And honestly this is more than they really should even have to do. I think it does go above their obligation. They're doing Offcom a favor here, they don't even have to figure out how to block it themselves.
> there's a sense that blocking these imports is an affront to base philosophical freedom in a way that prohibiting physical imports isn't.
It would serve UK legislators well to explore that tingling sense some more before they consider any further efforts in this direction, but that's just my two pence.
Code is speech. Open source projects are an exercise in speaking publicly. This law mandates particular speech in your otherwise Free as in freedom code.
How are you not outraged? People are missing the above forest for the "oh but it's a tiny little easy API and I don't see any downsides" trees.
I think those boomer firms are asleep at the wheel and this kind of market engineering will completely blindside them. Vanguard can't even figure out how to show me my cost basis on the same screen as the one where I sell a security. What could they possibly be doing to prepare for this?
> it's basically the government said "no asbestos in food" and some contrarians
it's actually the government saying "you must include salt in your food" and a few people who cook dinner at home and don't care for salt set up a website teaching you how to desalinate your... (well, there's no direct continuation of the metaphor here, but the point is it's very important that this is not the government banning a developer from implementing something, it is them mandating a developer implement something. That's far more troubling than an "asbestos ban" as in "your open source project must not fry the computers it runs on," which is equally questionable in light of "no warranty expressed or implied" but a totally different ballgame from "this API is required")
If we insist on stretching this absurd metaphor, the government would be issuing civil penalties to "water distributors" who provide water without the requisite floridation, where "water distributors" includes not just Aquafina for selling bottled water, but also the lemonade stand the kids set up in front of the house and you, in your home kitchen, serving your house guests water from your reverse-osmosis private reserve.
It seems metaphor is important to you, so hopefully this thoroughly illustrates the insanity of this law.
The point is there are no carve outs (for open source). Your toy operating system is just as liable as Microsoft to implement this. In the real world, the health department does not require your home cocktail hour beverages to meet industrial water supply mineralization standards.
Perhaps you believe that analogue is "a few people raising a stink" because you don't really believe the "health department" would go after my "little open source water faucet." But the way the law is written, there's nothing stopping them. And none of us want to be the test case. And that's not even getting into the whole "compelled speech" problem, but I'm going to have to leave that line of argument to someone else to analogize.
That's only going to apply to children, since there's only one age group for adults. There are definitely ways to solve that, too. It's not perfect, but I much prefer it to laws that force websites to ask for ID, or laws that do the same thing by making websites liable for children accessing them.
> Anti-cheat just has to keep the barrier high enough so regular players don't think the game is infested with cheaters.
And even that's the (relatively) straightforward part. The hard part is doing this without injuring the kernel enough that the only sensible solution for the security conscious is a separate PC for gaming.
Just because it's easy doesn't mean it's right. Give legislative busybodies the ability to force this little flag into the OS because it's no big deal, and next year they'll say "hey, make sure you only report 18+ if secure boot is enabled" and 5 years later it'll be "hey, you can only report 18+ if one of our Identity Partners has confirmed it."
It's the principle of the matter. The State should not be allowed to compel speech (what code you write) in your open source project. It may sound stubborn but if we don't fight it now it will only grow little by "easy feature" little.
I want to agree with you, but if it's my system and my browser reporting my bracket, wouldn't it be trivially easy to inject an http-header with the age I want to report?
And by "trivially easy" I mean "somebody already posted how-to for windows to stackoverflow"
You're trivializing how difficult tampering with OS internals in locked down secure boot environments can be. Just look at the state of Android custom roms. Devices that are years old can be impossible to modify the OS on.
Look at projects like byeDPI. Essentially, it's just a VPN service that runs on the phone itself.
You phone connection is passed to this VPN that modifies http-headers.
I kinda did forgot about Android, yeah. You can't exactly rewrite OS rules there. But it's no less trivial* on Android, you just have to solve it from different angle.
* assuming someone will just write the app, and share it. But since similar projects exist, it wouldn't be a reach to say that it's doable and some folks would be interested to do it.
