Colorado Amended SB051 (Age Verification Bill) to Exclude Open Source Projects (legiscan.com)

(5)(a) "COVERED APPLICATION" MEANS A CONSUMER SOFTWARE APPLICATION THAT IS ACCESSED THROUGH A COVERED APPLICATION STORE AND THAT MAY BE RUN OR DIRECTED BY A USER ON A DEVICE.

(b) "COVERED APPLICATION" DOES NOT INCLUDE:

(I) A SOFTWARE APPLICATION THAT DOES NOT PROCESS USERS' PERSONAL DATA; OR

(II) AN APPLICATION FROM A FREE, PUBLICLY AVAILABLE CODE REPOSITORY.

hopefully if each state starts crafting dumb laws like this they all get banned via commerce clause due to infeasibility of compliance

I foresee a wave of new porn-related open source applications in Colorado's future.

I know this is attached to a stupid bill, but I really like the general idea of special carve outs for open source projects.

Contributing to an open source project is one of the very few things on the net that I actually would want id verification on.

Good development, along with the most recent changes to https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

A colleague is hosting a virtual session on these and other similar bills around the world in two days https://maintainermonth.github.com/schedule/2026-05-22-age-a...

Or, now slightly out of date, read https://github.blog/news-insights/policy-news-and-insights/w... Added: I had not scrolled far enough on the front page, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214215 is on this blog.

As someone working on an open source project in CO, this is a welcome fit of common sense. How do these laws typically work in other jurisdictions, do they block non-conforming sites? Or does it open you up to lawsuits?

Edit: It looks like these laws will be enforced by app stores primarily, because they have more significant liability. I'm guessing they won't take the effort to provide exemptions to jurisdictions with the open source carveout unless it is common.

Good, California too now

Boiling frog strikes again.

"It's only for porn sites" to "its only for social media" to "its doesn't include open source projects" to "its only when you need an internet connection".

will colorado be issuing arrest warrants for developers ?

This TOTALLY ORGANIC movement to suddenly please think about the children with required age verification in software makes me sick.

Whoever is behind this needs to be exposed, tarred, and feathered.

We have age verification for many things. The problem now is trust. There is, for obvious reasons, negative trust that this won't ultimately harm people. That it won't be used to harvest more data and invade our digital lives even more. That negative trust is there because we see a constant ability to gather even more information about us, and use it to produce real harm, but no hint at an entity actually fighting back to protect people. If anyone in any government is reading this, you do not gain my trust that big tech will not abuse my information by requiring big tech to collect more of my information, you just loose my trust in the government. Earn my trust back and then, maybe, in some distant future, we can talk about 'but who will think of the children' legislation like this.

Call it an Identity Verification Bill, or think of something even more negative. That is more accurate and doesn't sound as attractive.

Names matter. We saw ChatControl 1.0 get defeated, it probably didn't hurt that the name implied censorship.

It is very fortunate for us that the authors were kind enough to demonstrate this has nothing to do with safety by adding this exemption.

Is there any push-back options?

I feel like age verification is important online - a copy of the real world. Check my ID before I go in the pub.

It feels like it's jumped all the way to positive-ID. Not just "of age" but become you are "First Last".

It's possible (right?) to assert age and is-human attributes w/o knowing which specific human at what specific age I am online?

This makes it even more unconstitutional. Privileging certain classes over others for compelled speech makes is way easier to strike down.

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