How Linux developers defeated the new OS age-verification laws

is there a similar contingency in the California law?

It's unenforceable on Linux. A Linux user can simply remove or modify any code running on their machine. Fedora, Debian, and Arch can't make a user verify their age any more than they can force you to use Gnome. It's kinda the whole point of FOSS.

Not yet, but I’ve spoken with Wicks staffers responsible for writing the bill. They are very aware of the open source issues and working on getting changes implemented during the current legislative session.

There is a very easy way to force linux users to enforce this. However, I won't give it away here, because as far as I can tell the current law makers are clueless.

And I don't want to give them clues.

And that's the whole point of the amendment to that law. Their congress critters were enlightened on the futility of such an endeavor. Next is California.

You know ... now that open source is officially a legal loophole, I could see this making it more popular.

New reason to use Linux: You're 13 and you want to look at boobs on the internet, but other operating systems won't let you.

There isn’t an easy way. There may be a way to enforce it when you connect to a remote site, but that requires the remote computer to implement it, not you.

I'm already seeing that in a year or two, we're getting blocked on websites or electron applications because of age verification just like in android with Google Play Services. Like use age verification software or get blocked for 99% the internet.

They don't even need to turn it into law.

From the linked System76 blog:

New York’s proposed Senate Bill S8102A requires adults to prove they’re adults to use a computer, exercise bike, smart watch, or car if the device is internet enabled with app ecosystems. The bill explicitly forbids self-reporting and leaves the allowed methods to regulations written by the Attorney General. Practical methods for a bill of such extreme breadth would require, in many instances, providing private information to a third-party just to use a computer at all. Privacy disappears.

That's appalling, and NY won't be the only government trying it. This is going to be one of those battles we need to fight again and again.

Our current law makers are still debating if freeing the slaves was a good idea. That's how far behind they are.

I'm going to argue that you share it because one thing you can count on is very determined nerds to defeat it.

Every time legislators tried to enforce some sort of dystopian thing, developers saw it as damage and routed around it.

You're not wrong, security through obscurity eventually fails. In this case however, time counts, the longer it can be cut off, the more chance of some sanity returning, of backlash building politically. The time to route around is after a law is made, preferably as flawed a law as possible.

I must admit pessimism here, once this crap has the 99% (OK 95% or less for non-phones) accepting it, they'll come for linux (or the ISPs). When they came for the gays I didn't speak out... It's the thin end of the wedge (OK, extremely thick end). Colorado is not the world. The laws will be flawed, but continue to be amended, perfected, worldwide, because politicians as a class hate free speech, and anonymity protects free speech. The technically able will keep finding loopholes, but the vast majority will be left behind.

Probably there will be an exception made for corporations, after all, they have more need for privacy than the populace. /s

Too bad this is moot. Google wants to deploy QR codes to prove you are human and not AI. The QR code is for your phone to prove you are real. Oops, your phone has a uuid and phone number and there goes your privacy.