System76  Mar 5

“In the case of Colorado’s and California’s bills, effectiveness is lost. In the case of New York’s bill, liberty is lost.”

Carl Richell, System76 Founder and CEO, urges New York to reject S8102A OS-level age verification.

Read his full statement: https://s76.co/m-S8102A

System76 on Age Verification Laws

Liberty has costs, but it's worth it.

System76 Blog
Show threadBill ZaumenMar 6

@system76 I can't make heads or tails out of the California law: for example I have a graphics program, epts, written in Java (so it is kind of a plug-in) and distributed via a Java installer or some Debian packages, & I'm out of the loop. Meanwhile in Linux/Unix, even "ls" is an application. Is age verification needed for that? Or for running 'ping' to see why your network is misbehaving (how do you send/receive a "signal" when your network is down).

https://billzaumen.github.io/epts/manual/index.html

Show threadvoanhcuocMar 17
@bzdev
"ls" is a program, or more precisely, a shell command implemented as a standalone program. In Windows, its equivalent, "dir", is a command implemented in "cmd.exe" along with many other commands.
So "ls" or "ping" is not an application from a non-technical point of view. The shell is an application. It's "cmd.exe" or "bash" that dictate which shell commands are allowed to be invoked, maybe based on the user's age.
P/S: it still sounds absurd.
Show threadBill ZaumenMar 17

@voanhcuoc I referred to "ls" as an "application" because there is not meaningful distinction between that and a program - in either case, you simply start a process that does its own thing.

The problem is the way the California law is written - it is vague, which means you run the risk of some non-technical DA trying to "save the children" by going after completely harmless software developers who can't make heads or tails out of the idiocy.

Show threadvoanhcuoc

@bzdev
The law, as it put, is vague by incompetence or by design. So your concern is valid.

But here I'm trying to read it assuming good faith: the law regulates applications that may feed users content that is not for children, including content produced by random people on the Internet.

Your EPTS app requires user to provide the file to be opened, so it doesn’t fall into that category. A kid takes porno from the Internet and use EPTS to edit the porno, should be none of your business.

Mar 17 at 4:01amWeb
Show threadBill ZaumenMar 17
@voanhcuoc Even funnier, using EPTS to edit a porn image wouldn't work - you can specify a background image, but then EPTS just lets you draw curves. I wrote EPTS to make it easier to set up some stick-figure animations, where something had to move along a path. The program translates distances in pixels into distances in user-specified units such as meters, and can generate files that can be imported into scripts. It can also produce SVG, which I can send to a laser-cutting service.
Show threadvoanhcuocMar 17
@bzdev Which sounds like a professional tool that kids would never use. Even GIMP / Krita / Photoshop shouldn’t change their behavior based on the user’s age at all. They don’t need to send the pictures a kid is editing to their parents ! Microsoft already does that!