RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@wwahammy/116264430375745593

I want everyone who says "this is the law, distros need to comply" I want you to explain a plausible set of circumstances to lead to the following:

* That the AG of California will sue a random Linux distro which has effectively no money
* Prove who the OS distributor actually is (is it the committers? Committers of what part? Their bank account with $12 in it?)
* Prove by preponderance of the evidence how many children used the OS in order to set the fines
* get a judge and jury to think this isn't a massive waste of their time
* That it isn't just a violation of the law but is a "negligent" or "intentional" violation
* all the while, the OS maker and everyone else having effectively zero knowledge of who uses it since there's no continuing relationship with users.

How does all of this happen?

1. The AG of California sues the biggest Linux distro because their real goal is destroying Linux, not age verification. The smaller ones will fall through legally questionable means, once the big ones who can resist are destroyed.
2. Debian has a committee, Redhat is a corporation, and they don't care who the OS distributor actually is. They'll incriminate some random Joe off the street, just to set a precedent, and then they can start sending threats and unlawfully raiding other organizations that distribute and maintain Linux. Because it'd probably hold up in court, so who'd risk fighting it!
3. Prove? All they have to do is get a jury who knows nothing about computers to feel like their children are in danger. And once they find a jury that mistakenly rules in their favor, that's precedent, so future juries who are saner or more prepared will be completely ignored since USA law is only based on precedent.
4. Easy for them to buy a judge. Their lawyers can finagle it to happen in the worst court and cherry pick the worst jury.
5. You don't think they intended to violate the law? They're trying to cook your children into stew! Are they guilty, or do you love dead children? Did we mention children?
6. Once the OS maker has been taken down, it doesn't matter who uses it, because all they can do is buy a proprietary OS, or have no computer. And a few will "break" the "law" but 99% of everyone else will get bullied into compliance, and those few will get locked out of everything in society, since the 99% won't even be aware that the locks are in place.

So uhh, this is a big deal. Also US law sucks sweaty monkey balls. It's true that assuming proprietary software giants like Microsoft, Apple and Google always play by the rules and never do anything in bad faith, then that California law can't possibly become a problem. No punishment awaits them for lawbreaking and cheating the courts though, nothing but either reward, or people complaining about it online and doing nothing until the corporation gets to try again.

@wwahammy There should be some kind of free speech argument saying that you can't add restrictions for free software developers like this. (After all.... source code is very close to speech.)

@cy the AG of California doesn't care about Linux. It's not an issue they have ever thought about or considered.

I bet the guy holding their leash sure does.

@pavel @wwahammy this is fairly well-trodden territory. They can’t force open-source devs to implement anything, really.

But they CAN regulate what can be SOLD. So the “right” way for RH/Canonical/whoever to comply would be to only ship the required capabilities in Enterprise Desktop versions of their OS. (Arguably they don’t sell an OS at all, but that would be hard to convince a jury of, I bet.)

Then fight any attempt to enforce more than that.

@calcifer @wwahammy I'm not US expert, and some coverage suggested this applied to "Johny developer places ISO images for download" situation. It is well possible coverage should have been more careful.

@pavel @calcifer IANAL, but as I read the law, it regulates "operating system providers" which specifically includes any person or entity who develops an operating system for a general-computing device.

Sure sounds like it applies to any developer.

@wwahammy @pavel they clearly *intend* that coverage yes. But this sort of shenanigan has been tried before and has not stood up to challenges, precisely because it’s a free speech issue. It’s likely they made the law as broad as possible knowing full well the courts would limit it.

@calcifer @wwahammy For the record, creating law that goes against constitution .... dunno, is that even legal? Sounds very wrong to me.

@pavel @wwahammy it is wrong, but it’s also how the system is designed so it’s not novel or surprising. Legislatures pass laws that conflict with higher laws (including the constitution) all the time. The judiciary acts as a check on that power.

Legislatures almost always have the ability to ask the judiciary to weigh in on proposed law, but they’re not required to do so.

Yes this whole thing is problematic, but also unlikely to change

@pavel @wwahammy for an example, legislatures have spent decades trying different variations on anti-abortion laws to test the boundaries of Roe v Wade — and they did this long before the conservative court that overturned such precedent was in power.