Colorado Lawmakers Push for Age Verification at the Operating System Level (pcmag.com) 165
Colorado lawmakers are proposing SB26-051, a bill that would require operating systems to register a user's age bracket and share it with apps via an API. PCMag reports: The bill comes from state Sen. Matt Ball and Rep. Amy Paschal, both Democrats. "The intent is to create thoughtful safeguards for kids online through a privacy-forward framework for age assurance," Ball told PCMag. "Unlike some laws in other states, SB 51 doesn't require users to share personally identifiable information or use facial recognition technology."
The legislation also promises to centralize the age check through the OS, rather than mandating that each app enforce their own age-verification mechanism, which can involve scanning the user's official ID, thus raising privacy and security concerns. The bill also forbids the sharing of the age-bracket data for any other purpose. But it looks like it's easy to bypass the age check proposed by SB26-051. The legislation itself doesn't mention any state ID check to verify the owner's age. In addition, the bill doesn't seem to cover websites, only apps and app stores. The report notes that the legislation was based on California's bill AB 1043, which was passed last year and expected to take effect January 1, 2027.
The legislation also promises to centralize the age check through the OS, rather than mandating that each app enforce their own age-verification mechanism, which can involve scanning the user's official ID, thus raising privacy and security concerns. The bill also forbids the sharing of the age-bracket data for any other purpose. But it looks like it's easy to bypass the age check proposed by SB26-051. The legislation itself doesn't mention any state ID check to verify the owner's age. In addition, the bill doesn't seem to cover websites, only apps and app stores. The report notes that the legislation was based on California's bill AB 1043, which was passed last year and expected to take effect January 1, 2027.
They should go fuck themselves (Score:5, Insightful)
I can verify that these lawmakers are old enough to go fuck themselves.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Honestly, I applaud them. These are non-technical people who are doing their best to find a solution to a real-world problem that still satisfies the concerns of more technical people.
It may still be a flawed approach (arguably *any* age verification is inherently flawed) ... but compared to so many other mindless idiot lawmakers in other states, who pass all sorts of idiotic nonsense with a "won't someone please think of the children!" mindset (and zero desire to understand or address technical concerns),
Not a rhetorical question (Score:5, Insightful)
What problem do you think they are trying to solve?
Re: Not a rhetorical question (Score:3, Informative)
Do you not think that, as a parent, you should have the ability to prevent your young children from seeing violence and sexuality (including videos of murders, extreme fetish videos, etc.)... without having to completely block them from the Internet?
I don't know of any reasonable people who are against solving that. What reasonable people are concerned about are the side effects (for adults) of any solution.
Re: Not a rhetorical question (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't prevent anyone from seeing such things unless you keep them locked in a windowless room. Sooner or later they are going to come into contact with such material. If this material is forbidden it will also be more attractive, so kids will share it amongst themselves at school for example.
So given that sooner or later kids are going to come across this material unless you take draconian measures to prevent it, surely its better that when they first encounter such things they do so under the guidance of responsible adults who can explain what it is.
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Correct. This is as it should be. Young kids are simply not equipped to deal with some of this. It can cause real trauma. As kids get closer to adulthood, parents with good judgement will relax the controls as they see their kids' judgement developing.
If this material is forbidden it will also be more attractive
So this isn't any of your business, regardless of how true your statement may be. Parents get to parent how they see fit
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If this material is forbidden it will also be more attractive
So this isn't any of your business, regardless of how true your statement may be. Parents get to parent how they see fit, within parameters society defines[1].
Once you start advocating for laws that restrict everyone, not just your children, it becomes my business.
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As a parent, this is part of the reason I'm against laws like this. It takes choices out of parents' hands.
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surely its better that when they first encounter such things they do so under the guidance of responsible adults who can explain what it is.
Ahh, responsible adults, that's a BIG can of worms :)
Are those the ones spending family holidays in a nudist colony or the ones that abhor the display of a (female) nipple?
And please find your own equivalents for political and societal ideas.
