Age verification requirements in California

[jaybo]

I am curious if and how future releases will require age verification to support California? See California AB-1043, or California Introduces New Age Verification Requirements for Software Applications

[Watford]

Only guess: 1st, they may check/confirm actual location (matching IP and interface), then ask for age confirmation.
I may be too simplistic, here…

[ugnvs]

@jaybo

I am curious if and how

IMO no a chance and no way.

I remember enough cases when official regulations required to implement impossible things due to the lack of technical expertise and excess of uneducated opinions.

[ericmarceau]

That kind of law could only work if a standard subset of middleware were present on all "terminal" devices and all "hosting" computers.

Regretfully, the task is near-impossible to achieve.

[lah7]

I learnt this was a thing today. A law that makes absolutely no sense and could set a dangerous precedent. It doesn't belong at an OS level, but maybe an "ecosystem" (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Valve = entities providing both the OS and software delivery of age restricted content)

Like, would such law apply to setting up retro hardware/OS in 2027? Offline computers? A toy running an embedded OS? FreeDOS with no concept of users!? What about if the API server goes down, can you still use the OS?

I just fear it could impact everyone globally, just like GDPR (EU) accidentally caused the world to ask for cookies. I guess we'll have to see what happens.

[guiverc]

I've only seen some mailing lists posts talking about/around it.

Those are going somewhat wide though; sure it was on Ubuntu ML that caused it to hit my inbox, but Debian, Fedora, and more are referenced & linked there too.

I've only seen discussion.

[guiverc]

Quoting from Ubuntu Discourse

@jnsgruk

Over the past couple of days, there has been a lot of commentary about Ubuntu and how it’ll respond to California’s new Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043), which will require operating systems to collect age information at account setup and expose an age “signal” to eligible applications from 2027.

Canonical is aware of the legislation and is reviewing it internally with legal counsel, but there are currently no concrete plans on how, or even whether, Ubuntu will change in response.

The recent mailing list post is an informal conversation among Ubuntu community members, not an announcement. While the discussion contains potentially useful ideas, none have been adopted or committed to by Canonical.

When we have a clear plan, we will publish it through our usual channels.