The exception only gives websites and other software a way to break if you insist on using Free Software. Every malicious bot, every child predator, every last bad actor is going to pretend to be Free Software, and people needing to comply with the law are simply going to block everything that isn't made by Google, Microsoft, or Apple. The reason that this got through the legislature is that it is the opposite of a win for Free Software, it is a devastating loss.

The commercial software vendors are going to create a framework that is going to insist on software signed by one of them to be "legitimate," and everyone that needs this verification to meet the standards of the law is going to simply block traffic that doesn't provide it. Free Software will still technically be legal, but it won't interoperate, and so it won't be usable.

You can see a bit how this works with Google Chrome on Linux. It mostly works great, until you need to watch something that requires Widevine, and then it either doesn't work at all, or it works with artificially reduced functionality. This is not because Chrome on Linux is less secure, or less capable, but rather because it is different. This isn't stopping piracy, the streams still escape. In fact, there are streaming services that I don't pay for, despite wanting to watch their content, simply because I would have to boot into something besides Linux to use their service, and the extra work isn't worth the hassle.

The difference is that this law is going to cover essentially every service that we want to use on the Internet. Every website, every app, every service with accounts that wants to be able to do business in California (and that's basically everyone), is going to require this age verification. Not only are they going to get in trouble if they don't get this information, but they actively want the information so that they can use the information to sell to advertisers. These operations aren't going to work on a non-validated code path. They are simply going to require commercial software verification and block everything else. It is not only the path of least resistance, it is the path of greatest profit.

No where does the law require that services work equally well without age verification. No where does the law say that the standard has to be open and implementable by Free Software. The reason that this exception stayed in the final bill is that the commercial software vendors saw this and realized that if they were going to be forced to build this API they could at least use it as an opportunity to shoulder out their competition for the long term.

Heck, this doesn't just work against Free Software. It is going to work against any newcomer to the party. Anyone creating a new device is going to have to use negotiate to use software blessed by Microsoft, Apple, or Google, because website and application operators are going to be skeptical of anything else. Anything else is going to look like a bot, or an attack, or some other bad actor.

The logic is economic autarky -- the belief that we're always better off having complete political sovereignty over every part of our supply chains than having to depend on imports for anything.

This is likely also behind Trump's trade war with Canada. His demands with Canada aren't about discirimatory tariffs -- those were negotiated away with NAFTA then re-negotiated in his first term. His demands are now infringe on Canadian sovereignty, to give US control of Canada's external trade policy, and even on its internal markets (e.g., the use of French in Canadian internal commerce). Symbolically, that's why he wants to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America". HIs establishment of US control over the Venezuelan oil industry is his greatest foreign policy achievement -- although it's not clear he understands the legal limits on what he can do with their money.

There's a foreign and military policy angle to this too: Taiwan is absolutely critical to the US economy, so we are absolutely committed to defend them if China invades. Semiconductor autarky would mean it's not our problem.

The problem with autarky is that even if it's a good idea (which economists don't believe), you can't conjure it into existence overnight. It will take many years, possibly decades for the US to replace the Taiwan's semiconductor industry. In effect, the administration is proposing to inflict the very damage on the US economy that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would inflict.

And, once the US has voluntarily self-inflicted that damage, China would be free to invade Taiwan.

The new system is simply another set of inputs. You will still get search results even if you don't click on anything. In fact, I would bet that actual user interaction with this new system is going to be very small. Most of the input that Google will get will be people trying to game the system.

I didn't even know about Kagi. In fact, it has been a long time since I have even considered using someone besides Google. I just resigned myself to the idea that things were forever broken. Thanks for the insight.

"Just let me live the life I want to live, by fucking up others' lives way more than the other party may have mildly inconvenienced me for sound policy. Wait, why is this affecting me now?"

It's a tale as old as time.

and they ignore our laws in favour of their own

Well, we can at least tell you learned zero Canadian history.

I live in Ontario, Canada. You're an idiot, and don't speak for me. There are idiots everywhere on the planet. You're one. See you at the polls.

~22% (I'll round it to 25%) of Canadians speak French as a first language, and using rough numbers that would be ~10 million Canadians, which equates to 1/8th of 1% of the world population. If forcing kids to learn a language that ~0% of the world uses seems rational, you've lost the point of education.

