The title of my article on age verification in Linux and other operating systems had a “for now” added for a reason, and here we are, with two members of the US Congress introducing a bill to add age verification to operating systems. The text of the proposed bill was only published today, and it’s incredibly vague and wishy-washy, without any clear definitions and ton of open-ended questions.
Still, if passed, the bill would require actual age verification, instead of mere voluntary age reporting that current state-level bills cover. It also seems to eschew the concept of age brackets, giving application developers access to specific ages of users instead. It’s a vague mess of a bill that no sane person would ever want passed, but alas, sanity is a rare commodity these days, especially in US Congress.
It’s introduced by Democrat Josh Gottheimer and Republican Elise M. Stefanik, so it has that bipartisan sheen to it, which could increase its odds of going anywhere. At the same time, though, US Congress is about as useful as a box of matches during a house fire, so for all we know, this will end up going nowhere as its members focus on doing absolutely nothing to reign in the flock of coked-up headless chickens passing for an executive branch over there.
If something like this gets passed, every US-based operating system – which includes most open source operating systems and Linux distributions – will probably fall in line when faced with massive fines and legal pressure. This isn’t going to be pretty.
“US Congress is about as useful as a box of matches during a house fire, so for all we know, this will end up going nowhere as its members focus on doing absolutely nothing to reign in the flock of coked-up headless chickens passing for an executive branch over there.”
As an American citizen who loves his country the only thing I have to say to that is, Amen brother! Our government has become a real s**t show!
And all this because modern parents insist on giving their kids electronic devices intended for adults, when electronic devices intended for kids already exist (and if they don’t in some countries, governments can always mandate a “child-safe” mode for OSes that parents can activate on an opt-in basis before giving the electronic device to their kids).
But yet again, us childfree people have to be f***ed because parents can’t say no to their kids (or can’t be arsed to care about the digital safety of their kids). Much like that time the UK government had ISPs block all adult websites by default (and you had to call the ISP to opt out, which was a problem if the internet connection was in the landlord’s name) instead of parents having to opt-in to that.
Anyway, I think Desktop Linux distros should move out of the US ASAP. If the fact that patents tend to last longer in the US or the “anti-circumvention” provisions of the DMCA weren’t reason enough, maybe this will. And if it doesn’t, I honestly don’t know what will.
(yes, I understand the real objective of this regulation is to de-anonymise internet users, but the fact there is so little pushback from the general public is because parents are glad they won’t have to do the minimum to parent their kids)