The technical design of the project just makes it so no one can force changes on the distro unwanted by the maintainer team regardless of any courtroom outcomes.
Like, what if someone made a law that said Bitcoin nodes must KYC? They could make the law I guess, and the international network operators would just laugh at it.
I expect in response one of the maintainers outside US jurisdiction of their own volition publishes via bittorrent, tor hidden services, and embedding blobs in public blockchains with no help from me.
Then the problem the legislators sought to solve just got a lot worse, while calling a lot of attention to how little power they actually have to control decentralized FOSS software projects.
Of course another point of the project is building the entire thing from source code with deterministic results only takes a few hours. For many, this would be faster than downloading artifacts.
It is not needed for maintainers to publish binaries at all. Publishing signatures on the expected hashes would suffice at worst.
Nobody here is saying that anyone is going to swoop in and physically prevent this software from being distributed on the internet.
> Then the problem the legislators sought to solve just got a lot worse, while calling a lot of attention to how little power they actually have to control decentralized FOSS software projects.
The legislators who passed this don't give a shit about that. Their intended target of this legislation is mainstream devices and mainstream users.
The correct response from the Linux community is to say "fuck off", and get back to making their distros more secure, more private, and easier to use.
I don’t think noncompliance of a container image is much of a “fuck you” since I don’t think lawmakers have ever heard of you nor would they really care about your compliance anyway.
This bill is primarily about kids using smartphones.
Anyway. Kids are an excuse to get it passed. It is about testing the waters of how much control can be exerted by government on end user devices, and we need all maintainers to hold the line.
You have precisely zero additional speech rights as a FOSS project than any other organization has. If "free speech" was a valid defense for you, then Meta would be doing the same.
> The technical design of the project just makes it so no one can force changes on the distro unwanted by the maintainer team regardless of any courtroom outcomes.
Being unable to comply is not a valid legal defense.
> Like, what if someone made a law that said Bitcoin nodes must KYC? They could make the law I guess, and the international network operators would just laugh at it.
This is the law in various places under various mechanisms. It is handled by putting people in prison or taking people's assets.
Sure it is. Lawyers even have a pithy Latin maxim about it: lex non cogit ad impossibilia.
But how would you remove an international distro from "the marketplace" if it's free and not operating a business?
Some oddball Linux distro really has no relevance to the larger picture that lawmakers are trying to accomplish though. The vast majority of kids are using iphone/android/mac/chromebook/windows. Basically zero are using esoteric container images to access TikTok.
The ability to receive specifically unsolicited DMs from adult strangers?
Opting in to behavioral tracking?
This bill doesn't block social media for kids... I expect their response to be simply that they keep using social media on their phone the way they already do.
If there's a law that says "Anyone who distributes X must also Y" and you can't figure out a way to continue distributing X while also doing Y, the way you comply with the law is that you stop distributing X.
With LLM's anyone will be able to disengage such "default wars" in popular software, so there isn't really any border control when LLM's form a large surface area of the border.
That's precisely what I discussed: the case where this person fully complies and ceases distribution (but the distro doesn't cease being distributed by others).
Don't make the mistake of logically getting caught up on the idea of laws "preventing crime". They never have, and they never will. The deter crime by providing for penalties when someone breaks the law.
A file hosted on foreign server might functionally be a system to "distribute" that file, but it is doubtful if a US state could prevent it from existing.
They could theoretically order US ISP's to cease providing access to said file, but that's a rabbit hole I'm not sure that Illinois or any other state really wants to go down.
Major OS providers, including major Linux distributions, are all within reasonable reach of Illinois law.
It’s probably less relevant if you’re a hobbyist working on Hannah Montana Linux on the other side of the planet.
Corporations do whatever seems most profitable. We can't base our understanding of constitutional rights on whether Meta decides to defend them.
Prior to that, export controls prevented PGP source code from being exported from the US. Advocates printed it in books and exported those, which helped clarify the issue.
Bernstein was a math student who made his own encryption software. The government tried to make him register as an arms dealer, and he sued in 1996, with the backing of the EFF. The result was a landmark decision that established source code as free speech and basically destroyed export controls on cryptography.
In 2016, Apple cited the decision when the government tried to hack a suspect's phone, saying they couldn't be compelled to "speak" by writing code.
In that very same case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said:
"We emphasize the narrowness of our First Amendment holding. We do not hold that all software is expressive. Much of it surely is not. Nor need we resolve whether the challenged regulations constitute content-based restrictions, subject to the strictest constitutional scrutiny, or whether they are, instead, content-neutral restrictions meriting less exacting scrutiny. We hold merely that because the prepublication licensing regime challenged here applies directly to scientific expression, vests boundless discretion in government officials, and lacks adequate procedural safeguards, it constitutes an impermissible prior restraint on speech."
But the inquiry doesn't stop there. First Amendment jurisprudence doesn't stop at asking the question "is this speech?". That's just a threshold question. If the answer is "no," then the case is analyzed one way. If the answer is "yes," then the case analyzed a different way. Think of it like a decision step in a flowchart.
Code being treated as speech doesn't automatically mean that software developers can do whatever they want, just like it doesn't mean that people who write, draw, make music, etc. can do whatever they want. It's not the magic unassailable defense you claim it to be. Courts will apply a balancing test to determine whether the Government's interest in prohibiting the speech outweighs the Constitutional interest in protecting it. The answer comes out different ways depending on the facts and the law, which is complicated.
