On Mon, 2026-03-09 at 11:13 -0400, Jonathan Whitlock wrote: > politicians in California want to create a world where everyone on the > internet is identifiable
I don't know the origin of this law, but Californian consumer protection, despite everything one might have against politics (here, there and everywhere) and even though it is regulated by the state, is actually very beneficial to consumer rights, as far as I can tell from afar due to other circumstances. Although this is a realistic problem, it would be negligible anyway if it were a proprietary system. I wanted to invest a lot of money in US hardware in January, but didn't do so because US companies technically cut off a judge of the International Criminal Court from the world just because he didn't want to do what the US wanted him to do. Anyone who uses professional proprietary stuff, and to a large extent this also applies to consumer products, is no longer anonymous anyway. So I'm sticking with my proprietary, inexpensive solution and focusing as much as possible on FLOSS, because better to have half-baked solutions that no one can shut down than top solutions that US oligarchs can shut down at any time if they don't like me. Therefore, submit a referendum to exempt FLOSS from the regulation. Californians need to take this into their own hands.
