Australian age verification law requires OS conformity

Gnugit · 2025-09-20 07:56:43

Hello you amazing gurus, thanks so much for an awesome OS!

In December 2025 Australia has some totalitarian age verification laws coming into effect. The part in particular that comes to mind for me and Arch is the requirement that the OS conforms, and is liable for up to $49.5 million AUD, if not conforming.

Has this been discussed yet? I couldn't find much from a quick search of the forum. If so, how will Arch and the Linux community and Linux in general approach this problem?

Direct PDF download link:

https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/defaul … 7545913466

Last edited by Gnugit (2025-09-20 09:47:10)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-09-20 08:15:09

In what way is Arch "adult"?

EDIT: btw this is very poor trolling. 3/10.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2025-09-20 08:15:48)

Gnugit · 2025-09-20 08:31:44

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

In what way is Arch "adult"?
EDIT: btw this is very poor trolling. 3/10.

I understand it takes some effort to read and comprehend my citation and welcome your interpretation of what is written regarding the inclusion of device OS's rather than your immediate shutdown for 'being a troll'.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-09-20 08:33:03

Gnugit wrote:

read and comprehend my citation advert

ftfy

EDIT: I didn't criticise you for being a troll, my complaint was that your trolling is of poor quality. Make an effort d00d...

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2025-09-20 08:37:02)

Gnugit · 2025-09-20 08:38:22

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Gnugit wrote:
read and comprehend my citation advert
ftfy
EDIT: I didn't criticise you for being a troll, my complaint was that your trolling is of poor quality. Make an effort d00d...

I edited my post link to be the direct government download of the relevant code PDF.

Last edited by Gnugit (2025-09-20 09:47:52)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-09-20 08:41:28

If you're serious then take this to the mailing lists. We're just users here, with the odd honourable exception (*waves at gromit & arojas*).

EDIT: and please don't full quote unnecessarily. This isn't a mailing list

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2025-09-20 08:42:48)

Gnugit · 2025-09-20 08:42:40

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

If you're serious then take this to the mailing lists. We're just users here, with the odd honourable exception (*waves at gromit & arojas*).

Thank you for some constructive advice.

seth · 2025-09-20 08:50:06

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

In what way is Arch "adult"?

Have you read *any* of my posts at all?

I'd say Australia can then sue "archlinux" for a billion Dollars (AU, so roughly the value of one BigMac)
Archlinux is neither incorporated nor hosted in Australia but

An OS provider must enable Australian end-users to set up child accounts or profiles and restricted accounts or
profiles for use on interactive (Tier 1) devices.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Parental_control

Gnugit · 2025-09-20 09:35:28

seth wrote:

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
In what way is Arch "adult"?
Archlinux is neither incorporated nor hosted in Australia but
An OS provider must enable Australian end-users to set up child accounts or profiles and restricted accounts or
profiles for use on interactive (Tier 1) devices.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Parental_control

I take this to mean all legal requirements are already met then?

Whoracle · 2025-09-20 09:36:53

Gnugit wrote:

I take this to mean all legal requirements are already met then?

Dunno. Ask a lawyer?

Gnugit · 2025-09-20 09:49:07

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

EDIT: and please don't full quote unnecessarily. This isn't a mailing list

Noted

seth · 2025-09-20 09:54:28

An Australian lawyer, more specifically.

The EU has similar efforts and it's pretty clear that these laws are written by clowns who want to sound all technical, but specifically and exclusively think about iOS and Android. Maybe their TV.
Desktop systems, let alone DIY ones aren't even on their radar - and they also clearly envision the internet as a star-net for crying out loud.

You just allow them to write their funny laws, then watch them crash into reality and move on.

Any GNU/Linux system can be randomly network-access constrained. Whether any specific linux user can apply that is a different matter.

