California's Age Verification Bill Passes with Linux Exemption Intact (linuxiac.com)
- Reference: 0185313182
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/08/31/0549210/californias-age-verification-bill-passes-with-linux-exemption-intact
- Source link: https://linuxiac.com/californias-age-verification-bill-passes-with-linux-exemption-intact/
> Back in May, [2]we reported that California lawmakers amended Assembly Bill 1856 to carve open-source operating systems out of the state's upcoming age verification requirements. Three months later, that exemption survived the legislative process intact, and the bill has cleared both chambers of the California Legislature... sending the measure to Engrossing and Enrolling, the final legislative preparation stage before it can be presented to Governor Gavin Newsom...
>
> For operating systems that are covered, AB 1856 builds on California's Digital Age Assurance Act, which is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2027. Under the current text, when an operating system runs on a device and includes an account setup feature, its provider must offer an interface that asks the account holder for the birth date, age, or both, of the device's primary user during account setup. The operating system must then be capable of providing a digital age signal to covered application stores and application developers through a reasonably consistent real-time API. Instead of exposing a precise birth date, the signal identifies one of four age ranges: under 13, 13 through 15, 16 through 17, or 18 and older... Covered application stores must request the signal from the operating system and make it available to developers.
[1] https://linuxiac.com/californias-age-verification-bill-passes-with-linux-exemption-intact/
[2] https://linuxiac.com/california-bill-adds-open-source-carve-out-to-age-verification-rules/
You think we won something? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its an age bracket now. In three years the owned media will start pushing "accurate age information would have prevented this", in 10 years it will be a left vs right thing. In 15 it will pass, shoved into the back of a budget omnubus. This is the VERY OBVIOUS thin edge of a wedge. When identity infrastructure is standardized and normalized thats when the screws will start to tighten.
Re: You think we won something? (Score:2)
You realize they'll get your birthdate within a day or two as you transition into a new group. Maybe on a service or two it takes a couple of weeks to update, but it's still close enough.
Once a feature becomes available to you at an age change you're going to want to transition to that group as soon as possible.
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The OSS exception prevents something being taken away. That is a win, even if we did not win something.
My hope is that tons of teens will find out how actually easy installing and using Linux is.
Incidentally, Windows "infrastructure" is NOT ready for standardization at all. Too insecure, too unreliable and no 2nd source.
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> The OSS exception prevents something being taken away. That is a win, even if we did not win something.
And what is that something?
All the OS age verification stuff does is avoid the third party age verification systems currently in place for things like Discord and other stuff. If you use Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android, the age verification can be done via an attestation from the OS. All the Linux exception does is not require Linux to support it.
That means a Linux user wanting to use Discord and accessing
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The exception only gives websites and other software a way to break if you insist on using Free Software. Every malicious bot, every child predator, every last bad actor is going to pretend to be Free Software, and people needing to comply with the law are simply going to block everything that isn't made by Google, Microsoft, or Apple. The reason that this got through the legislature is that it is the opposite of a win for Free Software, it is a devastating loss.
The commercial software vendors are going
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Except that now, not providing the age bracket signal will itself be a signal. This could be the beginning of a new way of information on the web being specifically refused to people on open source operating systems.
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Can we just vote the bastards out? Please? It would also help if we could permanently attach scarlet letters that would essentially make them un-electable in the future.
Redhate (Score:2)
Redhat will be subject to this requirement because their license places additional restrictions on the GPL and they are therefore in violation and have no right to use the code covered by that license
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Their distro is by far the worst to use anyways. Broken in so many ways.
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> Their distro is by far the worst to use anyways. Broken in so many ways.
Now, now. Be fair. Ubuntu works really hard to leapfrog them from one release to the next in the worst to use department. And I think it's high time we all recognize that supreme effort.
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I have not used Ubuntu in a long, long time, due to numerous problems and shortcomings. Hence I am not surprised they have regressed further.
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Then we can always use RHEL clones like Rocky Linux or Alma Linux.
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Where does Android fall within this? Android is like the Windows 9x era: something running on top of DOS, but in this case Linux. It's harder to get to a Linux shell, but it's underneath the covers.
Re: Redhate (Score:2)
The kernel is not the operating system, only part of it. As long as Google is keeping parts of their system closed it makes legal sense to subject them to the requirement. As long as they are putting a lot into play services...
Excellent (Score:2)
Nothing better to make kids install and use Linux than denying them social media otherwise!
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finally, the year of linux on social media!
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If that happens, at least one good thing would have come out of social media ...
Don't you hate it (Score:2)
"the birth date, age, or both,"
When a form (either paper or online) asks for your age, date of birth, and todays date.
Surely they can do the maths
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It's the same shit porn sites asked kids in the 1990s. "What is your date of birth".
Yes sir, I was born on january 1st 1970. Now let me the see the titties.
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They asked my operating system that question. It checked it's clock and this is how it answered.
So it got a bit mixed up with the semantics of who the "you" in "your date of birth" is.
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Except this is a first step. You think they're going to stop here? This will also means a lot of Linux/BSD systems won't be able to connect to a lot of websites once California starts requiring that "signal" to be sent from the OS to the destination site.
Dual purpose age-bracket signal :o (Score:2)
This age-bracket signal effectively identifies the user on a particular machine and can be used to track them online.
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No. It is data with pretty low information content. You need a _lot_ more to do tracking.