Re: Not a rhetorical question (Score:2)
You know, I'm both old enough to have kids and young enough to have grown up with unfiltered internet in the late 90s. And plenty of gore and sex in good old fashioned PG13 and R rated movies in the mid 90s.
Boys being boys, we got our share of nudity over 56k dialup and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of us didn't grow up into sex perverts and deviants. It's the genxers and boomers who couldn't really handle it apparently. Not sure what the greenhaired zoomers are on about, but they seem to be a small min
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You have a right to raise your kids how you want, and I strongly support that right. If you want to expose your kids to graphic violence of people being murdered, or extreme (eg. that cup video) porn, I will defend to the death your right to do so!
But I also will defend parents who want to let their children use the Internet, but still have some control over what those children see ... as long as it doesn't impact adult rights. Rights are all about letting people do what they want, as long as it doesn't g
Re: Not a rhetorical question (Score:2)
Rights work as a general concept because we don't have to think about the contradictions and conflicts too much. This is because most people will go along to get along, and not in the bad way.
We don't need id checks on the sale of matches and gasoline because arson is already a crime and nearly all people have enough of a sense of self preservation to not attempt it. Same with the dangerous chemicals under your sink, the sharp knives next to the sink, baseball bats, firearms, etc.
Same with pr0n and gore. Th
Stop limiting the world to what you notice (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't prevent them from having friends without stunting their social growth. Maybe instead teach them skills to survive in a world that will be subtly hostile to them... maybe without letting them turn into some kind of unthinking redpilled cult masculinist in the process.
If I had to tell myself anything as a kid, in retrospect, it would have been "some of your friends care far more about what happens in the moment than anything that you care about longer term. If they put you in a situation where you hav
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I can't prevent them from having friends without stunting their social growth. Maybe instead teach them skills to survive in a world that will be subtly hostile to them... maybe without letting them turn into some kind of unthinking redpilled cult masculinist in the process.
Giving them a coddled media experience wont prepare them for life. It wont protect them. Slow exposure to the horrors of reality while giving them the tools to deal with it is unfortunately safer over a longer period of time. Be an active parent, not someone who puts them in front of the TV and expects it to raise them for you.
Well said.
Re: Not a rhetorical question (Score:4, Insightful)
Or you could be a good parent that doesn't allow children unfettered, unsupervised access to the internet. Parents who are all for this are failures.
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Tell us you are not a parent without telling us you're not a parent.
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Or you could be a good parent that doesn't allow children unfettered, unsupervised access to the internet. Parents who are all for this are failures.
The real failures are the so called "good parents" that think they have control over their kids. Let me guess you the good parent are standing around them at school, watching them in the lock room after the game, sleeping over with their friends at their friends house.
If you think you can control the lives of your kid to the point of managing their entire experience you are a complete failure of a parent, not only because you won't be able to achieve it, but also because your kids are going to grow up to ha
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Do you not think that, as a parent, you should have the ability to prevent your young children from seeing violence and sexuality (including videos of murders, extreme fetish videos, etc.)... without having to completely block them from the Internet?
I don't know of any reasonable people who are against solving that. What reasonable people are concerned about are the side effects (for adults) of any solution.
Yes, and parents can already do that by SUPERVISING THEIR CHILDREN THEMSELVES.
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don't know of any reasonable people
That, right there, is a trap.
Clowns all the way down
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Parental controls/locks have been a thing for decades. There are lots of options out there for parents to take direct action curating content their children are able to access. The problem is already solved to the extent that it could ever be solved.
This "solution" only does two things; Transfers the responsibility of raising children from the parents to the government/corporations, and further normalizes giving up privacy in exchange for the illusion of safety. Either of these should invoke fear and anxiet
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When did you stop beating your wife?
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It's not a matter of being for vs. against solving that, it's a matter of not believing the problem has an adequate technical solution vs. believing in unicorns.
Why not pass a law that if a printed magazine has reason to believe the person looking at it is a child, it should refuse to open?
