MidnightBSD, a FreeBSD-based desktop operating system, has quietly updated its README to reflect a new geographic restriction. The project has added a clause that bars residents of any country, state, or territory with OS-level age verification mandates from using MidnightBSD
Speaking as a brazilian resident, the law will not be enforced. No such laws are ever enforced here. Everybody openly pirates everything, people sell retro gaming systems preloaded with thousands of ROMs openly online and in physical shops, and the government doesn’t even have 1% of the surveillance infrastructure needed to make enforcement attractive. The law is just electoral posturing and lip service to please evangelical idiots… but I repeat myself.
Remember what the maintainer of The Pirate Bay once said?
Never be too certain something won’t be enforced, as the power of capitalists are far worse than the public can imagine.
Maybe I’m too pessimistic, but this may just be the start. Big corps may find their way to control every aspect, step by step.
You’re right to give that warning, but Brazil isn’t a surveillance state like China or the USA. Our demons are different.
Of course, that could change in the future so a law like this shouldn’t stand regardless.
This is different from pirating. The government will be going after the developers like they did Kim Dotcom.
Not the Brazilian government, is what I’m saying. At most they’ll tell ISPs to block a few websites, and they won’t comply without a judicial order. Our Supreme Court, STF, is actually sane unlike our legislators, so no such order will be given.
The amount of bootleg dvd shops I saw in Paraíba and the amount of friends that have uTorrent installed on their phones is more proof of that. I’m all for it, I wish bandwidth was better all around Brazil to make it easier for everyone to just download whatever you guys want, especially if it’s from an American company
The problem is, of course, if those evangelical idiots end up in power again they now have the power to wield it. (or to at least try)
The law isn’t going to be enforced in CA either
You can’t spell “based” without BSD.
Also, that’s pretty much the main reason why FOSS OS are better than proprietary ones. They’ll just say “okay, I guess we’ll just stick to free countries” (while subtly gesturing at the nearest VPN).
Meanwhile, Windows and MacOS are going to fold like origami.
This is a feature and not a bug. The biggest distro maintainers will try to comply and the smallest ones will start banning usage or even closing up shop.
I don’t see why a volunteer who lives in, say, Germany has to give a single shit about the law in California or Brazil. It’s up to those regions to block MidnightBSD if they’re that fucking stupid.
Im just glad BSD is getting press.
ive been waiting to read headlines of this sort. cheers.
exasperated sigh I don’t want to get too deep in it with people again. Here is a link to the California law and some clarifications. (I cannot speak for the Brazilian law as I am not from Brazil)
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
- The law does not require ID verifications it only required that a parent indicate the age of their child when setting up their account.
- The law’s definition for operating system provider includes “general purpose computing device” so no, your toaster, microwave, and fridge are not included. (please remember that legal definitions do not always match how we would use the term in everyday conversation)
- An “accessible interface” is not well defined here. But it could be as simple as a system call rather than a REST API call. Similar to open file or malloc. (this means no centralized government server storing the data)
I have said this in other posts, but the linux community sticking their heads in the sand and pretending these states don’t exist just leave MS, Google, and Apple to decide how this is implemented. I am glad some distro maintainers are taking this seriously and looking at what is the minimum they would need to implement to comply with the law.
To be clear I do not support this law. The definitions are written so loosely that it leaves much of it up to interpretation. It is clear that they did not meet with anyone in the industry before voting.
The law’s definition for operating system provider includes “general purpose computing device” so no, your toaster, microwave, and fridge are not included. (please remember that legal definitions do not always match how we would use the term in everyday conversation)
That does mean (by legal definitions in California) your toaster, microwave and fridge.
And really the choice of “pulling” support from areas with issue laws is the way, this law is not enforceable as written and is likely the easiest way for any OS to avoid legal issues. Just putting in a line that the OS is not supported in the state will not stop the OS being used but will stop legal issues from said state.
People put doom on microwaves, I’d call that general purpose computing.
After reading that… it only pertains to commercially licensed?
Well its stupid broad, but I don’t think they can even pretend to do things to non commercial products (as in not a product). I think this will just end up like the cancer warnings, companies will just put the label on everything.
I’m sorry I am really not seeing what you are referencing from your link. This appears to be a link to the state administration manual which deals with how departments in the state of California operate.
This does not appear to be a law especially when you look at the procedure for revising the SAM.
Responsibility for updating SAM content is assigned to authoring state departments
Ie. Not assembly members.
