Item — HN Reader

I disagree with your understanding of COPPA, but I'm not going to repeatedly argue over the precise boundries of COPPA because that's not the point. COPPA is not a First Amendment violation as I understood it, nor is California's AB 1043. The latter is still very bad, just not to the point of being unconstitutional (but it's close). AB 1043 would violate the First Amendment just like the Illinois one if it didn't add a last-minute open-source OS exemption.

> Not you. The OS distributor breaks the law if they don't give you this ability.

Ok, but that's a technicality and it doesn't change the fact that your entire ability to see/hear/say anything online is being gatekept by a legally-compelled utterance.

1 comments

> The latter is still very bad

You have yet to give any harms.

> your entire ability to see/hear/say anything online is being gatekept by a legally-compelled utterance.

And? If there is no First Amendment violation, what is the problem with that? There are already many de facto compelled utterances required to communicate with other devices on the Internet.

The part of my comment that you quoted is exactly the reason why the Illinois law is a First Amendment violation, and why the California one is borderline. And as far as I'm aware, there are no other legally compelled utterances that bar ordinary citizens from all online communications at the moment. There are only instances where speech is compelled in a more local manner, and often not by law.

> And as far as I'm aware, there are no other legally compelled utterances that bar ordinary citizens from all online communications at the moment.

It does not bar all online communications. The law simply says the OS must provide some way for the account to have a set age and provide it to services that need that information. If a service doesn't need that information, there is no compelled utterance. COPPA and GDPR both require compelled utterances online for certain services as well.

Good luck finding a lawyer to take your case.