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Assembly Bill 1856 (AB 1856), currently moving through California’s legislature ahead of committee reviews in June, would amend the state’s earlier age-assurance law by excluding software distributed under licenses that allow users to “copy, redistribute, and modify the software.”
The amendment follows months of backlash after California passed the original Assembly Bill 1043 (AB 1043), formally known as the Digital Age Assurance Act, in late 2025. The law sought to shift online age verification away from individual websites and apps and down to the operating-system level instead.
Under the original law, operating systems would be required to request a user’s age or birth date during device setup, then expose an “age bracket signal” to apps and app stores. The law, which defined brackets such as “under 13,” “13–15,” “16–17,” and “18+,” immediately raised questions about how such requirements would apply to decentralized, open-source software ecosystems.
Unlike Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android, most Linux distributions are not centrally controlled commercial platforms. Many are community-run projects maintained by volunteers, often without user accounts, telemetry systems, or even formal corporate ownership structures. Critics argued the law’s wording was so broad that it could technically force open-source operating systems to become age-verification platforms.
Privacy advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticized the legislation as invasive and warned it could create infrastructure for broader identity tracking online. Linux developers also questioned how California could realistically enforce such requirements on infinitely forkable open-source software projects.
The controversy became particularly heated after reports suggested platforms like SteamOS could still fall under the law due to their ties to proprietary application ecosystems. Valve
AB 1856 does not repeal the original Digital Age Assurance Act. Instead, it narrows the definition of who qualifies as an “operating system provider” under the law. Commercial platforms with proprietary app ecosystems could remain subject to California’s age-assurance requirements even if most open-source Linux distributions are ultimately exempted.
California Assembly Member Buffy Wicks introduced the amendment on February 11, 2026. However, the open-source exemption language appeared in later revisions that began drawing attention across Linux and privacy communities. The latest version is dated May 18, 2026, and as of May 19, 2026, the bill was read a second time and ordered to third reading.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Thursday May 28, @04:45PM (6 children)
You can only legislate safety so much. Ultimately it comes down to parents. This is like those fancy trigger locks on guns. If your parents are irresponsible enough to not lock up a firearm, the firearm isn't the problem. It's the parents. Instead of putting training wheels on all our bikes, how about going after the parents that hand 60 mph e-bikes to kids? In fact, they finally just got around to doing that. It was in the news here in California.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday May 28, @06:15PM (5 children)
Probably a difficult analogy because e-bikes are regulated at national, state, county, muni, and park ranger level and every level at every location is different.
In my state there's lots of complaining about little kids going 45 mph on ebikes but the news reports VERY carefully omit thats already highly illegal under state law for some years. Before the 2020s electric bikes were flat out illegal in my state, one of my kids and I were going to build a kit one until we found out they're flat out illegal in our state. They passed a law limiting ebikes to like "kids electric vehicle" performance where it can't be over 750 watts and a software limit of 20 mph which is slower than pedal bikes can go (Well downhill at least).
You still can't register an e-motorcycle under scooter laws; has to burn gas (or diesel) and has to be under 50 cc to register a moped. And registration requires proof of insurance and a drivers license so its not very popular.
County won't allow ebikes on county roads. Those are mostly 45 mph farm roads and by state law ebikes are illegal over 20 mph so its a safety issue to keep them off the roads. They'd try and keep bicycles off county roads if the bikers would let them. Bicycles (and ebikes) are illegal on interstate highways for safety reasons.
Muni makes it illegal to ride on sidewalks and mandates registration which is essentially never enforced, along with never enforced helmet laws.
Most parks and trails ban them. I think there's one state ATV trail that allows e-bikes if you'd be insane enough to take a 750 watt 20 mph road bike on a ATV trail. At the muni level you're technically not allowed to bike thru muni parks because too many people getting run over. Just like they don't allow sidewalks.
Anyway a national computer age thing makes more sense than the bicycle regulation model of multiple layers doing random and inconsistent stuff.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday May 28, @07:45PM (4 children)
Regulating vehicles based on performance is one thing, but treating ICE and EV separately when the motor produces the same power output is ridiculous. Banning an EV simply because it's an EV is just evil. It sounds like whoever wrote that law was heavily invested in fossil fuel. What state is it?
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday May 28, @08:14PM (2 children)
Apparently 50 cc is "standard" for most states but some states have much higher limits for unlicensed mopeds so an outright motorcycle can be unlicensed in some states.
I think its the law moves REALLY slow compared to tech. I was bored enough to look it up and the 50 cc limit for mopeds was untouched from the 1970s until 2020s. fifty years is a good run for a law.
Apparently mopeds were a reaction to the 1970s oil crisis and they got real popular real quick resulting in regulation.
The state had no concept of electric bicycles in the 70s so the law is very confused about "proving to DMV registration authorities the cylinder volume is less than 50 cc". Usually government regulators are more reasonable than given credit and showing them an electric motor would probably count as proving its less than 50 cc cylinder volume, what with it being zero. Or maybe they'd be dicks and "moped law requires a cylinder to measure" so no E-bike.
Maybe in the 70s when we wrote our law a 50 cc engine might only output a fraction of a horsepower, but with infinite high revving engines you can get "some single digit horsepower" out of 50 cc in the 2020s, for awhile anyway, whereas e-bikes are limited by law to about 1 HP.
I would not be surprised if you could get 10 HP out of 50 cc for a short amount of time, like racing mods. The engines and parts are cheap, so sure. I bet they won't last long above 15K rpm but they'll go really fast for awhile...
An 1980s Honda scooter at 50 cc size might be like 4 HP, so even when the law was new, or only a decade old, it was already WAY more than the power allowed to e-bikes.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday May 29, @04:12AM (1 child)
My 16hp riding mower will do 60mph if I disable the governor... dunno for how long, but crazy people race these things!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30, @09:10AM
Meanwhile in Thailand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytKzWZp__Gs [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AjPp2puStQ [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28, @09:19PM
Probably not evil, e-bikes just weren't a thing. You could very easily write a law that for mopeds that the motor must be less than 50 cc and have it accidentally imply that it must be an ICE motor.