Despite signing it, Newsom issued a statement urging the legislature to amend the law before its effective date, citing concerns from streaming services and game developers about “complexities such as multi-user accounts shared by a family member and user profiles utilized across multiple devices.”
Then why the fuck did you sign it if it wasn’t ready and needed amendments? Is this what you’re going to do as president too?
Rhetorical, of course. Note how he doesn’t say he disagrees with the bill, just that it needed to consider family devices.
If this is who wins the primary, we are done. We’re basically already done, for sure, but him winning the primary would be the final nail in the coffin.
Are children not allowed to use computers now?
So now when I spin up a VM at my sysadmin job I have to tell the server I’m an adult? Does anyone actually know what the fuck we are doing here? What an absolute clown show.
This is what happens when boomers never die and stay in office for a lifetime. They don’t understand technology but are allowed to make the laws that govern their use.
When can just change the laws when they leave
Wut?
Many people here are going off on wild tangents over this. You should just read the law, it’s only a couple thousand words of quite plain English.
Many here have taken completely incorrect assumptions from the title. This law is for developers, not users.
Summary:
- Requires OS devs ask for DOB, age, or both at account creation time.
- Requires an API that allows app store devs to request this age data for the account. At minimum this API must signal that the account is a member of one of these categories: ‘user under 13, user over 13 and under 16, user is over 16 and under 18, user is over 18’.
- Explicitly bars OS devs from sending more data than explicitly necessary to meet 1 (hint: photo ID, facial recognition).
- Explicitly bars app devs recieving the data from requesting more data from the OS nor the App store.
- Bars app stores from using the data for any other reason and specifically calls out anticompetitive practices.
- Bars app store and OS devs from sharing this data with any third party for any other reason than to comply with this law.
- Has injunctions and civil penalties of $2500 (max per user) affected by negligent violations (eg a child account is served adult content), and $7500 (max per user) affected by intentional violations.
The only problem I have with this is that it should only apply to commercial software (app stores and OS). Libre/FOS software should not have to police ages on their app stores, due to their far reduced budgets (often zero), developer time, and the nature of the software being generally anti-centralized and anti-surveillance-capitalism. Though I’d be fine with it for FOSS software distributed via commercial app stores, as long as they gave a longer lead time to implement (EG a couple of years).
The only problem have with this is that it should only apply to commercial software (app stores and 0S). Libre/FOS software should not have to police ages on their app stores,
It’s a bit like saying the only problem with the Titanic is the water inside.
The law is bad, whether it can be worse or not is just tangential. But still, this law as is applies to computers, phones… And nas, some routers, watches, advance calculators… As they all have OS and can install apps. As per app stores, guess what, thats the GNOME app store, but also flatpak, jellyfin (can install apps as plugins), pip, docker, git… And what about plain executables? Githut should ask for your age too to download artifacts?
Porn started with only age verification by the user as a prompt, and we see where that is going now.
Does that mean if minor need to use computer to write essay as homework in Libre Office they couldn’t, cause age verification?
How will this affect embedded os like freertos or vxworks? There are lightbulbs that have operating systems these days, am I going to have to show ID to turn on my light?
My guess would be these OS’s just wont do it and stop doing business in that state.
Lucky for you, you can just download them anyway.
My guess is also that these lawmakers dont care nor considered other OS’s than Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android.
As those are not general purpose computing devices, and additionally have no app store - no, and no.
From the law text:
© “Application” means a software application that may be run or directed by a user on a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device that can access a covered application store or download an application.
cool, then neither is my desktop pc. i get all my software on 5 1/4" floppies.
For everyone trying to figure out how this would be enforced, it’s not about being proactively enforced. (and data collection is 99% of it)
It’s about adding a double-tap “Well, these people also violated our age verification law, so they have to pay a fine,” added to any incident where it’s convenient to add this in. If a minor sends another minor a snap that would trigger CP laws, and one of the phones isn’t age verified correctly, fine to the parents and hands up in the air “We tried!” A minor is involved in torrenting movies? “Look, kids using illegal OS! Fine to the parents!”
This is how laws work across a lot of corrupt developing countries. There’s laws for everything, but they only get applied selectively as authorities find they fit the situation. It’s hard to actually be 100% above board and do everything legally because of a few little things meant to be impossible to actually do bureaucratically. So in every situation, any set of authorities start in with the endemic leverage of “Well, we have suspicion of you selling ketamine out of your apartment. Did you do age verification on your laptop? No? Then we can seize that as a crime and see what’s on there. OR you can give up your supplier.”
uhhh. So would I need to get everyone who uses the household pc to verify age? Whats stopping a child from using the family pc that was age verified by an adult?