So publishers note that bound and printed paper has no ability to believe anything and just print the magazine as usual.
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No one has ever accidentally found murder videos nor porn on the PBS Kids website. Check that sites are appropriate before your kid goes to them. Don't let them use the internet unsupervised until you know they can do it safely. If kids search for something an
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What problem do you think they are trying to solve?
Clearly, the problem the lawmakers are trying to solve is one of parents who, either through ignorance or laziness, aren't setting up parental controls before handing an internet-capable device over to their kids.
I've said it before... if it were anything else, cars, liquor, guns, whatever - the parents would be held accountable for their poor parenting. But because it's tech (which some people do have trouble understanding the intricacies of) and the industry itself kind of collectively does see children
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I am not convinced.
This essential just turns on parental controls by default on all devices.
As a result all these lazy parents are going to have to hand over their id to turn it off on their own devices.
I am not convinced anyone really wants to do that.
Car, liquor, and guns are interesting, but unrelated examples.
This is akin to Rock n Roll is teaching are kids to worship the devil in the 50s, and violent video games make our kids violent zombies in the 90s.
I am afraid we have not identified the problem the
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Freedom speech.
This is a "global" (western) movement, and under the excuse of "protect the children" they are pushing certain conditions that force every system to real personal identification.
Why do that when in practice they already have being collecting ALL the information? (just see Google how integrates everything and any visit in other place automatically changes the view in other products, and most accounts are identified).
BECAUSE, not bound access can claim that was made by another person.
This is ju
Re:They should go fuck themselves (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I applaud them. These are non-technical people who are doing their best to find a solution to a real-world problem that still satisfies the concerns of more technical people.
Mark my words now, what you're applauding is snitchware. It will wind up with a specific legal requirement to a specific standard which can only be met by assholes whether that's in the bill now or not. The state will interpret its legislation through the courts in a way that produces odious requirements. The only reasonable thing to do when the state is requiring that your operating system collect information about you is fight against it.
Re:They should go fuck themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm most worried that this kind of system might be impractical on a general-purpose computer and thus further fuel the drive to replace them all with user-hostile walled-garden computing machines. On a general-purpose computer what would keep someone from tampering with the age verification system or copying credentials from another system?
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You kinda glossed over the part that some states already are doing the whole "If your site is accessible in our state and shows adult content, you must age check" thing.
It's all well and good to be on your moral high horse when we're talking hypotheticals, but from where I sit, my state already flushed privacy straight down the toilet. Having my OS just send a header/flag/whatever that says "Yes, the user is an adult" would be an improvement from the current situation, unless you're deluded enough into bel
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But still, I applaud these lawmakers for taking a very different approach from most other lawmakers
I'll applaud when they take their approach and stick it up their ass.
At no point will I applaud anything about this idea. Make parents take responsibility for parenting again.
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Lawmakers are not responsible for YOUR children. Stop letting the law replace you as the parent just because you agree and are lazy and/or stupid.
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Re: They should go fuck themselves (Score:2)
Probably would be better to make it illegal for children to use the internet or a computer. These gadgets are really fucking them up.
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These people are pretty idiotic though and have obviously not talked to actual experts. Hence what they want makes no sense. There is nothing to "applaud" here.
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The problem is, rather than consulting with experts to see what might be possible and practical, they're trying to handwave a solution into being.
What sort of API are they hoping for? Should I add a DOB env variable to .bashrc? If it's not there, assume adult? Should the variable contain a base64 representation of time_t? YYYYMMDD?
Why would my app ever have clear and convincing evidence of anything? It's not an AI, you click the button, it does the thing the button is for.
Re: They should go fuck themselves (Score:2)
Why are you cheerleading the Starmer approach of ID for every website when people can surf anonymously if parents just enable the young age group for phones and computers? This is way better legislation.
Re: They should go fuck themselves (Score:2)
Honestly⦠this sounds way better than the current state of affairs where you have to share your government if or credit card with loads of random 3rd parties with what I bet is all the security of a wet paper bag.
