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> Our FOSS code is constitutionally protected free speech and I would defend on those grounds. You have precisely zero additional speech rights as a FOSS proje

> Our FOSS code is constitutionally protected free speech and I would defend on those grounds. You have precisely zero additional speech rights as a FOSS project than any other organization has. If "free speech" was a valid defense for you, then Meta would be doing the same. > The technical design of the project just makes it so no one can force changes on the distro unwanted by the maintainer team regardless of any courtroom outcomes. Being unable to comply is not a valid legal defense. > Like, what if someone made a law that said Bitcoin nodes must KYC? They could make the law I guess, and the international network operators would just laugh at it. This is the law in various places under various mechanisms. It is handled by putting people in prison or taking people's assets.

greyface- 2mo ago
> Being unable to comply is not a valid legal defense. Sure it is. Lawyers even have a pithy Latin maxim about it: lex non cogit ad impossibilia.
- kube-system 2mo ago
  If you could stop doing that thing, it isn't an impossibility under lex non cogit ad impossibilia.
  - nemomarx 2mo ago
    what could they be compelled to stop doing here? Mechanically speaking, I mean. I can imagine fines or contempt of court, etc But how would you remove an international distro from "the marketplace" if it's free and not operating a business?
    - otterley 2mo ago
      Same way anything else gets pulled from distribution. You shut down the servers, destroy keys, remove files, etc. Sure, the files may remain in circulation from unofficial sources, but that's not your problem, as long as you're no longer facilitating it.
      - lrvick 2mo ago
        We are fairly unique for a Linux OS in that we have no central servers, and there are no central keys, and no central entity to even send a C&D to. Everything is a quorum of privately owned hardware, so truly I do not know what mechanism they could even try.
    - wtallis 2mo ago
      If anyone is distributing it within Illinois jurisdiction (or maybe even distributing it elsewhere while maintaining a business presence in Illinois), they could be at risk of qualifying as an operating system provider under Illinois law.
      - taneq 2mo ago
        How does that work with data on a server outside of the jurisdiction, that’s freely available to download and re-upload? The ‘local legal presence’ thing might work, but then what if they only distribute it on (say) a thumb drive, sent outside the jurisdiction, which is then uploaded by a third party? This whole thing seems unenforceable (or worse, arbitrarily enforceable).
        kube-system 2mo ago
        A court will care about what you do in the jurisdictions where it has power over you. What anyone else does is their problem, not yours. Some oddball Linux distro really has no relevance to the larger picture that lawmakers are trying to accomplish though. The vast majority of kids are using iphone/android/mac/chromebook/windows. Basically zero are using esoteric container images to access TikTok.
        hellojesus 2mo ago
        But wouldn't this type of law drive youth to using more exotic distributions to get around the issue? It's not far fetched to think that kids will just live boot from tails or another distro to visit socials and circumvent this rule. Plus with unlocked pixel bootloaders it would be trivial for them to petition their parents for a pixel, hard reset it, unlock the bootloader, install grapheneos via the web installer, and then be on their way. If parents don't know how to monitor their kids I doubt they'll notice grapheneos not being base android.
        kube-system 2mo ago
        What is this bill blocking that kids want so bad that they'd go through the trouble to do that... and lose blue bubbles with their friends? The ability to receive specifically unsolicited DMs from adult strangers? Opting in to behavioral tracking? This bill doesn't block social media for kids... I expect their response to be simply that they keep using social media on their phone the way they already do.
    - kube-system 2mo ago
      It's not that complicated. If there's a law that says "Anyone who distributes X must also Y" and you can't figure out a way to continue distributing X while also doing Y, the way you comply with the law is that you stop distributing X.
      - DoctorOetker 2mo ago
        None of this answers the question: even if @Irvick stops distributing or participating in any way with this "stagex" distro, that "stagex" distro continues its life outside of the jurisdiction, at most you start treating it like contraband drugs within your jurisdiction. With LLM's anyone will be able to disengage such "default wars" in popular software, so there isn't really any border control when LLM's form a large surface area of the border.
        kube-system 2mo ago
        That’s always been the case for things distributed on the internet. It’s irrelevant in terms of evaluating one’s personal compliance with the law.
        DoctorOetker 2mo ago
        > It’s irrelevant in terms of evaluating one’s personal compliance with the law. That's precisely what I discussed: the case where this person fully complies and ceases distribution (but the distro doesn't cease being distributed by others).
        kube-system 2mo ago
