You seem to have a sensible way to do it. … a bit like having a licence to drive a car … I would not object to an internet licence provided it was not open to misuse by commercial interests.
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France has already moved many of these things on line, driving licences, health cards, car insurance certificate, not to mention banking and cards, flight tickets. My concern is what happens with your phone if it is not fully charged and you are stopped by the police. Or if your phone dies or gets stolen, will some cleaver crooks get access to your data
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I lost my phone a few years back. Did not have too much on it then. But that is one thing I do worry about and that is losing my phone. A lot of sites want to sent you a code for the 2 step verification. If I lost my phone, it would be difficult to even logon to these sites.
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For almost everything I download a copy to my phone and my tablet, plus send a copy to my wife, belts and braces plus printer copy ! You just never know
Great point!
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I agree that DIDs and ZKPs have an important place in our digital landscape, but I still maintain that the responsibility for child safety online should fall on parents. Then the only roll Government would have would be to facilitate a parent’s ability to meet his/her obligations with legislation requiring OS and distribution developers/maintainers to include and support child protective software with their offerings, and that governments must take steps to aid in the support of regional/local parental assistance/educational groups/materials so these bodies can help parents obtain the knowledge they need to enable themselves to keep their children safe online.
Ernie
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I think a smart way to handle these ‘Internet Licenses’ may be to handle them in a manner similar to passkeys, so if your Internet License is required to complete some transaction, or access an adults only website, a pin or other biometric form of identification should be required to prove that the license you’re presenting is actually yours. What do you think?
Ernie
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In the case of a lost or stolen phone, contact your service provider to deactivate that phone ASAP, then get a replacement, and when you have it in your possession, use the same proof of ID you used to deactivate your old phone to activate this one, keeping your phone number. It’s a real pain in the behind, and a lot to go through, but it’s better than trying to start from scratch. Believe me, I’ve been there!
Ernie
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What I do is store account recovery information stored in my password vault for all of my accounts that offer such options. Admittedly, there’s an unfathomable volume of effort required to regain your life, but the alternative’s much worse.
Ernie
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My immediate reaction was laughter, not at you, but from enjoyment from your comment itself and the fact that the more things seem to change, the more they seem to remain the same! It’s too bad we don’t have a laughing thumbs up emoji here! 
Ernie
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It won’t work, either at work or at home. As with the Munich initiative you can’t use a computer if the printer (in particular) lacks workable drivers and software that runs just like in Windows & Apple. Probably, that will only be sorted by legislation which, let’s hope, will also put an end to the consumables and user registration scams.
That’s just one example. Not long ago, my up-to-date Ubuntu installation failed to install the free version of the important bibliographic system Mendeley because it didn’t do Appimage. It sort of works now but I’m not yet confident with it.
On another point, the French education system doesn’t get a mention, perhaps because that’s been 200% M$ since 2015. We don’t talk politics here but then some things don’t need to be said…
I’ve proposed elsewhere that we might also take a more cynical view of various bugs and long-running subtle deficiencies in FOSS OS and applications. Quite recently, Ubuntu and Mint had a few show-stoppers affecting ordinary users; the Mint forum, to name but one, wasn’t terribly helpful with practical advice.
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Some brands of peripherals definitely don’t support Linux, but if the user base increases enough, they might be incentivised to do so. That’s likely to be a slow process.
Most software that people need either works on Linux or there are suitable replacements. Getting people to notice that and be willing to try them is another matter. Since most apps on Linux are free and a lot of people are economically challenged, that may help as well.
The year of the Linux desktop is probably quite a ways off, but any progress is good.
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Oh, no, not this again!
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Not from me! My comment was intended as a quote from the author of that item! I fully understand the realities, and I agree that any significant increases in user-ship across the board will benefit everyone with growing support from hardware and software manufacturers/developers!
Ernie
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You’re reasonable then!
TY for letting me know
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