I’m anti-copyright in general*, and especially in favour of stronger fair use–type laws to allow remixing. But as far as copyright does go, this doesn’t actually sound all that egregious to me. The fault lies mostly with the musician that Mumbo Jumbo licensed from, rather than with Warner Chappell themselves. The ideal would probably be that MJ could keep the music up and the licenser would have to pay the entire cost of it to WC. But that’s a rather difficult thing to expect.

* sort of… Under capitalism it’s absolutely necessary that artists can protect their works in some form to be able to make a living, and I’m not entirely sure how to square that with the idea that artistic expression should be free.

Cool. I stopped paying for it back when it was still called “YouTube Red”, during one of their many crackdowns on creators’ freedom in the name of benefitting advertisers. I dumped it and installed an adblocker, and eventually YouTube Vanced and its successor Revanced.

Actually something just occurred to me. Because my system, unlike the one from the Stack Exchange link or the one described elsewhere in the thread using an ID card, relies on a per-site untraceable request to the government, the government would be able to detect if one user is making a suspicious number of requests. It’s reasonable for one person to make tens of requests, maybe even low hundreds over the course of a lifetime. It’s not reasonable to be making hundreds or more in a day. They wouldn’t know which sites are being accessed with it, or even what accounts on those sites. But they could set rate limits to prevent one person creating too many accounts for others, and potentially threaten legal action against them for doing so.

That threat of legal action is part of the same thing that prevents children from being able to go up to a random adult, handing them a $50 note, and asking for $20 worth of alcohol in exchange. You’re not going to be able to prevent it on a smaller scale, but you can definitely prevent a small handful of people being able to age verify on behalf of thousands of children.

An additional protection could be added depending on how the age verification works. If she verification is “upload a scan of your photo ID”, then yeah, mass verification becomes possible. But if each verification requires you to hold up your photo ID next to your face, speak a specific phrase aloud (with automated lip reading attempting a rough lip flap match), nod your head, write a specific phrase on a piece of paper, and more, all in randomised orders, it becomes a much bigger burden for someone to provide for others.

I’m certainly not advocating this. The level of burden for legitimate users would be too high to consider it reasonable. But it would be possible. Something like this has been used in the past for things like EV code signing certificates, where a larger burden is relatively more reasonable.

Honestly, that is how I would prefer it be done. But it isn’t what OP asked for.

It would have to be set at an operating system level, with the OS providing an API for the browser to use, while the os itself restricts installation of unapproved apps (and to work, installation of apps would have to use an allow-list or a similar age-tagging system, where any app that includes general web access has to be 18+ unless it also implements age-gating correctly).

But yes, this would be the best system. Parental controls have never been very successful in the past, but I think part of the reason for this is that they’ve never been properly supported up and down the stack. The government should mandate that it is supported the whole way, so that parents really have the tools they need to enforce parental controls.

Edit: I thought this was a comment in another thread. My reply here only makes sense in that context.

It would also reveal to the government that the user was accessing 18+ content

Yes, I did mention that. Although ironically, Australia’s social media minimum age law, and other similar laws being considered around the world, would actually increase privacy in this respect. The government could have separate keys for each age of legal significance (16 and 18, in Australia) and sign with the appropriate one (either the highest the user meets, or all the user meets—the latter would give the site less information about the user’s and).

I don’t believe it is technically possible to get around the example you shared there. Even in the real world, it’s not dissimilar to a child asking an adult to buy alcohol for them.

Here’s one good answer: https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/96283

It has the downside of requiring a physical device like a passport or some specific trusted long-running locally-kept identity store held by the user. But it’s otherwise very good.

