cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/62278765

Software changes for compliance with age-verification laws are being pushed a bit everywhere in Linux-development; for example:

It’s interesting that it’s the same small group of people behind these pull requests, and that discussion threads in them have been locked owing to a great amount of negative criticisms.

They say “we have to comply with the law”. Which also means that if “the law” in the future will require proper verification, handling to 3rd-parties, or whatnot, then they will comply.

Well, it’s their right to. They don’t owe anything to anyone, and are under no obligation to report to users or to the community, nor to pay heed to anybody’s wishes.

If things proceed in this direction, we users may at some point have to choose between privacy-friendly Linux distributions or legal Linux distributions. People who, like me, are worried, need to start thinking about concrete actions to take before it’s too late: where to develop such distros? which channels to download and distribute them from? And so on. (And of course, more generally we need to write and protest to politicians, organize protest marches, go on strike, refuse to comply…)

It’s good to remind to those who keep on repeating the words “legal” and “illegal” that for example Nelson Mandela was, technically speaking, a criminal who did and promoted illegal activity. This happens when laws become immoral.

  • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    2 days ago

    Linux is used in so many places where age verification makes no sense that I find it highly unlikely there will be “illegal” distros.

    Like, if I spin up an EC2 instance to use as a server will I need to verify my age? If I create SSH users for my coworkers will they have to verify their age? What about service users like the ones used in systemd? What about Linux embedded in industrial controls?

    I ask because all of those could be used to circumvent age restrictions, and that’s just off the top of my head.

      • AbidanYre@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        I’m interested in where the line is for adding this stuff.

        What if Hemmingford, NE passes the same law but wants your favorite color instead of dob? What if India says the OS needs to verify your caste, or any number of oppressive countries want your religion as a field? Hell, the US is like one step away from saying your gender assigned at birth needs to be tracked.

        • gian @lemmy.grys.itEnglish
          11·
          2 days ago

          What if Hemmingford, NE passes the same law but wants your favorite color instead of dob?

          You simply input a random color. How they can check if it is true ? Same for any other field.

          What if India says the OS needs to verify your caste, or any number of oppressive countries want your religion as a field? Hell, the US is like one step away from saying your gender assigned at birth needs to be tracked.

          In some countries it would be illegal to ask for such data. (EU for example)

          Then I totally agree that this law is beyond stupid.

          • AbidanYre@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 day ago

            You simply input a random color. How they can check if it is true ? Same for any other field.

            The point there is that complying with the whims of every town on the planet gets to be unmanageable. A town with <1000 people deciding what fields are present for the other 8 billion is insane. I picked color as an example for something dumb that wouldn’t matter. I hoped that was obvious.

            And if you can just lie about it, then why even bother including the field at all?

            In some countries it would be illegal to ask for such data. (EU for example)

            Exactly. How does systemd decide which set of laws to follow? The ones that say you need to report the data or the ones that say you can’t?

            • gian @lemmy.grys.itEnglish
              1·
              8 hours ago

              The point there is that complying with the whims of every town on the planet gets to be unmanageable. A town with <1000 people deciding what fields are present for the other 8 billion is insane.

              Nah, if the problem is the whim of small town I don’t think someone would go to the trouble to implement it. The problem is if the law is from a country, and even in this case it would not be obvious that someone would do something.

              Then there we could start a discussion about how this was handled in Systemd, but it out of scope.

              I picked color as an example for something dumb that wouldn’t matter. I hoped that was obvious.

              I know it was just an example.

              And if you can just lie about it, then why even bother including the field at all?

              Because who write the law do not understand anything about it and they are naive enough to think that everyone will answer sincerely.

              Exactly. How does systemd decide which set of laws to follow? The ones that say you need to report the data or the ones that say you can’t?

              That should be asked to the guy who implemented the feature and to the maintainer of Systemd. But the real problem here is that they think that what US laws say are valid everywere in the world. (Not that I have any confidence that Pottering and the other guy would answer in some intelligent way…)