Comment by b_e_n_t_o_n a day ago
> If some piece of software I'm running is the only reason for you to refuse the connection, then you should be obligated.
Obligated how? Like through violence? What happened to freedom of association?
I mean, we all have things we'd rather not have people reject us for, that doesn't mean it should be illegal to do so. We already have the (legal) right to keep our software preferences private.
In general I'd caution against trying to use legalisation to solve problems like this because they usually introduce more problems. At the very least I'd expect banks to no longer carry liability for fraud, so perhaps one intended consequence of this is that if you get defrauded the bank no longer protects you. That would suck imo.
Perhaps they could make it so you waive all protections by using unauthorised software. That would probably require changes to existing legislation, and then of course people would complain that the banks have too much power etc...
> At the very least I'd expect banks to no longer carry liability for fraud
Respectfully to you but not to banks, fuck that. You can use your computer under your control to access a bank and it's fine. You don't have to give up fraud protection. Phone apps should be the same way.
In Germany, the banking system had an open API, so you could even access your bank account from KMyMoney and do transactions. And you still had proper fraud protections.
How is it that accessing my bank account with KMyMoney is fine, but banks don't even allow me to access my smartphone's root account without blocking me?
The same violence that stops you from running a red light, yeah.
In my view, it's more important to have freedom of software choice than to have the very narrow freedom of association based on what software someone else chooses.
Because again I'm fine with you rejecting me for just about any other reason. But that one? No, I think we should all have to interoperate.
Another way to look at it is that I should be able to keep what software I use private.
Also the important part is applying this rule to companies with 7+ figures of revenue. Not so much to actual people.