Are they? The law effectively only applies penalties to the parents. If you have not ready the law I highly recommend it. It is very short and says nothing about actually verifying the age of the user. It is equivalent of entering your age on steam or the “are you 18+” questions.
Go read the bill, particularly section 1798.501.b, 1798.502.a and b. Every developer of every application that can be downloaded from every package system MUST request your age bracket every time it is downloaded or face the fine. And possibly every time it is launched. Basic utilities like ‘ls’ and ‘cat’, that pong example I pushed as a test, everything.
I fully agree, the definition of application is too broad and should be revised. But how do we revise it without also introducing loopholes that companies can exploit.
All the law requires developers to do is receive the signal and treat that as the primary indicator of the user’s age and to comply with applicable laws (ie. things you should have been doing already anyways).
For applications like ls (which let me be clear that I do not believe this app should be covered by this law) it could be as easy as requesting the signal from the OS, deciding that the user’s age bracket does not matter for your execution, and just performing as usual.
They should really limit the definition of application to just social media apps. (which would likely include things like irc apps).
I hate the law I dont need to read it. I oppose all age verification measures floated. Do you think the average parent is reading these laws? They dont care that they have to verify age they will happily sign in with facebook and give over their ID. They see this as an actual solution even though it effectively just makes everything worse.
The law effectively only applies penalties to the parents.
This applies penalties to far more than the parents. If I provide an operating system to a California parent, and my operating system does not include this “signal” apparatus, I can be fined $7500 every time a kid launches an application on my OS, for my deliberate decision not to implement their asinine horseshit.
I mean yea. If you don’t make a good faith effort to implement this age attestation page and api to allow apps to pull from it. Then yes. You would be liable.
You could of course decide to not provide to residents of California and Colorado. No one is forcing you to provide for either of these states.
No… The law literally says that if you make a good faith effort then you are not liable.
An operating system provider or a covered application store that makes a good faith effort to comply with this title, taking into consideration available technology and any reasonable technical limitations or outages, shall not be liable for an erroneous signal indicating a user’s age range or any conduct by a developer that receives a signal indicating a user’s age range.
Also the 2500$ is only for negligent violations.
Look, I don’t want linux to leave Cali. I have primarily used linux for the past 8 years and have no desire to use windows anymore than I have to. But, as you said, the linux community throwing their hands up and deciding to exit Cali and Colorado is just playing right into Microsoft’s desires.
No… The law literally says that if you make a good faith effort then you are not liable.
It used to be that my liability was to the people using my code. If I code badly, they won’t use it, and I might be blocked from contributing to a project. That was the worst penalty that I faced for providing bad code.
Now, I might have to argue against a lawyer claiming my mistakes are negligence, and my efforts are in less than good faith, with financial penalties should they prevail.
They merely need to point to my opposition to this law as evidence that I am not acting “in good faith” to support it.
Throwing up our hands and exiting California and Colorado is playing into Microsoft’s desires. It is also the only rational response should this law go into effect as planned. Which means the proper course of action is to denounce this idiot law, not lend it our support or rationalize the harm it causes.
Most practitioners of data security are aware of the severe dangers of fingerprinting users, and that is a hardline issue. Thus, in order to maintain their security practices, their only choice is to not collect this sort of info on users at any level. If they’re delivering a security product with a built-in vulnerability, they’re not delivering a security product. It’s much better to just surrender one state until it invents sanity.
Are they? The law effectively only applies penalties to the parents. If you have not ready the law I highly recommend it. It is very short and says nothing about actually verifying the age of the user. It is equivalent of entering your age on steam or the “are you 18+” questions.
Go read the bill, particularly section 1798.501.b, 1798.502.a and b. Every developer of every application that can be downloaded from every package system MUST request your age bracket every time it is downloaded or face the fine. And possibly every time it is launched. Basic utilities like ‘ls’ and ‘cat’, that pong example I pushed as a test, everything.
I fully agree, the definition of application is too broad and should be revised. But how do we revise it without also introducing loopholes that companies can exploit.
All the law requires developers to do is receive the signal and treat that as the primary indicator of the user’s age and to comply with applicable laws (ie. things you should have been doing already anyways).
For applications like ls (which let me be clear that I do not believe this app should be covered by this law) it could be as easy as requesting the signal from the OS, deciding that the user’s age bracket does not matter for your execution, and just performing as usual.
They should really limit the definition of application to just social media apps. (which would likely include things like irc apps).
I hate the law I dont need to read it. I oppose all age verification measures floated. Do you think the average parent is reading these laws? They dont care that they have to verify age they will happily sign in with facebook and give over their ID. They see this as an actual solution even though it effectively just makes everything worse.
This applies penalties to far more than the parents. If I provide an operating system to a California parent, and my operating system does not include this “signal” apparatus, I can be fined $7500 every time a kid launches an application on my OS, for my deliberate decision not to implement their asinine horseshit.
I mean yea. If you don’t make a good faith effort to implement this age attestation page and api to allow apps to pull from it. Then yes. You would be liable.
You could of course decide to not provide to residents of California and Colorado. No one is forcing you to provide for either of these states.
And if I make a good faith effort, but it doesn’t work right, that’s a $2000 penalty. Every time that snot-nosed, unsupervised kid opens an app.
Yes, that’s exactly what Microsoft and Google want. They don’t want my FOSS OS competing with their commercial offerings.
No… The law literally says that if you make a good faith effort then you are not liable.
Also the 2500$ is only for negligent violations.
Look, I don’t want linux to leave Cali. I have primarily used linux for the past 8 years and have no desire to use windows anymore than I have to. But, as you said, the linux community throwing their hands up and deciding to exit Cali and Colorado is just playing right into Microsoft’s desires.
It used to be that my liability was to the people using my code. If I code badly, they won’t use it, and I might be blocked from contributing to a project. That was the worst penalty that I faced for providing bad code.
Now, I might have to argue against a lawyer claiming my mistakes are negligence, and my efforts are in less than good faith, with financial penalties should they prevail.
They merely need to point to my opposition to this law as evidence that I am not acting “in good faith” to support it.
Throwing up our hands and exiting California and Colorado is playing into Microsoft’s desires. It is also the only rational response should this law go into effect as planned. Which means the proper course of action is to denounce this idiot law, not lend it our support or rationalize the harm it causes.
Most practitioners of data security are aware of the severe dangers of fingerprinting users, and that is a hardline issue. Thus, in order to maintain their security practices, their only choice is to not collect this sort of info on users at any level. If they’re delivering a security product with a built-in vulnerability, they’re not delivering a security product. It’s much better to just surrender one state until it invents sanity.