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News First OS changes license to exclude use in California effective 01/01/2027 due to unanimous passage of California bill AB1043

Steltek

Steltek

Diamond Member
Well, the fallout from Kalifornia's dumb-ass OS digital age verification law has begun.

www.pcgamer.com

An upcoming California law requires operating system providers to enforce basic mandatory age verification

It's basic, and by the looks of it, near unenforceable.
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com

Midnight BSD, an independent BSD distro, has changed their license agreement to exclude its use in the State of California effective 01/01/2027 when the new law goes into effect. Colorado will also apparently be added as an exclusion if their similar pending law is passed.

Ironically, since the law indicates that ANYTHING that runs an OS is subject to the law, the DB48X open source operating system attempting to clone the HP48x OS to run on SwissMicros DM32/DM42 calculators of all things has also come out with a similar change, amending their license to exclude use in California effective 01/01/27 and in Colorado as of 01/01/28 if their version of the law passed. A calculator OS. Go figure.

This has the potential to be very entertaining as well as very embarrassing for California (and Colorado) politicians.
 
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All the crap that's been going on is giving me an uneasy feeling. I foresee all online services including the service itself requiring ID, and banning the use of encryption. That would mean dark overlay networks wouldn't be the escape hatch they otherwise would. That leaves mesh networks, which have a technical, and financial high barrier, as well as easily tracked radio signals. It would shrink the world to 19th century size.
 
lxskllr said:
All the crap that's been going on is giving me an uneasy feeling. I foresee all online services including the service itself requiring ID, and banning the use of encryption. That would mean dark overlay networks wouldn't be the escape hatch they otherwise would. That leaves mesh networks, which have a technical, and financial high barrier, as well as easily tracked radio signals. It would shrink the world to 19th century size.
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Yeah, it is a real long term concern.

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid".

Ben Franklin has never been more applicable than he is today.
 
I don't yet know how this is gonna affect me as a non CA/CO resident. It feels like one of those things that's unworkable if full diligence is given to enforcing the law as written, but ends up being a nothingburger because the hassle is too great to enforce. IOW, they got their law, declared victory, and life went on as usual for everyone else.
 
lxskllr said:
I don't yet know how this is gonna affect me as a non CA/CO resident. It feels like one of those things that's unworkable if full diligence is given to enforcing the law as written, but ends up being a nothingburger because the hassle is too great to enforce. IOW, they got their law, declared victory, and life went on as usual for everyone else.
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In the short term it almost certainly will be a nothingburger, especially on Linux. But it does seem like a bad omen for things to come.
 
Really scary where things are heading. It seems more and more sites/products are requiring ID now, I can see this becoming the norm and we completely lose anonymity online. Governments hate the idea that we can be anonymous, they want to watch our every move. Would not put it past them to mandate all websites/products to ask ID and keep track of it. They already do to some extent via KYC laws it's just that it only applies to certain types of sites and not all of them.
 
The law in Colorado appears to require the user to enter a number. (Edit: Which might represent an age in years, or a date of birth.) It doesn't require that number to be accurate, nor that any proof of accuracy be provided. So it seems pretty pointless to me.
 
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Ken g6 said:
The law in Colorado appears to require the user to enter a number. It doesn't require that number to be accurate, nor that any proof of accuracy be provided. So it seems pretty pointless to me.
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The purpose of this is simply to get the government's foot into the door, as it were. Once the lemmings are conditioned to comply with this stupid requirement, it will almost certainly get more invasive as there will undoubtedly be more onerous follow-on legislation passed if the courts say this is legal.

I vaguely recall reading an article a while back stating that this type of legislation is also being looked at by several countries in the EU as well.

What is retarded about the whole thing is that most of us only have one user account on a machine. Entering an age (or a date of birth) at account setup means nothing if the person using the computer isn't the person who who actually installed the OS and set up the initial user account.

Unless the machine will be required to intentionally and continually pester users asking them their age. If it doesn't do this, otherwise, the only other way to actually comply with the intent of these stupid-arsed laws is to require every single user on a particular machine to have their own separate user account on that machine.