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I can verify that these lawmakers are old enough to go fuck themselves.
I'm pretty sure most everybody is capable of fucking themselves well before the age of legality.
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I wish American leadership would discriminate a little more based on age.
Re: They should go fuck themselves (Score:2)
Operating System Level per govment rules will brea (Score:2)
Operating System Level per govment rules will break the internet in many ways also who is runing the ID check in the 1st place and will that even work in all states??
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Not just that: how about operating systems that do not require account creation - such as FreeDOS? And why should government dictate account creation in the first place?
The parental controls that exist in most operating systems are adequate, and place the power and responsibility where it belongs - in the hands of parents/guardians. It's not the job of OS admins to police any of that
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how about operating systems that do not require account creation - such as FreeDOS?
Then you won't be able to run apps that make use of the age verification API. Maybe a dating or sports betting app won't provide useful function if they can't get an answer from the OS about user age.
Re:Operating System Level per govment rules will b (Score:5, Interesting)
It'll break everything.
If a toaster is running a low level RTOS, how does that toaster verify the age of its users?
Do linux compilation scripts have to refuse to compile if someone doesnt compile the youthbanner.so module
Will my automatic telescope tracker now require me to punch in my drivers license into its little LED panel?
Technologically illiterate dystopian stupidity.
Re: Operating System Level per govment rules will (Score:2)
I would imagine that the web site owners would be told âoeyouâ(TM)re not allowed to send any naughty data if the OS doesnâ(TM)t have support for the APIâ.
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Because they are pushing for a different motive (to know how does what) they won't care if RTOS doesn't do identification.
They will said that it depends on the conditions. And the conditions is if the user has the freedom of interact and speech freely in Internet with it.
That's the reason they attack the main desktop and mobile OS, not routers or whatever.
At current stage this is gonna be an absurd change. They will put an app that it will be easily skipped.
That's the reason that, if people doesn't drop thi
Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Or are these geniuses going to outlaw an entire OS?
most server run LINUX so good luck banning that an (Score:2)
most server run LINUX so good luck banning that and going ISS
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I believe you meant IIS... and most servers running linux serve the web with apps like Apache, Nginx, TinyHTTPd, MySQL, CouchDB, Memcache... and beyond that custom api's with python, perl, ruby, and go.
Re:Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry, the systemd team is already on it!
Re:Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
And all that's required to bypass liquor store age verification laws (which some people seem real fond of using as a real-world analogy) is a kid swiping the stuff from their parent's fridge. Oops. We don't really go through extraordinary lengths to age gate things even in meatspace; a car for example, will start and drive just fine as long as you have the key and can physically reach the controls, regardless of your age.
Realistically, all this has to cover is OSes that are preinstalled on mainstream consumer devices. It doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough for lawmakers to say "Look, we did something. If your little hellspawn got around it because they installed Linux or used a fake account, now that's on you as a parent."
From where I sit, this seems like a reasonable compromise over having every damn site on the internet intended for adults checking your ID. Pick your poison.
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And then you will find that lots of things become inaccessible if you are not running one of those mainstream systems. So instead of a free and open internet, you have "the microsoft network".
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And then you will find that lots of things become inaccessible if you are not running one of those mainstream systems. So instead of a free and open internet, you have "the microsoft network".
And then you will find that lots of things become inaccessible if you are not running one of those mainstream systems.
You've pretty much described how things already work in the mobile realm, where some companies insist that you can only access their services via an app that happens to only be available for Android and iOS.
I didn't think I had to spell it out, but obviously someone with mod points clearly didn't get it: In an ideal world, parents who want age restrictions on the internet would configure a device's parental controls, as they should've in the first place. We don't live in that ideal world though, and site-
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you very much do not need good luck to prevent kids from installing linux
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Well yes, we already have plenty of banking/"security" apps that will only run on a phone. Now strictly speaking Android is Linux, but it's getting locked down tighter and tighter.