Look, I do not like this law one bit, but pushing alarmist misstatements is not the way to fight it.
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[1]PII comes in two types: direct identifiers and indirect identifiers. Direct identifiers are unique to a person and include things like a passport number or driver's license number. A single direct identifier is typically enough to determine someone's identity. Indirect identifiers are not unique. They include more general personal details like race and place of birth. While a single indirect identifier can't identify a person, a combination can. For example, 87% of US citizens could be identified based on n [ibm.com]
[1] https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/pii
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Exactly. Won't be hard to track me using my birth date of 1/1/1601.
A N D R O I D ?? (Score:2)
AFAIK Google's Android OS is based on Linux and may fall under the exemption. I suspect there are people trying to enforce the GPL2 surouce-code obligation against Alfabet. Apple's iOS is based on Net?BSD, can be closed but may or may not meet the legal definition.
Oh the forked future... (Score:2)
Is looking SOOOO Bright! (Politicians don't seem to be aware that doing this will create an OS Black market of forks with it removed, that is so large it will eclipse the sun!) ;-D
They know it's a bad Bill (Score:2)
It's not meant to be a useful law it's meant to be a trap during the midterm campaigns. Anyone who votes against it is going to get a bunch of ads about how they put children in danger dun dun duuuun!
You got a lot of bad laws like this because voters are dumb and they don't pay a lot of attention to politics and we don't teach them things like this.
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> You got a lot of bad laws like this because voters are dumb and they don't pay a lot of attention to politics and we don't teach them things like this.
I'm with you right up until "and we don't teach them things like this." If we've learned anything from the birth of the internet, it is that knowledge and the availability of information are weakly correlated, at best.
If we're wondering why (Score:2)
[1]Three in five Americans favor stronger oversight of social media companies, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds [yahoo.com]
[2]Americans want kids shielded from the internet. They don’t trust websites or the government to do anything about it [fortune.com]
So, you want a realistic, down to earth show, that's completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots?
On a more serious note this is the result of any lack of legislative progress on a national ID or any better way to identify people online so instead we have an unenforceable patchwor
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/three-five-americans-favor-stronger-100330303.html
[2] https://fortune.com/2026/03/27/age-verification-laws-americans-survey-easily-circumventable/
Re: (Score:2)
The USA has national ID, it's called a passport. (Real ID was supposed to be a national ID, but it's been watered down so that it effectively isn't one.) The passport or passport card is the gold standard of ID because it verifies both nationality and citizenship.
The USA also has national online ID verification, it's called ID.me. It's shit, but it exists.
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25 years after 9/11 my state has started to issue real ID cards. All the 9/11 hijackers had legitimate identification to begin with. I feel safer already.
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Exactly, a passport is insufficient as an actual ID as DLs are used today for a number of reasons and real ID is still all state level patchworks, thus it's watering down. Also all of those are still not universal as they require outlays of money, any actual system will have to contain new funding and be free to obtain, that's the only way to make it actually mandatory.
ID.me is also a private entity which makes it a total non-starter for an actual national level usage.
An actual solution to this issue is go
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> Exactly, a passport is insufficient as an actual ID as DLs are used today for a number of reasons
The passport is more than sufficient as an actual ID. It is sufficient for ID in all situations. The Driver's License verifies the right to drive, and the ID at the state level. It's the driver's license which is insufficient as an ID, not the passport. The passport always verifies identity.
> ID.me is also a private entity which makes it a total non-starter for an actual national level usage.
Welcome to capitalism.
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It is not, it's too complex to obtain, too expensive currently (it would have to be made free) and was just never intended to be used that way. DLs were not either but they are already more sufficient, most places can verify a DL but only airlines and travel places are equipped to use a passport.
If we want to go that route it will require a bunch of funding because there are plenty of citizens who don't have the funds or necessary info to obtain a passport. Every try to get a new birth certificate in Amer
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Using passport as national ID is common and you could have just googled it to find out like I did [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card_policies_by_country
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And if you read that you'd see the majority keep those separate. Example in the EU only one nation uses passport as national ID (Ireland)
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Traci Lords used a driver's license to get her first job.
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The passport isn't a national ID. There are still plenty of people that live in the US legally who cannot get a US passport.
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this is the result of any lack of legislative progress on a national ID or any better way to identify people online so instead we have an unenforceable patchwork of standards and now we'll have an unenforceable patchwork of state laws on top of that. What a mess.
Um... so... good? I'm all for bureaucratic bullshit preventing the government from taking away our rights and increasing surveillance. Unfortunately this isn't all that true as the government will just contract all this out from the privat
There was no way to get rid of the exemption (Score:2)
The whole thing would have failed otherwise, because it would have effectively outlawed (F)OSS Operating Systems. That cannot be constitutional.
WSL for the win (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear god, politicials are ignorant.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't even need WSL. The exception wasn't for "Linux", it was for "GPL, BSD, MIT" and some other licenses. Yeah, just license things as close-sourced BSD/MIT, and you're all good!
Re: WSL for the win (Score:2)
I don't understand the government here.
[1]https://planet3dp.com/legislat... [planet3dp.com]
Among other things, California will effectively ban open source slicers like orcaslicer, require locked bootloaders, ban "jailbreaking" them, etc.
[1] https://planet3dp.com/legislation/