The coordinated effort worked. When lawmakers finalized Colorado SB26-051, they added Section 6-30-105(e) to the text. This specific clause waives compliance for operating systems and applications distributed under licenses that allow copying, modifying, and redistributing without platform-imposed technical restrictions. Why the Section 6-30-105(e) Exemption Protects Decentralized Tech
This exemption establishes a formal legislative precedent for the tech industry. It legally shields free and open-source operating systems from hardware-level age attestation laws that closed ecosystems like iOS and Windows will soon have to follow.
It’s unenforceable on Linux. A Linux user can simply remove or modify any code running on their machine. Fedora, Debian, and Arch can’t make a user verify their age any more than they can force you to use Gnome. It’s kinda the whole point of FOSS.
There is a very easy way to force linux users to enforce this. However, I won’t give it away here, because as far as I can tell the current law makers are clueless.
And I don’t want to give them clues.
There isn’t an easy way. There may be a way to enforce it when you connect to a remote site, but that requires the remote computer to implement it, not you.
I’m already seeing that in a year or two, we’re getting blocked on websites or electron applications because of age verification just like in android with Google Play Services. Like use age verification software or get blocked for 99% the internet.
They don’t even need to turn it into law.
Honestly the faster they try to lock us out of the web the sooner we can get a second, freer web with card games and prostitution.
So just like the old net before Google, Meta and Amazon :)
“Like putting too much air in a balloon!”
Our current law makers are still debating if freeing the slaves was a good idea. That’s how far behind they are.
Behind or ahead? Maybe we shouldn’t respect the laws they make?
I am very glad that you have strategically selected which parts of your mind to lose.
I’m going to argue that you share it because one thing you can count on is very determined nerds to defeat it.
Every time legislators tried to enforce some sort of dystopian thing, developers saw it as damage and routed around it.
You’re not wrong, security through obscurity eventually fails. In this case however, time counts, the longer it can be cut off, the more chance of some sanity returning, of backlash building politically. The time to route around is after a law is made, preferably as flawed a law as possible.
but systemd has dooomed us all
waaaaaahh!
And that’s the whole point of the amendment to that law. Their congress critters were enlightened on the futility of such an endeavor. Next is California.