Edit: sorry I didn’t respond to your second point. From the Cali law:
1798.503(b) An operating system provider or a covered application store that makes a good faith effort to comply with this title, taking into consideration available technology and any reasonable technical limitations or outages, shall not be liable for an erroneous signal indicating a user’s age range or any conduct by a developer that receives a signal indicating a user’s age range.
1798.503(b) An operating system provider or a covered application store that makes a good faith effort to comply with this title, taking into consideration available technology and any reasonable technical limitations or outages, shall not be liable for an erroneous signal indicating a user’s age range or any conduct by a developer that receives a signal indicating a user’s age range.
OR instead of having to collect that info at all you just put “OS not for cali” on the user agreement and just not deal with the risk.
You are right. I have no additional response to this that would not make me sound like an asshole.
What an odd thing to say. I do think that california based projects/products will try to follow (at least show an attempt) as you say but as big a market cali is there just is no reason for a OS (more so a donation funded linux one) to pander to one state.
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They don’t care about the details they just want control.
They will either give special permissions to relevant businesses (maybe an expensive Super Premium Golden Access), or use selective enforcement to only go after people/businesses that don’t comply to their overall authoritarianism and pose too much of a risk to the status quo.
California L. Outsourcing child care to random people who are not even US citizens. Thats like forcing knife manufacturers to make the knives child-safe.
On a sidenote, while looking up the history of actual legal cases involving children in California, I stumbled upon a story of Joseph Hall, son of abusive, alcoholic, insignia wearing, salute throwing, nazi activist piece of shit Jeffrey Hall, whom, at age 10, he shot in his sleep after being given a gun by him, and for which he was put into juvenile detention centers for 12 years until he turned 23, instead of… idk… being declared a national hero and given a compensation for the society failing upon him.
Personally, I don’t think this is the answer. Like, I get it, and it’s a sure way to avoid having to deal with all this bs. But at the end of the day, the only people who suffer from this decision are the end users. It’s punishing them for something their government has implemented. Doesn’t seem right to me.
It is not up to the developer community to take responsibility for the stupid decisions made by their government.
People get the leaders they deserve.
People get the leaders they deserve.
Sadly, they often do not.
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There is always the option of non compliance.
An important thing to understand here is that in America, the people have the power over their government. The people of California are responsible for putting the people who did this in power, and it’s their responsibility for getting them out again.
This is now in many countries, not just the US
I can only speak on America
That may be the best way to deal with the potential legal liabilities introduced by this unmitigated abject idiocy.
Good thing everybody can still torrent whatever they want from where ever they want. Or use IPFS. Or IRC DCC. Or Usenet. Or just a VPN.
Australian legislation specifically notes that all sites must age challenge users connecting via a VPN
Well, good for them. I’m not Australian, get to vote for Australian lawmakers or host websites in Australia.
Is Australia going to pay every single website admin for the burden of implementing this wonderful magical logic to detect a given source IP(v4) belongs to a VPN provider? What about IPv6?
If I host a simple static website on a static webhost in Denmark say, and provide some otherwise perfectly legal OS ISO’s for download, how would I implement any logic at all? Why the fuck should I be subject to Australian laws?
The cookie acceptance of the GPDR was already bad enough and ruined so much of the Internet with no appreciative improvement of the privacy of visitors. If every Tom, Dick and Harry are going to place spurious demands on every website, it’ll do nothing except raise enormous barriers to entry and ensure that only huge players with the capacity to comply with demands from legislators all over the world will even be able to “legally” run websites at all. And then we can’t have an Internet or FOSS for that matter.
Maybe legislators should stop writing half-baked laws the consequences of which they apparently cannot comprehend.
It applies to websites not hosted in Australia, that may have Australians visiting the site via VPN
Enforcement is going to be interesting to watch
There are already services that catalogue VPN sources for webmasters to implement block lists
how its done
Good. I’m glad they’re standing up to this insanity.
It’s ironic though because it’s a California based OS.
By the way, anyone tried gaming on BSD?
Gaming on BSD isn’t as bad as you’d expect. There are Linux compatibility tools that let you run proton/wine on FreeBSD
Random shit breaks sometimes but once you get past the steep learning curve you can play a lot of titles
Genuinely asking, why would you use FreeBSD when there already is Linux?
“Linux” is like 12 different software projects in a trench coat. Like people in a trenchcoat, the whole thing falls apart if one of them goes missing. The BSDs (and most other sane operating systems, for that matter) are a monolith developed together for each other