        So what? That's how all laws work. What if I don't rob my local convenience store, but someone else does? Don't make the mistake of logically getting caught up on the idea of laws "preventing crime". They never have, and they never will. The deter crime by providing for penalties when someone breaks the law.
DennisP 2mo ago
Unless the PGP decision has been overturned, code as free speech is in fact a valid defense. If the government couldn't stop code they claimed were "munitions" from getting distributed, then it seems unlikely that they'll stop a Linux distro. Corporations do whatever seems most profitable. We can't base our understanding of constitutional rights on whether Meta decides to defend them.
- otterley 2mo ago
  There was no "PGP decision." You're making that up.
  - DennisP 2mo ago
    Maybe try google before making statements like that. The decision was Bernstein vs. US. Prior to that, export controls prevented PGP source code from being exported from the US. Advocates printed it in books and exported those, which helped clarify the issue. Bernstein was a math student who made his own encryption software. The government tried to make him register as an arms dealer, and he sued in 1996, with the backing of the EFF. The result was a landmark decision that established source code as free speech and basically destroyed export controls on cryptography. In 2016, Apple cited the decision when the government tried to hack a suspect's phone, saying they couldn't be compelled to "speak" by writing code.
    - otterley 2mo ago
      It is you who needs to do your research. That was not PGP. The Bernstein case was about Snuffle. In that very same case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said: "We emphasize the narrowness of our First Amendment holding. We do not hold that all software is expressive. Much of it surely is not. Nor need we resolve whether the challenged regulations constitute content-based restrictions, subject to the strictest constitutional scrutiny, or whether they are, instead, content-neutral restrictions meriting less exacting scrutiny. We hold merely that because the prepublication licensing regime challenged here applies directly to scientific expression, vests boundless discretion in government officials, and lacks adequate procedural safeguards, it constitutes an impermissible prior restraint on speech."
nobody9999 2mo ago
>If "free speech" was a valid defense for you, then Meta would be doing the same. Is that some sort of in joke? Meta loves more surveillance, more data and more info about their vassals^W users. I'm sure their lobbyists were pushing hard to get this law passed.
tessierashpool 2mo ago
> If "free speech" was a valid defense for you, then Meta would be doing the same. Meta lobbied heavily for this. The fact that they have not decided to use free speech to fight the move that they are lobbying for is not an argument that free speech is irrelevant here. This is not legal advice but a personal request: please do not get your legal advice from Hacker News. Get it from a lawyer.
- kube-system 2mo ago
  Alright, then let me rephrase: > If "free speech" was a valid defense to any legal compliance laws that affect software, then any software company would raise this defense this rather than comply.
  - DennisP 2mo ago
    And in fact, Apple in 2016 went to court rather than comply with the government's order to put a backdoor in the iPhone, and they argued their case in part on free speech grounds. Whether other companies do the same depends on what they consider the most profitable path, including legal fees and risk.
    - otterley 2mo ago
      Don’t read too much into the Apple case. There was no precedent set by that. The FBI withdrew their demands after they found a different mechanism to obtain what they needed.
      - DennisP 2mo ago
        Of course there was no precedent set. They were using a precedent that had already been set. We'll never know how it would have turned out, but the previous comment implied that corporations always comply rather than going to court on the grounds that code is speech, so I posted a well-known counterexample.
- lrvick 2mo ago
s3p 2mo ago
[dead]
lrvick 2mo ago
Okay well if they want to jail me for being unable to comply with violating the privacy of the users of the Linux distro I work on it. Cool, I guess. They would sure be wasting a lot of resources and public goodwill with absolutely no positive outcome for their agenda. Which is why I do not think it will actually happen. But if it does, it does. Not going to live my life in fear, I have more security and privacy tools to ship :)
- kube-system 2mo ago
  I don’t think they’re going to spend any resources on going after you because: * your project might not even qualify under the text of the law * even if it did, the number of children using it to access social media is likely zero
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - lrvick 2mo ago
    Oh, we will be supporting desktop/ubuntu style use cases soon. Position will remain the same though. And, agreed, they will still ignore us. But sick of seeing bigger projects cave to this nonsense. But, none of this was about protecting kids. It never was.
    - voakbasda 2mo ago
      They will ignore you right up until precedents are establish for a process to effectively prosecute any holdouts. Sure, first they will come for bigger fish, but then they will come for you.
      - lrvick 2mo ago
        they can try

greyface- 2mo ago

> Being unable to comply is not a valid legal defense. Sure it is. Lawyers even have a pithy Latin maxim about it: lex non cogit ad impossibilia.