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They won't let you buy hardware (Score:2)
This is a systemic problem. You cannot solve it by hiding in your own little world. You are going to have to engage with politics or you are going to have to get used to having no rights and no privacy.
And if you are currently engaged with politics and you lean right, you're going to have to stop doing that. Because this think of the children bullshit is entirely driven by the right wing. You are going to have to shift the country back to the left. Or again you are going to have
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How would I implement this?... /etc/shadow.
The birth date could be stored in a new field in
Then maybe a DBus service listening on the system bus that can be asked for the age bracket of a user. The existing systemd org.freedesktop.login1 service would match nicely.
It is too difficult to require the birth date to be entered on account creation. Instead allow the API to return that the information is missing.
To limit API usage to app stores, the DBus policies should be used. So this has to be configured on di
Self-Attestation? (Score:5, Insightful)
If there really is no ID check, then it's a self-attestation of age by whoever set up the device.
So, essentially the same as what websites have been doing since forever, except you only punch it into the device once, not per-site.
Out of all the proposals I've seen floating around, this is by far the one I'd take. Presumably parents supervise which devices their kids use much more easily than which app they're on, and will set the child's real age on the device prior to giving it to them.
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If there really is no ID check, then it's a self-attestation of age by whoever set up the device.
I'm not gonna go read the law right now because I only have to worry about California's version, but I would be stunned if they didn't require that you do it in some effective fashion, and then the question will be, what fashion is going to be effective? And it's going to come down to government ID verification, and if the OS vendor doesn't want to do it themselves, then it will be handed off to an approved vendor. And that's going to boil down to, you guessed it, id.me.
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I've skimmed the CA one. (Little) Kids can't buy computers so the theory is the parent buys the computer and creates the account for the kid. Once you have an income that lets you buy your own computer, you're probably an adult and nothing would be age gated for you so it doesn't matter if you lie about your age. Actually typing that out, I realize it doesn't prevent adults from creeping on kids which is one of the things people want these laws for.
Aged-specified accounts won't let kids swap devices with
Sounds like a win (Score:4)
Weakness of the law doesn't excuse its overreach (Score:3)
Of course, protecting children is just a convenient lever to justify this giant overreach into everyone's privacy. The ultimate goal of these people is to minitor everything everyone does. Once the mechanisms are in place, they will be used. And they will eventually be used to their full extent no matter what assurances we are given at the start.
Your justification that the law will be easy to bypass if flawed, too. Passing laws that we know will be ignored or bypassed just destroys public respect for th
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Of course, protecting children is just a convenient lever to justify this giant overreach into everyone's privacy.
The irony is that if you're using any of the mainstream mobile OSes and have a credit card on file, they already know who you are and that you're an adult.
The intent is universal surveillance and silence (Score:5, Informative)
It's taking away control over the operating systems you run on your own equipment and putting it under the AI big brother gaze so that government can enforce any future rules they so desire.
I can imagine the big tech players like Google, Microsoft and Apple will love this because it means they can lock down their operating systems even more, while sucking up even more info. Broadening their dominance over user level computing.
It also makes it almost impossible for Linux and other alternative operating systems to comply effectively making them illegal to run.
It will put computing under the thumb of the government and in so doing take away individual freedom. Something authoritarian governments have desired to do ever since the first PC's were created.
I couldn't believe it when California's bill AB 1043 was passed. This is very bad news for society and democracy.
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For family, it's Settings->Family->->Apple Account->'Age range for apps'
Children lie about their age (Score:5, Insightful)
People did it when I was a teenager.
People did it when my parents were teenagers.
People did it the in the American Revolutionary War.
People probably did it when the pharaohs ruled Egypt.
Anyone that thinks they can protect children with age verification is either:
1) A moron.
2) A lying scumbag that wants to track adults using the "think about the kids" scam.
I am thinking about the kids, you cannot stop them from lying about their age because they care far more about tricking you then you do about stopping them.
sounds awesome. (Score:5, Funny)
I definitely want this on my smart fridge.