Another option does not require anything extra be kept by the user, but does slightly compromise privacy. The Government will not be able to track each time the user tries to access age-gated content, or even know what sources of age-gated content are being accessed, but they will know how many different sites the user has requested access to. It works like this:

1. The user creates or logs in to an account on the age-gated site.
2. The site creates a token T that can uniquely identify that user.
3. That token is then blinded B(T). Nobody who receives B(T) can learn anything about the user.
4. The user takes the token to the government age verification service (AVS).
5. The user presents the AVS with B(T) and whatever evidence is needed to verify age.
6. The AVS checks if the person should be verified. If not, we can end the flow here. If so, move on.
7. The AVS signs the blinded token using a trusted AVS certificate, S(B(T)) and returns it to the user.
8. The user returns the token to the site.
9. The site unblinds the token and obtains S(T). This allows them to see that it is the same token T representing the user, and to know that it was signed by the AVS, indicating that the user is of age.
10. The site marks in their database that the user has been age verified. On future visits to that site, the user can just log in as normal, no need to re-verify.

All of the moving around of the token can be automated by the browser/app, if it’s designed to be able to do that. Unfortunately a typical OAuth-style redirect system probably would not work (someone with more knowledge please correct me), because it would expose to the AVS what site the token is being generated for. So the behaviour would need to be created bespoke. Or a user could have a file downloaded and be asked to share it manually.

There’s also a potential exposure of information due to timing. If site X has a user begin the age verification flow at 8:01, and the AVS receives a request at 8:02, and the site receives a return response with a signed token at 8:05, then the government can, with a subpoena (or the consent of site X) work out that the user who started it at 8:01 and return at 8:05 is probably the same person who started verifying themselves at 8:02. Or at least narrow it down considerably. Making the redirect process manual would give the user the option to delay that, if they wanted even more privacy.

The site would probably want to store the unblinded, signed token, as long-term proof that they have indeed verified the user’s age with the AVS. A subsequent subpoena would not give the Government any information they could not have obtained from a subpoena in an un-age-verified system, assuming the token does not include a timestamp.

In the OS is where it belongs. But not like this.

Parental controls is the answer. The OS should be required to support robust APIs that allow parents to set the age of their child and prevent children from accessing apps or sites (via browser APIs that hook into the OS APIs) that are out of the age range. The only actual “verification” should be parents choosing to type in the number.

Worth noting that Lemmy receives at least some institutional funding for its development. And I believe some of that funding is contingent on hitting active user goals or similar metrics.

What’s xz?

Fwiw this idea does exist. Here’s one site that sells it. That site has handwash, general household cleaner, dishwashing powder & tablets, etc., as well as glass bottles to use them in. Also something called “bleach alternative”. All designed to be shipped dry.

shampoo, soap

We could reduce shipping needed for these if it became the norm to ship them dry and mix with water in the home. Bonus: they could be shipped in paper rather than plastic, and consumed from reusable glass bottles rather than plastic.

Just quoting Wikipedia:

In 2017, Russia was suspended from competing at the Olympic Games due to the state-sponsored doping scandal.

Russia at least was originally banned not for political reasons, but because of systemic cheating among their athletes. I saw someone say that that’s changed and the reason the ban continues is politics. I’m not sure. But if it was entirely about the doping, I would think that the IOC has a reasonable stance.

But broadcasters can and absolutely should do more things like this video. Use the Olympics as an opportunity to humiliate countries and athletes like Israel and their bobsledder for their involvement in war crimes including genocide.

Australia has about 2/3rds the population of Canada, with fewer than half the MPs (150).

You’re making me support Piers fucking Morgan‽ Wtf is going on‽

It’s gotten to the point where a lot of people very clearly think even the word conspiracy means “a crazy nonsense theory”. They’ll say “it’s not a conspiracy…” and then proceed to describe a textbook conspiracy.

Labour won just over 1,150 seats at the local elections in 2022

The Conservatives, who won 401 seats in 2022

Non-brit here. I’m just shocked at how many seats there are.

I live in a city about a third the size (by population) of London. Our 5 Local Government Areas have a combined 73 councillors & mayors. You guys have over 20 times the number of local representatives, only counting the two largest parties. :O

Yes, they have two options. Either honour the sticker price, or stop selling it at all until the price is fixed.

In Australia if the price at the checkout is higher than the price tag you are entitled to the first item free

Got a source on that? That’s not what the ACCC says.

This edit inspired by Zagorath

Fuck yeah!

Btw the other way you can do it (which will only be noticeable to users with screen readers) is to put the alt text between the square brackets.

![alt text](image url)