kube-system 2mo ago
If you could stop doing that thing, it isn't an impossibility under lex non cogit ad impossibilia.
- nemomarx 2mo ago
  what could they be compelled to stop doing here? Mechanically speaking, I mean. I can imagine fines or contempt of court, etc But how would you remove an international distro from "the marketplace" if it's free and not operating a business?
  - otterley 2mo ago
    Same way anything else gets pulled from distribution. You shut down the servers, destroy keys, remove files, etc. Sure, the files may remain in circulation from unofficial sources, but that's not your problem, as long as you're no longer facilitating it.
    - lrvick 2mo ago
      We are fairly unique for a Linux OS in that we have no central servers, and there are no central keys, and no central entity to even send a C&D to. Everything is a quorum of privately owned hardware, so truly I do not know what mechanism they could even try.
  - wtallis 2mo ago
    If anyone is distributing it within Illinois jurisdiction (or maybe even distributing it elsewhere while maintaining a business presence in Illinois), they could be at risk of qualifying as an operating system provider under Illinois law.
    - taneq 2mo ago
      How does that work with data on a server outside of the jurisdiction, that’s freely available to download and re-upload? The ‘local legal presence’ thing might work, but then what if they only distribute it on (say) a thumb drive, sent outside the jurisdiction, which is then uploaded by a third party? This whole thing seems unenforceable (or worse, arbitrarily enforceable).
      - kube-system 2mo ago
        A court will care about what you do in the jurisdictions where it has power over you. What anyone else does is their problem, not yours. Some oddball Linux distro really has no relevance to the larger picture that lawmakers are trying to accomplish though. The vast majority of kids are using iphone/android/mac/chromebook/windows. Basically zero are using esoteric container images to access TikTok.
        hellojesus 2mo ago
        But wouldn't this type of law drive youth to using more exotic distributions to get around the issue? It's not far fetched to think that kids will just live boot from tails or another distro to visit socials and circumvent this rule. Plus with unlocked pixel bootloaders it would be trivial for them to petition their parents for a pixel, hard reset it, unlock the bootloader, install grapheneos via the web installer, and then be on their way. If parents don't know how to monitor their kids I doubt they'll notice grapheneos not being base android.
        kube-system 2mo ago
        What is this bill blocking that kids want so bad that they'd go through the trouble to do that... and lose blue bubbles with their friends? The ability to receive specifically unsolicited DMs from adult strangers? Opting in to behavioral tracking? This bill doesn't block social media for kids... I expect their response to be simply that they keep using social media on their phone the way they already do.
  - kube-system 2mo ago
    It's not that complicated. If there's a law that says "Anyone who distributes X must also Y" and you can't figure out a way to continue distributing X while also doing Y, the way you comply with the law is that you stop distributing X.
    - DoctorOetker 2mo ago
      None of this answers the question: even if @Irvick stops distributing or participating in any way with this "stagex" distro, that "stagex" distro continues its life outside of the jurisdiction, at most you start treating it like contraband drugs within your jurisdiction. With LLM's anyone will be able to disengage such "default wars" in popular software, so there isn't really any border control when LLM's form a large surface area of the border.
      - kube-system 2mo ago
        That’s always been the case for things distributed on the internet. It’s irrelevant in terms of evaluating one’s personal compliance with the law.
        DoctorOetker 2mo ago
        > It’s irrelevant in terms of evaluating one’s personal compliance with the law. That's precisely what I discussed: the case where this person fully complies and ceases distribution (but the distro doesn't cease being distributed by others).
        kube-system 2mo ago
        So what? That's how all laws work. What if I don't rob my local convenience store, but someone else does? Don't make the mistake of logically getting caught up on the idea of laws "preventing crime". They never have, and they never will. The deter crime by providing for penalties when someone breaks the law.

