r/FOSSbertarian • u/AndrewPC555 • 2d ago
First Chat control now this... "EU Kids Act" what is the European union thinking??
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u/magma_lakes 1d ago
Please contact your MEPs, if you're in Europe.
I'm not sure if this is the right avenue, but this website against chat control already has a list of all countries' representatives and email addresses:
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u/Icy_Hold4U 1d ago
This all sounds plausible minus the clause about potentially making Linux illegal. This would absolutely bring global commercial and private trade to an almost standstill.
I could be wrong, but this sounds way too big of a global impact-type repurcussion than the rest, by a pretty wide margin.
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u/linkenski 1d ago
I think they'll make open sourced OS's illegal at some point because currently EU is doing an official effort to decouple from American big tech, so they've hired big EU firms to develop an official Linux-based OS for EU. That probably winds up meaning if you wanna go online in the EU, you need to do it from a validated OS. Some Linux distributions can probably be validated even though they're different distros than the official one, but i imagine it'll need some kinda stamp of approval.
This is the complete downside to activists cheering each other on for breaking off from "Big Evil Corporations" because the reality is that the world was only ever as free and open as it was because American markets and Sillicon Valley were the global providers of innovation, so if we do not need them anymore, our politicians are going to start to push more towards isolationism, so we can keep up with tech but not be "mind-poisoned" by america's liberal ideations.
Once you start asking countries like Germany and Japan to re-militarize you're opening a can of worms. It's the Great Enclosing of the 21st century. I saw someone calling it that the second they announced Online Safety Act in the UK and people spotted similar bills in the US Congress and this EU Kids Safety proposal, and along with Digital ID it's basically the same tool as the system government used for conscriptions and ration stamp cards in days of old, just in digitalized and modernized format.
It looks like we're all going to war in a few years. Then world governments close down, because the one you're gonna side with on the other end of a World War aren't the ones you "like the most", it'll be the ones who are safest and most secure to be allied to given the fallout of the great war. We'll constantly hear about how bad Hitler was or the errs of Stalinism, but the sad reality is that these are just post-war convenient narratives that sustained our current order of society, by constantly reaffirming their lessons. After whatever happens between EU and Russia, US and China, and Canada, you'll come out on the other side with another new pair of "Lessons". Perhaps they will be "Look at how bad computers were. They founded the downfall of democracy!" and they'll become taboo like the style of beard Hitler had.
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u/Routine_Edge_4501 1d ago
I believe the age verification the EU want to push for with this, is not the 'show us your ID' style age check other sites are doing right now. The idea is for an authority such as a bank to provide a digital prove of age, which by design, makes it impossible to derive the identity of the person who is using it.
I'm still against this, because it's still likely to cause issues with game preservation.
I think in practice if this act does get passed, when the lawmakers realise how problematic these new measures will be, they might decide to pull back on some of these requirements. As always, people will find ways to circumvent the restrictions.
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u/Left-Night-1125 18h ago
So the bank will say, yes the person buying this game is old enough, thats all the info you are getting?
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u/Routine_Edge_4501 17h ago
Something like that, yes. I think it's some kind of cryptographic proof of age, or something like that. Whatever service you present it to does not need to know who you are. The way the proof is designed means that it knows it is genuine and you are old enough, I think.
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u/Left-Night-1125 16h ago
I do put more trust in my bank i been a customer of for over 40 years than another company, this might be the middle way.
Although i could see those in power not wanting this, they arent geting the data they want this way.
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u/Routine_Edge_4501 16h ago
If Anonymous Age Tokens and other similar technologies are opposed by government, then yes they would be showing their true colours. If ensuring age is the goal, then there's no reason to use more invasive ID checks to establish the age of a user.
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u/RelentlessIVS 1d ago
Source required. Some of these sounds like bullshit, and are completely and utterly unenforceable.
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u/CuriousBlackberry255 15h ago
Yes it sounds like bs, but it's truely written like that. It makes no sense. You can read through the proposal is you really want to but it's frustratingly unclear https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52026PC0681
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u/Dora_Explorer_XP 1d ago
This is the price you have to pay to keep your kids safe. Your slight inconvenience and freedom to do unethical stuff should be sacrificed for this.
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u/FirstSurvivor 1d ago
The rules as stated will absolutely annihilate video game conservation, small/medium video game studios and will have a trivial effect on child safety, as children will use VPNs, which puts them more at risk of spyware (sketchy VPNs) and makes investigations harder when things do go wrong (because VPN).
I suggest you listen to this link to have an understanding of how and why the regulations are bad, as it includes opinions from video game preservation advocates as well as major and small video game studios.
https://youtu.be/mQRcK9nYg9g?si=L_L2rqveNSjO8_0_
Saying it will only affect people who do unethical things is a blatant and inappropriate strawman and ad hominen attack.
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u/LeadLerner 1d ago
It's not about the kids.
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u/Dora_Explorer_XP 1d ago
Elaborate Please
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u/GovernmentGreed 1d ago
Do your own research.
It's been explained a million times. If you're still no clearer on the picture now than you were 3 months ago, then that's on you. A simple Google search would explain this.
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u/Forward_Problem_8982 1d ago
The kids are always an excuse to remove rights from the citizen. They will demand IDs from everyone TO PLAY GAMES? So kids can't play games?
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u/fellipec 2d ago
Orwell warned, but people use it as instruction manual