Solution in search of a problem. (Score:5, Informative)
Kids only have access to the Internet if someone gives them that access. Generally speaking, that's going to be at home, on a phone, at school, or on a friend's device.
Parents already have the tools to regulate what their kids can do online through existing parental control tools baked into mobile OSes and apps. So a solution like this is superfluous.
Schools lock down their devices already, so that's a non-issue.
If they're on a friend's device, that's not something age-verification legislation can address unless they expect the device to take a face scan every 30 seconds to verify that the user using the device is the one who authenticated their age already.
So again I ask - what problem are we solving exactly?
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These parental controls are generally easily bypassed, and kids usually know a lot more about this stuff than their parents.
Old hardware is available cheaply or even for free, and is more than adequate for accessing "forbidden" content, there are plenty of public wifi networks a kid could connect to.
Any "controls" that exist will be seen as a challenge for the kid to overcome.
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https://www.childlight.org/new... [childlight.org]
That one (allegedly). Not sure if yet more system-level controls will help.
And what is an "operating system"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I noticed it's not explained at all in the bill.
Does that mean my car entertainment system needs to verify my age? My phone? My watch? Alexa? My "smart" light switches?
Does the account I made for my Playstation work on all Playstation devices, or just the one where I made the account?
Pretty sure my cable modem has an operating system... But I'm not even allowed to upgrade it, how am I supposed to log in and verify my age? Wait, my whole family uses that same cable modem. Does that mean it's going to need to segment traffic based on the device that it's connected to? That would mean that the OS of all my devices would need to publish my age to all my other operating systems so they can properly sort me into the correct box.
Re: And what is an "operating system"? (Score:2)
And what about people who visit the state? Will people who go to Colorado be in violation of the law for having a device without age verification?
All they need to get around it.. (Score:2)
Hmm ... (Score:2)
Protecting people from things/material they have to actively seek out to do/view. Parents, it's not others people's job to prevent your children from doing/viewing something, it's yours. Adults, if you don't want to do/view something, don't go looking for it. Everyone, take responsibility for your own actions. Some people, stop being so puritanical and wanting/trying to control others to conform to your narrow-minded thinking -- you know who you are. /rant
TempleOS to the rescue! (Score:2)
Guaranteed to make your kid a lonely virgin for life, or your money back!
hmm, best attempt yet at the unsolvable... (Score:2)
American culture is so saturated with tech and belief in science etc, that when combined with the views held among most tech types we have a serious national blindspot: many of us think everything can be solved with a gadget and/or some code. This is apparent everywhere. Cryptocurrency is an attempt to bypass reckless governments manipulating fiat currencies and spying on citizens. Cryptography and blockchain stuff is constantly proposed to fix this or that. Now AI is the tech path to nirvana. The problem i
idiots (Score:2)
How come that lawmakers behave as if they were never kids or can't remember how they themselves considered any and all "stay out, you're not old enough" measures a challenge to overcome?
Especially if it's a machine, which lacks the common sense of, you know, the dumbest door bitch who would take one look at you and say "I don't give a fuck what your fake ID here says, you're at most 15 and you're not going in".
Then I'll hire the AI and not you. (Score:2)
Its the whole Idiocracy theme again.
I was IT person and asked to check on a problem in the engineering department. New college electrical engineering grad was soldering a circuit board with it being powered and tripped a circuit breaker. I politely asked college person to power down circuit board while soldering, and they replied they know what they are doing. And this person told the engineering manager I was a moron. Engineering manager fired college person on the spot, called me into the office and s
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Moderators : Please delete. My post was meant for someplace else. Not sure how it got in this discussion.
What kind of environmental catastrophe ... (Score:2)
has polluted Colorado that severely to make their brain cells rot away to such an extend?
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That would be assuming these people had any working minds previously. From observing who goes into politics, that is a questionable assumption.
Wonâ(TM)t somebody (Score:2)
â¦think of the service accounts??