Because of all the intra-state (as well as international) issues these types of laws create, I personally feel that the issue should be preempted by federal legislation via Congress (if we actually had a functional one, that is).
 
The number would have to be valid so it sends you a code though, and the phone company is going to have all your info. This also makes it harder to have multiple accounts and if your number gets banned then you can't just make a new account either. From a site admin point of view it does make it easy to block spammers though...
 
Red Squirrel said:
The number would have to be valid so it sends you a code though, and the phone company is going to have all your info. This also makes it harder to have multiple accounts and if your number gets banned then you can't just make a new account either. From a site admin point of view it does make it easy to block spammers though...
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Not a phone number. A number for age, like 26, or 52. Or a date, which might or might not be a date of birth.
 
Red Squirrel said:
The number would have to be valid so it sends you a code though, and the phone company is going to have all your info. This also makes it harder to have multiple accounts and if your number gets banned then you can't just make a new account either. From a site admin point of view it does make it easy to block spammers though...
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Everyone likely already has all of your information. Due to all the data breaches that have occurred over the last 15 years, even the concept of privacy is now dead.

The criminals know more about you than you do. Or, if they don't, they easily can if they want to.
 
Steltek said:
Everyone likely already has all of your information. Due to all the data breaches that have occurred over the last 15 years, even the concept of privacy is now dead.

The criminals know more about you than you do. Or, if they don't, they easily can if they want to.
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True but that data is still jumbled up in a way that makes it a bit harder to use. If they require actual ID it's way more granular as they now have a database that links your data to you specifically. All the breeches are a horrible thing though, and companies should be held liable when they happen. Especially when it's info such as real name, phone numbers and addresses since then it can be used to link your account to you as a person.

Either way though it should be a site's choice if they want to require that info or not, and not the government forcing it. Government needs to GTFO of our lives.
 
Illinois is apparently jumping on the crazy clown bandwagon with California and Colorado:

 
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Wonder how long until they just do like North Korea where they're only allowed to use Red Star OS. I can see them do the same here where you're only allowed to install specific OSes from a list of government approved ones.

I remember many years ago a satire article about Lunix, the illegal hacker operating system. That article might end up turning into truth lol.
 
JFC this data privateering corpo-bigbrother crap needs to stop.


i'm proposing a system for verifying age that theoretically avoids creating a juicy target data trove:

states dmv already have age/name/etc databases, so when they issue a DL or ID card, there is an "above 18" data value that is Y/N. (you can add a secondary value for -2 for things that want to verify age 16 etc)

the dmv issues a some sort of numeric code as a public key type identifier that is printed on the DL/ID.
when a website/game/etc wants to verify the person is 18+ they ask for the public key; the person enters the number code; the site queries the DMV for the "above 18" and the DMV returns a Yes or No.

no personal data is given to the company/site/game and everyone who is and adult gets to do whatever transaction/business with minimal hassle. other than the odd kid using grandma's age verify code, children are gated out and no one gets to mine data.


it doesnt necessarily have to be just the DMV but the idea is to use institutions that already have the data rather than creating new targets for the corpo/techbro.
 
Red Squirrel said:
O just drop the entire thing. Parents should be the ones that are responsible for parenting their kids, not webmasters, not app developers, not the government. Government needs to get out of our lives.
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Yup, parents are never going to get radicalised into doing everything big tech wants them to do. Nosiree! /s

I think you need to understand that whether you want it or not, there will always be organisations that are seeking to control the populace, the only thing that changes are their methods of steering the ship. Now you can either have organisations that are elected by the people (and so therefore there is an element of consent), or ones that aren't.
 
I have to admit I am a little excited that this intrusion, if it goes through, will get some of my family to come to me asking about switching to linux 😀
 
lxskllr said:
Checkout the hardware section also :^D

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The Ageless Device

"A physical computing device designed to satisfy every element of the California Digital Age Assurance Act's regulatory scope while deliberately refusing to comply with its requirements. The device costs less than lunch and will be handed to children. "

I absolutely adore creative malicious compliance when it happens to stupid people that actually deserve it.
 
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