cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/62278765

Software changes for compliance with age-verification laws are being pushed a bit everywhere in Linux-development; for example:

It’s interesting that it’s the same small group of people behind these pull requests, and that discussion threads in them have been locked owing to a great amount of negative criticisms.

They say “we have to comply with the law”. Which also means that if “the law” in the future will require proper verification, handling to 3rd-parties, or whatnot, then they will comply.

Well, it’s their right to. They don’t owe anything to anyone, and are under no obligation to report to users or to the community, nor to pay heed to anybody’s wishes.

If things proceed in this direction, we users may at some point have to choose between privacy-friendly Linux distributions or legal Linux distributions. People who, like me, are worried, need to start thinking about concrete actions to take before it’s too late: where to develop such distros? which channels to download and distribute them from? And so on. (And of course, more generally we need to write and protest to politicians, organize protest marches, go on strike, refuse to comply…)

It’s good to remind to those who keep on repeating the words “legal” and “illegal” that for example Nelson Mandela was, technically speaking, a criminal who did and promoted illegal activity. This happens when laws become immoral.

  • stravanasuOP
    1·
    14 hours ago

    Yes, that’s the good news. But probably some of the forks or privately-modified OSs will therefore be by definition “illegal”, just like in some countries the wine that you might make from the grapes in your garden is illegal.