Comment by akdev1l
9 days ago
so many people start asking random questions like these acting as if judges are drooling baboons or something
“What’s even an operating system will this apply to my toaster?” - probably not, a judge would ultimately decide.
That seems pretty annoying for people who sell computing appliances like smart toasters, routers, and televisions, and videogame consoles—do they preemptively start implementing in case a judge decides they are covered? Why not write an easy-to-interpret law in the first place?
You couldn’t really write a law that is easy to interpret in all cases and that is completely unambiguous.
Could the law be better written? Probably. But at some point there will always be a grey area that needs to be slowly defined through jurisprudence and case law.
Exactly which part of AB 1043 makes you think a "smart toaster" could reasonably fall under it?
The GE smart wall oven could meet the definition. I’m genuinely unsure which way a judge would rule. For ovens which do not provide an App Store, I cannot tell what the intent of AB 1043 should be.
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I assume you're aware that many "smart" devices these days have a full blown OS, a web browser, and an app store. But then some are missing or have only partial functionality here or there. If the law doesn't unambiguously specify what it applies to it puts anyone in the grey area in a difficult position.
While we're at it, does fdroid count as the sort of app store that this law cares about? Because an end user can install that for themselves.
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I was responding to the scenario set out in the comment I responded to.
> “What’s even an operating system will this apply to my toaster?” - probably not, a judge would ultimately decide.