Technology

I've been posting this in other threads too and while the OS angle is huge, and worth picking a fight with, I haven’t seen any coverage over how this goes after developers too.

I think this is an attack on ALL open-source.

These bills are written by people who are clearly or maliciously tech illiterate and don’t understand either the terminology or the practical impacts. And of course it’s wrapped in ‘what about the children?!’

They include definitions like (paraphrasing; not quoting a specific bill, but New York, Colorado and California do this):

• "Application" is any software application that may be run on a user's device -- so ... EVERYTHING.
• "Application Store" is any publicly accessible website or similar service that distributes applications -- so ... also everywhere, such as GitHub or GeoCities.
• "Developer" is a person who writes, creates or maintains an application -- so if you have a github repo, or you've posted a binary or perhaps even a script somewhere recently, you're a developer.

And then require both developers and operating system providers to handshake this age verification data or face financial ruin. I think the original intent or appearance of intent is that the store developer needs to do the handshake. I'm not a lawyer, but I can't imagine these definitions aren't vague enough that they can't be weaponized against basically anything software.

I have a github account, and have contributed to "applications". As I read them, these bills pose a serious threat to me if I continue to do so, as that makes me a "developer" and would need to ensure the things I contribute to are doing age verification -- which I don't want to do.

I think that even outside the surveillance aspect, the chilling effect of devs not publishing applications is the end-goal. Gatekeeping software to the big publishers who have both the capacity to follow the law and the lawyers/pockets to handle a suit. These laws are going to be like the DMCA 1201 language (which had much much more prose wrapped around it and was at least attempting to limit scope), which HAS been weaponized against solo devs trying to make the world better.

I fully expect some suit against multiple github repo owners on Jan 2, 2027.

I've emailed the office of Buffy Wicks, the author of the California bill, with similar details as the above. I haven't yet identified the authors of the NY and CO bills, but I'm working on that too. If you live in one of these places, please contact your state officials and tell them this is a bad idea -- and if you don't live there, keep an eye on your state bills.