Succulent of your garden · 2025-09-20 11:40:14

Also since there are mirrors around all the internet I find very hard that all other mirrors around the world can be blocked, that would definitely break many laws in Australia and some international agreements. I can't imagine possible the scenario where you need to verify if a systemd or haskell package is child safe before getting in into your system LoL.

Since Arch is a community distro also that's a factor to take in consideration.

Also it seems that the brits are using more vpns now than ever before LoL . In reality ISPs are also forced in someway to give access to the entire internet, at least in ip addresses.

EDIT:

I guess with https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Parental_control who seth said before, and that Arch can let you block any dns traffic that you don't like is more than enough ?

Last edited by Succulent of your garden (2025-09-20 14:18:17)

256 · 2025-09-20 19:27:22

Governments can't, in practice, stop computer-literate people from accessing foreign websites they don't like (or installing foreign OSes), but they can definitely stop those websites from being hosted or administered in their own borders, potentially getting them shut down.

In the UK, it's effectively illegal to run an independent forum like the one we're on right now (unless you make everyone run a mountain of proprietary JS and doxx themselves, I suppose), and as a result a bunch of British forums have already shut down; other countries seem to be headed in the same direction. I don't know what country's laws are relevant to Arch; whois says that archlinux.org has a German registrar, and the IP falls into a range controlled by Hetzner. I guess German law applies here? Is Germany likely to pass laws that would affect Arch? i know the website is not the OS, but it's the same idea.

In general, I don't think it's a good idea to just laugh off any concerns about potentially harmful laws like this, and accuse people of trolling. It's always an exaggeration until it happens.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-09-20 19:49:14

The OP originally posted a link to an Australian lawyer firm, which is why I jumped to the trolling accusation. I can see now I was wrong and I apologise to the OP for the suggestion. I'm sure they would be excellent at trolling if they tried. But not as good as me

seth · 2025-09-20 20:48:19

I guess German law applies here?

"Yes" (largely), https://terms.archlinux.org/docs/terms- … icable_law

https://www.heise.de/news/Jugendschutz- … 60019.html (german)
They're trying to come up w/ anonymous age verification systems, which… yeah. Ok. Anonymous verification.
This should™ have happened in July but I'm not aware of any progress itr.

The efforts however - for now - only targets bigger platforms (so not random niche boards like this) and the current idea is to somehow™ use a phone app to verify your age (anonymously…), so your random linux distro would not be affected as OS.
Nothing of this is however really figured out at all.

Is Germany likely to pass laws that would affect Arch?

Do you also want next weeks lottery numbers?

Some general thoughts on the situation:
As for Germany w/o the EU vector: not gonna happen. That'd be political suicide.

Germans are notoriously uneasy with anything that smells like general surveillance (you might be aware that there's been another German state ~35 years ago, for now that's still in the collective memory in east and west), administrative censorship is unconstitutional and the current president of the EU commission has a track record here (arguing a technically impossible infrastructure to censor the internet by not understanding how the internet is organized and demonstrably and brazenly and repeatedly making up random facts and statistics about, let's say "epsteining on the internet")
Needless to say these efforts spectacularly failed against a broad public coalition (basically everyone was against that once they understood the massive shortcomings and risks) 15 years ago and was also seen as in part a political stunt.

While I've little doubt that she's personal appetite to try this again and huge doubts that her attitude, morality (there were questionable and technically illegal publicity stunts showcasing "epsteining on the internet" to the press) or expertise have risen at all - this is gonna be a very tough sell *especially* for her if it's not very clearly above all suspicion.
People might also start to point out the irony that this is coming from someone who's very private about how she spends other peoples money - where she likewise has a track record here…

Then there's the fact that US companies (MS, Google and Apple) would be involved and the Orange-Man factor, so the EU might just scrap this altogether because of those concerns about data breaches - at least for the near future.

All that said: for now and all I can tell the EU considerations would not affect either the distro or this board (which is moderated and generally sfw, next to the very low participation) itfp.
But then again: there's for now actually nothing substantial, more overall ideas to do this but no clear idea how to.

