Apple campaigned to make apps responsible for it.
  - userbinator 5mo ago
    Big Tech in general.
- mtoner23 5mo ago
  The kids are very fucked up tho by the internet in our pockets. I'm Not sure that id on OS is the solution. But we should be trying something
jmward01 5mo ago
We have age verification for many things. The problem now is trust. There is, for obvious reasons, negative trust that this won't ultimately harm people. That it won't be used to harvest more data and invade our digital lives even more. That negative trust is there because we see a constant ability to gather even more information about us, and use it to produce real harm, but no hint at an entity actually fighting back to protect people. If anyone in any government is reading this, you do not gain my trust that big tech will not abuse my information by requiring big tech to collect more of my information, you just loose my trust in the government. Earn my trust back and then, maybe, in some distant future, we can talk about 'but who will think of the children' legislation like this.
Cider9986 5mo ago
Call it an Identity Verification Bill, or think of something even more negative. That is more accurate and doesn't sound as attractive. Names matter. We saw ChatControl 1.0 get defeated, it probably didn't hurt that the name implied censorship.
- tardedmeme 5mo ago
  But it doesn't verify your identity so why would you call it that? It just says an OS has to have the option to create a child user account.
jwitthuhn 5mo ago
It is very fortunate for us that the authors were kind enough to demonstrate this has nothing to do with safety by adding this exemption.
edoceo 5mo ago
Is there any push-back options? I feel like age verification is important online - a copy of the real world. Check my ID before I go in the pub. It feels like it's jumped all the way to positive-ID. Not just "of age" but become you are "First Last". It's possible (right?) to assert age and is-human attributes w/o knowing which specific human at what specific age I am online?
polski-g 5mo ago
This makes it even more unconstitutional. Privileging certain classes over others for compelled speech makes is way easier to strike down.
3vo-ai 5mo ago
[flagged]

227 points by ki4jgt 5mo ago

floxy 5mo ago

(5)(a) "COVERED APPLICATION" MEANS A CONSUMER SOFTWARE APPLICATION THAT IS ACCESSED THROUGH A COVERED APPLICATION STORE AND THAT MAY BE RUN OR DIRECTED BY A USER ON A DEVICE. (b) "COVERED APPLICATION" DOES NOT INCLUDE: (I) A SOFTWARE APPLICATION THAT DOES NOT PROCESS USERS' PERSONAL DATA; OR (II) AN APPLICATION FROM A FREE, PUBLICLY AVAILABLE CODE REPOSITORY.

vegadw 5mo ago
That wording could be interesting, because it's ambiguous if free is applicable to the repository or the project. Presumably, the latter. This means you could absolutely do source-open but not open-source and still get around it.
- fc417fc802 5mo ago
  Well it says code repository not artifact repository. But it doesn't prohibit obfuscation or transpilation and more generally doesn't appear to specify anything beyond "free and publicly available". I really get the feeling that the people who wrote the law don't have a clear idea of what they're trying to say here and that any court decision is going to be a roll of the dice.
fc417fc802 5mo ago
On the one hand, I'm absolutely against blanket age verification laws like this one, think there are better ways to solve the stated problem, and believe that the current crop of legislation is being pushed by bad actors for nefarious purposes by means of pandering to public mania. On the other hand, I do appreciate that a possible unintended consequence of the out provided by (5)(b)(I) could be that PII (along with user generated content in general) becomes similarly radioactive to if the US had passed a GDPR equivalent. Either that or it's used as a justification for every single online service to require government ID in order to interact with it "because liability". Unfortunately I assume the latter is somewhat more likely at this point. Also is it defined precisely what it means to "process users' personal data"?
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > there are better ways to solve the stated problem Call your representatives. There is overwhelming demand for age gating social media (based on, honestly, good evidence). This will be implemented based on who calls in. If the status quo of technical people being hopelessly nihilistic continues, it will be written in the stupidest ways possible.
  - MBCook 5mo ago
    Of course we could make predatory algorithms illegal. Or just algorithmic timelines/discovery algorithms. Nah. Can’t stop the money. Let make brain destroying scams and ad spam legal as long as you’re over 18.
    - fc417fc802 5mo ago
      TL;DR We need age verification laws to prevent minors from accessing the addictive stream of toxic sludge rather than outlawing its manufacture and distribution.
      - ethin 5mo ago
        How exactly would you do this without, you know, violating the first amendment? Algorithmic feeds are nothing without the content. People get toxic sludge because they signal to the algorithm that they like that.
        fc417fc802 5mo ago
        Presumably by outlawing the types of algorithms used with the legislation carefully limited to a particular context rather than anything being authored by an individual. Right to express oneself preserved, government regulates a harmful product, business as usual. As far as this specific Colorado legislation goes (which is concerned with the ability to comply with their previously passed data privacy law) I think it's not entirely bad but I have two issues with it. First, it reverses the problem. Services should be sending an age-appropriateness (or even just general content classification) signal to the device for local processing, not the other way around. If you're going to mandate that OS creators do anything it should be to implement a certain baseline level of (interoperable!) functionality as far as parental controls are concerned. Second, the entire thing should be predicated on some metric such as MAU or revenue or combination thereof not on the exceedingly vague idea of a "free, publicly available code repository".
dlcarrier 5mo ago
So if your service is proprietary, but your client is open source, it looks like your're free to go. As someone that relies on third-party clients to get usable interfaces, if this gets widely adopted it would be great news. It would end the cat-and-mouse game from companies trying to force users onto first-party clients.
- Yokohiii 5mo ago
  Most proprietary services would process user data. It's also naive to believe that a fraction of open source in a companies pipeline would give them a free pass for everything.
  - KAMSPioneer 5mo ago
    But the text says "or," not "and." So by my interpretation if you process user data but are available via "free, public" repo, you're not covered. I presume "free" is defined elsewhere in the text, and that it approximates "open-source."
    - floxy 5mo ago
      >(3) THIS ARTICLE 30 DOES NOT APPLY TO: (e) AN OPERATING SYSTEM PROVIDER OR DEVELOPER THAT DISTRIBUTES AN OPERATING SYSTEM OR APPLICATION UNDER LICENSE TERMS THAT PERMIT A RECIPIENT TO COPY, REDISTRIBUTE, AND MODIFY THE SOFTWARE WITHOUT ANY PLATFORM-IMPOSED TECHNICAL OR CONTRACTUAL RESTRICTIONS IMPOSED BY THE PROVIDER OR DEVELOPER ON INSTALLING ALL MODIFIED VERSIONS.
      - KAMSPioneer 5mo ago
        Aha, thanks! So I think that raises the question of whether e.g. RHEL is affected. Technically it could be argued that they don't add any additional restrictions, but I wonder if Colorado will see it that way.
      - ChucklsTheBeard 5mo ago
        [dead]