Please drink your age verification can…
Believe it or not, straight to jail
Underage 👇🏼, Overage 👆🏼… Jail.
Birthday? Believe it or not, jail.
Clearly the point is not tl verify the age. They want your data.
Simple solution. From now on Linux distros should ship with a big message “NOT FOR USE IN CALIFORNIA”.
You want to force age verification? No server in all of California will run. Period.
Yeah… It says just that in the article. You did read the article, right? I mean you didn’t just read the title and then rush in here to make a comment?
How people farm internet points is serious business
“My name is Microsoft, and I approved this message.”
Ah, the Glock solution.
This will not matter to most of linux, it’s non enforceable and easily circumvented.
But the issue is what they used for thumbnail. Steam deck.
Steam is bringing linux to the the masses but they won’t be able to sell any without complying to the part that all apps that can be installed must be able to ask the os to give this data.
Steam already requires your age when you look at m rated games. The only difference is that the age verification is before you get to that page.
Also, the age verification is literally just check a box. Its the less of several evils, but really if I HAVE to verify my age, Id prefer to do it this way
The law does not require photo ID uploadsor facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age, setting AB 1043 apart from similar laws passed in Texas and Utah that require “commercially reasonable” verification methods, such as government-issued ID checks.
Seems toothless. Good.
I had to scroll way, way too far for this sensible comment.
I like Lemmy, but people panic and jump to conclusions often.
Which proves we are no better than reddit users. We are just more privacy minded, but still dumb fucks with a keyboard.
Sounds like they’re lampooning the other laws tbh
Feels more like they see the direction tides are turning and they want to get ahead of it. They implement the laziest and easiest to work around age verification, and then if down the line age verification is required on a federal level, California can say they already did it.
I’ve always input my age as 1900-01-01 and I can’t change that now because that’ll show an inconsistency and we can’t have that now can we.
Enforcement against Linux distributions, however, is likely to be problematic. Distros like Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, and Gentoo have no centralized account infrastructure, with users downloading ISOs from mirrors worldwide, and can modify source code freely. These small distros lack legal teams or resources to implement the required API, so a more realistic outcome for non-compliant distros is a disclaimer that the software is not intended for use in California.
That’s what MidnightBSD did.
California residents are not authorized to use MidnightBSD for desktop use in the state of California effective January 1, 2027. California law CA AB1043 requires a complex age verification system implemented for operating systems with no exceptions for small open source projects. At this time, we don’t have development time or a plan in place for this.
They, eh, want for every local user account to be tied to some central database?
In general this is going out of hand, age verification is parents’ responsibility.
Wow California leading the way to fascism, who woulda thunk?
This kinda seems like a roundabout way of avoiding government /corporate age verification laws? Like it doesn’t require ID verification or biometrics and runs a local api to verify age.
Can someone smarter than me please explain if this is a good thing or not?
Colorado Dems pushing a similar law rn.
Fucking idiots.
Because it’s not that crazy or authoritarian and is basically what most websites already do to “verify” you age (which is to say nothing but asking you your age). But the onus is now being put on OS makers, with an additional clause to build an API for other developers to access so they also can “know” a user’s age.
The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age
It always ALWAYS comes step by step!
First they will introduce age “non-real-check”, then they will enforce the check: you have accepted the principle, so what’s the big deal if we actually check it?
The photo ID requirements are what will come next.
Maybe. But it will be funny for a little bit when the data starts showing the average age of a Californian is over 200 years.
They’ll tag all the Linux users with “1 January 1970”
I am ready to believe those that allowed this law to pass were.
It’s been that way for a very long time.
What if no internet? How set up?
Technically, Linux is not an operating system, just a kernel, so I’m not sure how this would be implemented.
See, here’s the big open secret. All these politicians, who make all these rules? They don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. They think a kernel is something that gets stuck in your teeth whrn you eat corn.
But they do have a clue how laws work, and the element of fuzziness in who’s guilty is a beneficial effect.
That was a 5’19 kernel operating in my mouth, I swear.
That’s my guess. These people have no clue what they’re doing.
Most of them are old enough to remember when politics was invented.
You just said it, it’s a rule for operating systems, which means that whoever ships Linux as part of an operating system has the onus of implementing this.
If you do Linux from scratch, that would be you I guess.
Linux being a kernel is hardly relevant though. The law lies the responsibility at the “operating system providers”, looking at the definition in the article that would be the developers/organisation behind the individual distributions. Politicians don’t care if each distro comes up with their own solution or gets built-in to the kernel.
But personally I think they all just give this law the finger, put a ‘not for use in California’ in their licenses and forget about this brainfart.