Succulent of your garden · 2025-09-20 21:43:42

So it's fine to see that in reality from many places around the world, people find these kind of laws stupid and silly and way out of touch. I can understand the main issue from the OP in this post. Totally a valid question.

Thanks anyone and specially seth for the comments. But I also think like seth on this:

seth wrote:

But then again: there's for now actually nothing substantial, more overall ideas to do this but no clear idea how to.

Also since the fediverse is a thing and p2p are also a thing, I don't think that this kind of laws are gonna help in anything. Remember when the US banned alcohol ? It's more like that, yeah the intentions are good but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It came far worse when there were no alcohol in the US in comparison to drunk US. This is more like the same. Lawyers of course know history well, they know that in limiting or prohibiting access to products or services is not always the best option, most of time is the worst option, obviously there are only a very few exceptions to be honest. So the fact that many people from around the world don't like these kind of laws says something, that these kind of laws are not going to last much longer, probably they doesn't fit well in society at all. But who knows ? maybe it doesn't, but I'm 100% that in Germany that is very hard to happen as Seth says, probably Berlin people would get very angry and make a non stop techno fest as a some kind of protest, probably all drinking mustard beer non stop. LoL

Last edited by Succulent of your garden (2025-09-20 21:45:34)

nomorewindows · 2025-10-06 17:30:47

Gnugit wrote:

Hello you amazing gurus, thanks so much for an awesome OS!
In December 2025 Australia has some totalitarian age verification laws coming into effect. The part in particular that comes to mind for me and Arch is the requirement that the OS conforms, and is liable for up to $49.5 million AUD, if not conforming.
Has this been discussed yet? I couldn't find much from a quick search of the forum. If so, how will Arch and the Linux community and Linux in general approach this problem?
Direct PDF download link:
https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/defaul … 7545913466

What they are doing is selecting what is considered unsafe content for children and what is not. Some of it completely absurd or completely made up. One state is just allowing parents to randomly choose anything that might be objectionable. This is definitely not anything to do with protecting children. It is a lame excuse for government overreach and censorship.

nomorewindows · 2025-10-06 17:32:06

256 wrote:

Governments can't, in practice, stop computer-literate people from accessing foreign websites they don't like (or installing foreign OSes), but they can definitely stop those websites from being hosted or administered in their own borders, potentially getting them shut down.
In the UK, it's effectively illegal to run an independent forum like the one we're on right now (unless you make everyone run a mountain of proprietary JS and doxx themselves, I suppose), and as a result a bunch of British forums have already shut down; other countries seem to be headed in the same direction. I don't know what country's laws are relevant to Arch; whois says that archlinux.org has a German registrar, and the IP falls into a range controlled by Hetzner. I guess German law applies here? Is Germany likely to pass laws that would affect Arch? i know the website is not the OS, but it's the same idea.
In general, I don't think it's a good idea to just laugh off any concerns about potentially harmful laws like this, and accuse people of trolling. It's always an exaggeration until it happens.

UK was trying to tell some outfit completely housed in the states that they had to comply with UK law. They came back with we aren't in the UK sorry bastards!

nomorewindows · 2025-10-06 17:38:23

Much adult content isn't even housed in the states, and many states are requiring the age verification scam. How can that practically be enforced? So many of the adult content sites are protesting against age verification by not allowing access to their sites from those areas. The government is tricking the adult content sites into complying with the law by protesting the age verification part. Some real skull duggery being pulled there. But adult content was the internet that Al Gore claimed he invented, in jest the public thinks he is only talking about the parts of the internet that they see.

Last edited by nomorewindows (2025-10-06 17:38:52)

Arch Linux

#1 2025-09-20 07:56:43

Australian age verification law requires OS conformity

#2 2025-09-20 08:15:09

Re: Australian age verification law requires OS conformity

#3 2025-09-20 08:31:44

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