Re: California law CA AB1043

On 2/26/26 07:12, Lucas Holt wrote:
> California is requiring age verification checks for account creation at
> the OS level with a signal API to provide information to applications in
> 2027.  They explicitly call out individual developers or companies with
> fines of 2500 dollars per child affected.
> 
> I wondered if anyone has started looking into this on the FreeBSD side. 
> The way I read this, we would need to implement changes when creating
> accounts, provide a mechanism to check from apps (library), and provide
> support within package managers to filter apps?  Then browsers would
> need to implement this and call the respective OS APIs for age
> verification for desktop use.
> 
> It seems like it makes sense for multiple *NIX systems to implement a
> similar mechanism across platforms.
> 
> The paragraph near the bottom seems to indicate that it wouldn't apply
> to server use since indirect signals aren't required to be honored.
> 
> For reference:
> 
> https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1043/id/3269704
> 

Hmm. 1798.500(e)(1) [and (2)] would appear to make port-package
distribution of "Application" (but plural) a "Covered application
store". At the moment I do not see how the FreeBSD port-package
distribution mechanism would fit into this in its current form. It would
seem to require accounts to be involved for all "Account holder" (but
plural), for example. The "operating system provider" has to require
account setup to indicate age information for the "user" (such as a
child) and has to provide secure access to the information "when the
application is downloaded and launched".

Since the FreeBSD OS includes applications and the means to download
optional applications that are also part of the OS, there may be similar
issues for it (relative to itself) as far as I an tell.

The title does not apply to:

) broadband internet access service (Section 3100)
) telecommunication service (Section 153 of Title 4 of the US code)
) Delivery or use of a physical product

But I doubt that such applies.

There are time constraints that I'll not get into but would seem to be a
problem.

-- 
===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com