denimnerd42 5mo ago

hopefully if each state starts crafting dumb laws like this they all get banned via commerce clause due to infeasibility of compliance

cyanydeez 5mo ago
[flagged]
tzs 5mo ago
This one is trivial to comply with. You have to add a couple fields or so to whatever gathers user info at account creation time. Personally I would find that non-trivial because nowadays those are usually GUIs and I haven't done any GUI stuff in ages. People who current write GUI apps for current OSes would have no problem. Then you need to use that data in a way that lets you provide an API for apps to check the age bracket of the current user. That part is easy, although some people will no doubt make it way more complicated than it needs to be (probably making it part of systemd or something ridiculous like that). What I would do is create a file in some standardized location for each age bracket. These files would be protect so that ordinary users cannot open them for reading. When an account is set up, an access control list entry would be added to the appropriate files that allows that user to open the file for reading. The API for apps to check if the user is in an age range they allow is to simply use the normal file access API to try to open the age bracket files corresponding to the age ranges they are checking for.

hungryhobbit 5mo ago

I foresee a wave of new porn-related open source applications in Colorado's future.

fc417fc802 5mo ago
So a FOSS app running a device local diffusion model specifically for porn would be free of age checks. From a technical perspective that's not all that different from, say, an ansible playbook or bash script or whatever to download a model from HF and configure a local inference stack yet I feel like it must be an unintended loophole.
anigbrowl 5mo ago
I'm actually OK if websites trend toward being endpoints and there's competition for frontends. The unification of the two by site owners has been a net negative for the internet.

jdgoesmarching 5mo ago

I know this is attached to a stupid bill, but I really like the general idea of special carve outs for open source projects.

afaawfawf 5mo ago
Of course you do. And farmers like subsidies for corn. That's a general idea for them too. And of course you're going to say the public benefits from open source projects and the farmer will say starving no good. Middle class see, middle class do but think they no do.
alwa 5mo ago
It does seem kind of elegant, doesn’t it, in terms of aligning incentives? Annoyed by the age gating, or feel it to be commercially burdensome? Open your source, and poof, no more mandate! Just trying to build and maintain a cool thing, and share it with the world? Never mind the compliance burden.

hunterpayne 5mo ago

Contributing to an open source project is one of the very few things on the net that I actually would want id verification on.