We should counterattack (Score:2)
I'm not talking about protests (although that helps and give us time).
I'm talking about offering the true solutions of this problem (that it's used as an excuse).
We need to work with SO, desktop and browser developers to add a way to DECLARE the age of the personal account. NO IDENTIFICATION. Just a declaration.
Users are setup by an admin. Well, as simple as the admin can declare the age of the users. They can't override the configuration.
Browsers can call the SO to get the age declaration of the user. And
Completely insane (Score:2)
You know exactly WHY they are all pushing for this, now it should even happen at the OS level?
This is getting absolutely insane. Orwell would have to write a new couple of books to catchup with our dystopian reality.
What's a better solution? (Score:2)
The intention is good want to protect kids, the Interweb is wild west, too many weirdos and crims. Kids aren't ready for that. Going on the internet is like going to the lawless rough part of town. It's a human instinct to protect kids, defy that and defy nature, good luck with that, fights start for much less.
"Net-Nanny" home firewalls can’t be solving the problem of protecting kids. Government could incentivise that, certify/legislate home routers that need to ship with one and block VPN. Make it la
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Social Media and Content providers get away with far too much.
Big tech can easily get away from everything. Their legal departments are enormous, they have almost unlimited capital and they can bribe any regulator.
If you push regulations for content providers to be responsible of the user content you will only destroy the competition of the small creators that push their independent sites.
You're helping the Big Tech.
Require Always-VPN mode and provide a VPN (Score:2)
Don't we already have this? (Score:2)
Like for the Microsoft Store and Xbox, you tell your user account what your age is and then you can only see items for your age or lower....... yes? no?
-m
Xen/JVM/etc loophole? (Score:2)
Is a JVM an application? Is a hypervisor an application? Is lua/cpython/awk an application?
If so, then we could theoretically split our repositories into two, where only a subset of "applications" need special handling, and higher-level a
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OMFG is a Z-machine an application? "Hey kids, come run pornograph--err, I mean pornoliteral adventure games on my dirty Frotz fork!"
Not too bad, IF don't correctly (Score:2)
I don't see a huge problem IF, when you set up a new user on the family PC or a phone, you check a box that says the user is under age, and that boolean value gets passed along. I think this addresses the concerns of parents who want to protect their kids. Maybe you can put in a date when the flag is deactivated, and leave this up to the parents?
Will there be a way to get around it? Of course, but that's probably going to be true of any system that doesn't validate a government issued ID, and create huge pr
Good luck (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The US isn't the worst [slashdot.org] when it comes to this by far.
Re: (Score:2)
Every government wants to implement this. Most are less overt about it. They are waiting for a black swan event to impose it. ie 9/11 and the Patriot Act
Re: Get out of the US (Score:2)
You would have to leave planet Earth to get away from the madness. And it is far easier to kick off the lunatics than for the majority or sane people to leave
Re: (Score:3)
We should let kids go into physical stores for porn. alcohol, weed too....oh wait they require ID.
Best leave it online where PDFs can scam kids into performing for them....
In the meantime take away a woman's right to her own body, take away rights of medical professions to do actual healthcare for women. Let the churches say what is what while they have a major PDF problem.
This same attitude is why the USA leads in school sh00tings and mass sh00tings.
You have the
Re: (Score:2)
The real solution, if they were really pushing this for the arguments they say they do, would put very easy tools for parents to setup the devices.
NEVER GET A DEVICE TO A MINOR WITHOUT PREVIOUSLY SETUP IT CORRECTLY.
As simple as that. Every device should be setup by an adult.
And then, put the tools to use them easily. Most parents are not hackers neither capable with devices. Make the software as simple as possible for that configuration.
BUT WITHOUT ANY NEED OF IDENTIFICATION.
Otherwise you are trading a solu
Re: (Score:2)
How does it work? I can guarantee that many Linux distros haven't been modified to handle this. And I doubt that any BSD version has, except, if you want to be very generous, Apple.
Does it mean you can't use Slackware in California or what?