For example, it's unlawful to make and distribute CSAM. It's unlawful to defame someone. It's unlawful to defraud someone. It's unlawful to violate others' copyrights. You have to label food and medicine a certain way. These are all forms of speech, but the courts have held that none of these restrictions (or requirements) violate the First Amendment. And I don't think we'd all be cheering someone on and claiming "code is speech" for someone who writes ransomware or software whose sole purpose is to drain your bank accounts or shut down power plants.
And the bar for compelling any particular speech is generally quite high. Apple could not be compelled to put a backdoor in an iPhone, even though the suspect was the San Bernardino shooter, and this did not result in Apple losing their ability to sell iPhones. The courts may well hold that you can't compel a Linux distro to implement a particular feature either.
Another possible definition, one you may have meant, is that there's a set of "invalid defenses" that could not possibly work, and the remainder are "valid" even if they might not prevail.
That's an entirely different situation because Apple couldn't have complied with silence. A product compliance requirment doesn't typically count as compelled speech because you can comply with silence.
For instance, COPPA is a very similar law, and it is not compelled speech, because nobody is forcing you to write software that checks if users are 13 or older. You can comply with COPPA by simply not writing software that collects data from users that are under 13. You are not being compelled because you literally have the option not to do it.
That is exactly the same in this case.
Is that some sort of in joke? Meta loves more surveillance, more data and more info about their vassals^W users.
I'm sure their lobbyists were pushing hard to get this law passed.
Meta lobbied heavily for this. The fact that they have not decided to use free speech to fight the move that they are lobbying for is not an argument that free speech is irrelevant here.
This is not legal advice but a personal request: please do not get your legal advice from Hacker News. Get it from a lawyer.
> If "free speech" was a valid defense to any legal compliance laws that affect software, then any software company would raise this defense this rather than comply.
Whether other companies do the same depends on what they consider the most profitable path, including legal fees and risk.
They would sure be wasting a lot of resources and public goodwill with absolutely no positive outcome for their agenda. Which is why I do not think it will actually happen.
But if it does, it does. Not going to live my life in fear, I have more security and privacy tools to ship :)
* your project might not even qualify under the text of the law
* even if it did, the number of children using it to access social media is likely zero
But, none of this was about protecting kids. It never was.
They might not be able to break your private keys, but they can fine you or jail you for not complying.
"Der Proceß" [The Trial] by Franz Kafka is just a realistic description of the court system (Franz Kafka studied law).
I would refuse to even give the appearance of compliance in hope to motivate others to do the same.
Look to Universal Studios v. Corley for an example of code (speech) that is nonetheless not free, because the government has an interest and can regulate subject to intermediate scrutiny.
> Truly I dare someone to try to take me to court over this. Would be great publicity for our coercion resistant approach.
IANYL but that’s commendable. Ain’t a lot of people got a code to live by anymore. But it’s double the reason you should touch base with an attorney. Remember this: test cases have to know what they’re testing. If you want to move the law forward you have to break it correctly.
Also reach out to the EFF, who may be able to help/advise, especially if you genuinely want to fight this.
This is a terrible law. That doesn't mean it's not a law, and courts do not look kindly on people subject to their jurisdiction (which unfortunately often includes state laws to people in other states) who try to dodge the responsibility the court thinks they should have.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of people in the US willing to go to jail (or worse) for their beliefs. It’s kind of the founding mythology of the nation.
US history is full of people who successfully challenged violations of their rights and government overreach. Success isn’t guaranteed, sure. It never is. But cowering in fear because the tyrants might put you behind bars is downright un-American.
But when I play, I play to win. Openly thumbing one's nose at the courts and the state is rarely a winning strategy. The way to win is through the democratic process: persuading elected officials to take your side. That, in turn, requires persuading the public to take your side.
Successful civil rights activism took place in an environment where people were being arrested, beaten, and even killed for standing up for what is right. You could even argue that this created fertile ground for the success of the movement. Failures of justice create hardened activists and support networks, and eventually public support.
Going to the courts instead of the legislature is another strategy that often wins. This is how Bernstein ended export restrictions on cryptography, by suing the government on constitutional grounds rather than trying to persuade legislators.
2. Openly thumbing your nose at the law is not going to serve you well in court. What did Prof. Bernstein do when he was threatened with legal sanctions? He lawyered up and took his counsel's advice. His communications throughout the process remained factual and respectful even though his disagreement was clear. He did not go onto Hacker News and prejudice himself by saying things like "Illinois legislators can eat shit" and "I dare someone to try to take me to court over this." He was patient, let his lawyers do the talking, and did not get the judge pissed off at him.
Civil disobedience, as with the legislative and judicial processes, works through the power of persuasion. If you fail to persuade, your mission fails.
These processes involve emotional and imperfect people, not deterministic logical machines, and success ultimately requires making them happy (or at least not making enemies out of them). The system might not work, but you have to work the system.
I am an active FOSS maintainer who wishes to protect the privacy, security, and sovereignty of users of community owned operating systems. My goal is to signal to them that we find these types of laws so completely ridiculous and unenforceable, that they should worry less about maintainers injecting state malware into their operating systems. Also it is to signal to other maintainers they will not be alone in resisting this.
With those goals in mind I am happy to tell any legislators pushing this sort of thing, to eat shit.
Neither is Prof. Bernstein. The observation is not oriented to lawyers or politicians; it is oriented towards how to succeed when judges and politicians make the rules.
And, since you seem to be making assumptions about what people you know nothing about could or could not hypothetically handle, maybe look a bit closer at my history. I have survived WAY harder shit than sitting in an air conditioned box with 3 squares a day for doing what I thought was right, so even if the threat of jail was credible, it would not deter me.
It is the bluster of people that think I even could be jailed for something like this that I am most amused by.
Truly it is fascinating and a bit sad how much fear there is in this thread over upsetting some state level officials.