giancarlostoro 5mo ago
What for? That's kind of strange. Maybe if its a critical project, but for random projects that aren't like apache web server, nginx, or Linux Kernel, I don't care, heck I would argue if its a very very small change, and it has been scrutinized I don't care who it came from.
- altairprime 5mo ago
  Raises the defensive bar for today-unaccountable slop and malware, at minimum.
  - giancarlostoro 5mo ago
    [dead]

mlinksva 5mo ago

Good development, along with the most recent changes to https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1856 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... A colleague is hosting a virtual session on these and other similar bills around the world in two days https://maintainermonth.github.com/schedule/2026-05-22-age-assurance-laws-and-open-source https://maintainermonth.github.com/schedule/2026-05-22-age-a... Or, now slightly out of date, read https://github.blog/news-insights/policy-news-and-insights/why-age-assurance-laws-matter-for-developers/ https://github.blog/news-insights/policy-news-and-insights/w... Added: I had not scrolled far enough on the front page, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214215 is on this blog.

doginasuit 5mo ago

As someone working on an open source project in CO, this is a welcome fit of common sense. How do these laws typically work in other jurisdictions, do they block non-conforming sites? Or does it open you up to lawsuits? Edit: It looks like these laws will be enforced by app stores primarily, because they have more significant liability. I'm guessing they won't take the effort to provide exemptions to jurisdictions with the open source carveout unless it is common.

vsgherzi 5mo ago

Good, California too now

HDBaseT 5mo ago

Boiling frog strikes again. "It's only for porn sites" to "its only for social media" to "its doesn't include open source projects" to "its only when you need an internet connection".

Muromec 5mo ago
That's how politics works actually. Something has to be done but also not upset X, Y, Z because they will be loud. It's quite okay situation when it happens I think.
- NewJazz 5mo ago
  Yeah. I think a lot of us just look at computers and operating systems differently than these legislators. But we need to more effectively communicate our needs and side effects of their policies. And elect younger folk sheesh.
zx8080 5mo ago
It took almost 30 years for politicians to close down the openness of the internet. Not too bad.

calvinmorrison 5mo ago

will colorado be issuing arrest warrants for developers ?

Cider9986 5mo ago
The DOJ already has been prosecuting developers of open source tools. (https://www.therage.co/tag/tornado-cash/ https://www.therage.co/tag/tornado-cash/)

declan_roberts 5mo ago

This TOTALLY ORGANIC movement to suddenly please think about the children with required age verification in software makes me sick. Whoever is behind this needs to be exposed, tarred, and feathered.

CamperBob2 5mo ago
It's pretty well understood to be Meta, isn't it?
- NotPractical 5mo ago
  Does anyone have a citation for this that wasn't written by Claude? It wouldn't surprise me, but I refuse to look through AI slop to check the accuracy of the report.
  - Cider9986 5mo ago
    It was written by Claude, the question is if it's accurate.
- inetknght 5mo ago
  Meta and the spooks, yeah
- nl 5mo ago
  Not as simple as that. Meta's well know campaign was actually to make the app stores (and maybe OSes) responsible for age verification, not apps. Google and Apple campaigned to make apps responsible for it.
- userbinator 5mo ago
  Big Tech in general.
mtoner23 5mo ago
The kids are very fucked up tho by the internet in our pockets. I'm Not sure that id on OS is the solution. But we should be trying something

jmward01 5mo ago

We have age verification for many things. The problem now is trust. There is, for obvious reasons, negative trust that this won't ultimately harm people. That it won't be used to harvest more data and invade our digital lives even more. That negative trust is there because we see a constant ability to gather even more information about us, and use it to produce real harm, but no hint at an entity actually fighting back to protect people. If anyone in any government is reading this, you do not gain my trust that big tech will not abuse my information by requiring big tech to collect more of my information, you just loose my trust in the government. Earn my trust back and then, maybe, in some distant future, we can talk about 'but who will think of the children' legislation like this.

Cider9986 5mo ago

Call it an Identity Verification Bill, or think of something even more negative. That is more accurate and doesn't sound as attractive. Names matter. We saw ChatControl 1.0 get defeated, it probably didn't hurt that the name implied censorship.

tardedmeme 5mo ago
But it doesn't verify your identity so why would you call it that? It just says an OS has to have the option to create a child user account.

jwitthuhn 5mo ago

It is very fortunate for us that the authors were kind enough to demonstrate this has nothing to do with safety by adding this exemption.

edoceo 5mo ago

Is there any push-back options? I feel like age verification is important online - a copy of the real world. Check my ID before I go in the pub. It feels like it's jumped all the way to positive-ID. Not just "of age" but become you are "First Last". It's possible (right?) to assert age and is-human attributes w/o knowing which specific human at what specific age I am online?

polski-g 5mo ago

This makes it even more unconstitutional. Privileging certain classes over others for compelled speech makes is way easier to strike down.

3vo-ai 5mo ago

[flagged]