I'm unlikely to read anything dumber than this today. French is a single class, its easy. You remind me of when I was in grade 7 and two morons in my class took up the cause to protest that we had to learn the subway stations even tho, in their words, 'they would never use it'. So that's fun, you make the same fundamentally stupid mistake that some grade 7 kids were making about the value of learning things - the point isn't to teach things that you need, the point is to teach you thinks so that you learn how to learn. That French *can* help you if you're not some kind of moron allergic/scared of the greater world is part of the point.

3 Inches of Blood

ROFL. Youre whining about CanCon then complaining about a Canadian band that isn't being played on the radio? The stupidity astounds me. I dunno what small town you're from, but it's doing you no favours.

the fucking country speaks English

I hear French all the time on the streets of Toronto, parents at school, in public transit. I am from Toronto. Despite being from an Anglophone family with two parents who don't speak a lick French, all of my school was in French until I was in grade 6, and then half of it was in French until I was in grade 9. I understand French fluently (although I don't really need to speak it) and I know many other Anglophones who are fluent in it here in Toronto.

You're a moron. Don't talk about things you don't know shit about.

Netflix doesn't "broadcast" anything. Users pull it, if they so desire.

Netflix makes content available, and they choose what is available, based on the geographic location of the person watching it. Doesn't sound much like a pull model to me. The ask of Cancon is simply to regulate that there's a particular balance of Canadian produced content. Suggesting Cancon is about regulating the balance of consumption belies the fundamental stupidity at the base of your argument.

And oh, when's the last time you saw the majority of US media (incl Hollywood, to look at the bastion of American cultural power) saying /nice/ things about the US?

Literally any time it would improve their bottom line? What are you, an idiot? Your entire post sure makes it sound that way.

That is a very good point. duckduckgo.com (to use an example) does not summarize the search results for you, and, once you know what to look for the ads are clearly marked. To be honest, purchasing ads on duckduckgo.com is likely a sign of good taste on the part of the advertiser as well. Honestly, I hadn't even considered using a non-Google search option for a long time. That is almost certainly part of the problem. Thanks for your response.

There was nothing automatic about Google's trustworthiness. It simply counted up links that lead back to a particular page. If it had more links it was (supposedly) a better page. Almost immediately webmasters around the world started gaming the system. Google still restricts some of the things my account can do for hidden links that were added to some ads on websites that I ran in like 2001. GoDaddy and all of the other big web hosting companies of that era all rose to prominence on the strength of gaming the PageRank system.

I am sure that other industries tell the same story.

PageRank might seem trustworthy to you, but that's only because you weren't trying to game the system back in the day. I can assure you that, right from the start, people were abusing PageRank in precisely the same way that upsets you now. The only difference was that registering a domain back then cost $70 for two years, and you probably created the links you used to game the system by writing Perl. That raised the barrier to entry significantly. However, there was still real money to be made in that arena, and whether the winners paid Google directly, or paid for back links to their content (or both), I can guarantee you that the road to your trust was paved in money.

In the end Google has decided that the most reliable way to have publishers show that their information is trustworthy is to force them to pay for the privilege. Coincidentally that also happens to be the method that makes Google the most money. For years an entire SEO industry has thrived around the idea that if you pay someone enough money they can trick Google to steal your information instead of your competitors. Now we are finally at the endgame and Google doesn't even send traffic. They simply summarize the information for their customers. Chances are excellent that you don't even leave the google.com domain.

Google's competitors are simply doing the same thing at a different domain. All of them make their money by charging publishers to show up prominently in search ranks. Whether you are rooting for Oceania, Eurasia, or Eastasia it's Big Brother all of the way down.

Well wtf does he mean by speedtest then? If he's doing it from his phone or wifi connected laptop, then it's going to reflect the speed of his wifi. If he's doing it from his router, and complaining that the speedtest is wrong because his wifi is slower than his router uplink, I'd say that's a statement only a doofus would make.

"Now I'm currently using fiber at the speed fast than my wifi router, which makes my speedtest always wrong."

oh please expand on this - this is gunna be hilarious

Warrants, encrypted data with only owning jurisdiction access, periodic audits of the camera, the network, the datacenter and access logs. Or just gtfo with this.

And yeah I know, if we do that it's "worthless". Because illegal use is the point.