Hello Debian Developers. There are multiple 'age verification' laws getting somehow passed in multiple places around the world. Brazil, taking effect March 17, California US, taking effect Jan 1 2027, Colorado US, not passed yet, and New York US, not passed yet. (All to the best of my knowledge).
What are the plans for those laws? Adding any kind of age verification to Debian would go against both Debian and Linux philosophy as a whole. These laws were obviously not well thought out, as Linux by design has no central way to enforce them. I believe the best and most effective way to handle this, is doing what midnightBSD did: blocking those locations. Debian is widely used as a server OS across the world. Geoblocking locations requiring age verification could cause problems for the people living there, and that would be the goal. If problems are caused from these laws, lawmakers might finally use their brains and see that these laws do more harm then good. If Debian does obey these laws, what's next? Not if, *when* an ID age verification law is added, what then? Will ID verification be added to Debian as well? Or will that finally be the breaking point? I implore you to take this into consideration. These laws *will not* stop here. If they are not fought and protested, they *will* get more and more invasive.