I know most of this facts quite well. And yet I believe that the big corps actions are a desperate attempt to extract last drops of value before enshittificating themselves in the hole in the ground.
It's the laws and the FOSS that matter. You can circumvent almost anything, and – if the laws allow – you can share it freely.
I feel like we disagree on "you can't really enforce laws or policies like this without locking down the OS and hardware". In my eyes you can enforce the suggested law, without locking down on things. The law as written requires sending brackets, it doesn't require for them to be in any way to be true. It doesn't require OS to check.
I presume that if a child could get around this restrictions, they could make a choice between following them or getting around them. In my mind it's akin to "don't trespass" signs. Obviously a child could trespass them quite easily, and yet it's on parent to teach them why they shouldn't
Note that I know that we don't know yet what are the restrictions and how they could be enforced. I just don't get how we got from what we know to "lockdown all platforms must happen".
The problem is not that it's hard to cheat (it's easy), the problem is it makes you officially a liar and liable for "illegal app use".
It might not be a problem for you, but some underage kid, who lied about their age, gets addicted to a game with in-game purchases and gets into financial trouble now has no recourse against the company who made the addicting game.
There's no liability in the law for a child who uses an over-18-signaled account and accesses over-18 content, nor for a parent who gave that account to the child. It's all the parent's decision if the child should be restricted or not.
I'm not a lawyer, but it's clear that this changes the narrative. If some technical restriction is in place (OS level age statement with apps who enforce it) and the kid circumvents that, it's easy for a company to claim that they did their part and all blame is on the kid. Without that, it's trickier for the company who intentionally created some addictive product to prove that they did enough to protect the kid.
You see a slippery slope and I see a reasonable compromise. It's a wildly popular opinion that we should control which age groups can use social media[0][1][2]. Do you think these polls are astroturfed? If not, it's clear people want some sort of age verification, and I think California's way is the least intrusive.
And I know someone is going to say 'then we should regulate social media sites to force them to verify the users' ages...' no god please no. Normalizing cloud-based age verification is far, far worse than AB 1043. If there is a principle to be set that should be: cloud should trust local, not vice versa.
People, generally, have no grasp of what they really want or what downstream effects of what they think they want look like. They don't know what it would take to effect that ban. In fact, I would speculate that if the same group were asked "should you, personally, have to scan your ID to visit Facebook," you'd see a meaningful shift in responses. (yes, I know that's not the way this particular CA proposal would be implemented, the point is that people are fickle and polls are not a good guide for lawmaking)
I also don't base my principles on the desires of the masses. It's our duty as people who understand the technology to prevent the controversy-de-jour from wagging our dog.
I share your feeling that if everyone did it this way and the world promised to stop making bad, privacy-invading ID laws I could grin and bear it. I don't see that happening, thus I am hostile to it in any flavor.
> They don't know what it would take to effect that ban.
Exactly. This is why if there is no some less evil way to appease these stupid people we'll go all the way straight to the evilest way. Stupid and uninformed people do actually vote.
I'm curious what a poll of public opinion would say about certain demographics in 1930's Germany. Does that seem like a good argument for what the government should and shouldn't do?
A reasonable compromise? With who? Who here is somehow required to "compromise"?
Debian's interests, whether they know it or not, is for the government not to be able to mandate what features must be present in their open source software. They should be happy to have such a vocal advocate involved in this important fight.
Scene. Ext. Town street. Night. Invader military vehicles patrolling, announcing curfew through loudspeakers.
TEEN: *runs at invaders* Hey, you thugs! You can't make me obey! I support Bob, over there! *points at Bob's house*
THUGS: Grrr! Thugs smash!
BOB: Please! I have done nothing! I don't know who that teen is!
JOE: You should be happy to have such a vocal advocate in this important fight.
NARRATOR: Ironically, Bob and Jane were quietly plotting strategy and tactics for the Resistance. Until they and their children were dragged out into the street that night.
And honestly this is more than they really should even have to do. I think it does go above their obligation. They're doing Offcom a favor here, they don't even have to figure out how to block it themselves.
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