DennisP 2mo ago

Unless the PGP decision has been overturned, code as free speech is in fact a valid defense. If the government couldn't stop code they claimed were "munitions" from getting distributed, then it seems unlikely that they'll stop a Linux distro. Corporations do whatever seems most profitable. We can't base our understanding of constitutional rights on whether Meta decides to defend them.

otterley 2mo ago
There was no "PGP decision." You're making that up.
- DennisP 2mo ago
  Maybe try google before making statements like that. The decision was Bernstein vs. US. Prior to that, export controls prevented PGP source code from being exported from the US. Advocates printed it in books and exported those, which helped clarify the issue. Bernstein was a math student who made his own encryption software. The government tried to make him register as an arms dealer, and he sued in 1996, with the backing of the EFF. The result was a landmark decision that established source code as free speech and basically destroyed export controls on cryptography. In 2016, Apple cited the decision when the government tried to hack a suspect's phone, saying they couldn't be compelled to "speak" by writing code.
  - otterley 2mo ago
    It is you who needs to do your research. That was not PGP. The Bernstein case was about Snuffle. In that very same case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said: "We emphasize the narrowness of our First Amendment holding. We do not hold that all software is expressive. Much of it surely is not. Nor need we resolve whether the challenged regulations constitute content-based restrictions, subject to the strictest constitutional scrutiny, or whether they are, instead, content-neutral restrictions meriting less exacting scrutiny. We hold merely that because the prepublication licensing regime challenged here applies directly to scientific expression, vests boundless discretion in government officials, and lacks adequate procedural safeguards, it constitutes an impermissible prior restraint on speech."

nobody9999 2mo ago

>If "free speech" was a valid defense for you, then Meta would be doing the same. Is that some sort of in joke? Meta loves more surveillance, more data and more info about their vassals^W users. I'm sure their lobbyists were pushing hard to get this law passed.

tessierashpool 2mo ago

> If "free speech" was a valid defense for you, then Meta would be doing the same. Meta lobbied heavily for this. The fact that they have not decided to use free speech to fight the move that they are lobbying for is not an argument that free speech is irrelevant here. This is not legal advice but a personal request: please do not get your legal advice from Hacker News. Get it from a lawyer.

kube-system 2mo ago
Alright, then let me rephrase: > If "free speech" was a valid defense to any legal compliance laws that affect software, then any software company would raise this defense this rather than comply.
- DennisP 2mo ago
  And in fact, Apple in 2016 went to court rather than comply with the government's order to put a backdoor in the iPhone, and they argued their case in part on free speech grounds. Whether other companies do the same depends on what they consider the most profitable path, including legal fees and risk.
  - otterley 2mo ago
    Don’t read too much into the Apple case. There was no precedent set by that. The FBI withdrew their demands after they found a different mechanism to obtain what they needed.
    - DennisP 2mo ago
      Of course there was no precedent set. They were using a precedent that had already been set. We'll never know how it would have turned out, but the previous comment implied that corporations always comply rather than going to court on the grounds that code is speech, so I posted a well-known counterexample.
lrvick 2mo ago

s3p 2mo ago

[dead]

lrvick 2mo ago

Okay well if they want to jail me for being unable to comply with violating the privacy of the users of the Linux distro I work on it. Cool, I guess. They would sure be wasting a lot of resources and public goodwill with absolutely no positive outcome for their agenda. Which is why I do not think it will actually happen. But if it does, it does. Not going to live my life in fear, I have more security and privacy tools to ship :)

kube-system 2mo ago
I don’t think they’re going to spend any resources on going after you because: * your project might not even qualify under the text of the law * even if it did, the number of children using it to access social media is likely zero
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- lrvick 2mo ago
  Oh, we will be supporting desktop/ubuntu style use cases soon. Position will remain the same though. And, agreed, they will still ignore us. But sick of seeing bigger projects cave to this nonsense. But, none of this was about protecting kids. It never was.
  - voakbasda 2mo ago
    They will ignore you right up until precedents are establish for a process to effectively prosecute any holdouts. Sure, first they will come for bigger fish, but then they will come for you.
    - lrvick 2mo ago
      they can try