[munfred]

Here is the full text of the ACCESS Act of 2019 bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/265...

I highly recommend that everyone reads it - it is extremely short, well written, and probably the single most important piece of legislation to HN folks in the past decade.

As the bill is right now, it require communications platforms with 100M monthly active users in the US to make their services interoperable with other platforms. The bill presumes that platforms using open protocols already (like email) are fine. Facebook and it’s messenger platform is likely to be the only one meeting the threshold.

I'm not American, but if you are and you care, I would suggest you to call your representative and explain why you support (or not) this bill. Remember that as it goes through congress, it can, and most likely will, be heavily edited or gutted to fit the many competing interests whispering in their ears. If you think the bill is good as is, tell them that! Personally, I think the bill is perfect, except for the 100M user threshold to start demand compatibility, which I think should be lowered to 10M.

[jkarneges]

> the bill is perfect, except for the 100M user threshold to start demand compatibility, which I think should be lowered to 10M

I kinda like the high number, as it means the spirit is to prevent monopolies, which is one of the most compelling reasons for regulations to exist. Make the number too low, and it would invite criticism from people about regulations being overbearing. I don't know if that number is 100M, 10M, or 1M, but just something to be mindful about.

My sense is that if Facebook is legally forced to interop, then all other smaller/future players will voluntarily interop anyway.

[xg15]

Different strokes for different folks as they say, but I don't think "preventing monopolies" has to be the only motivation of this bill. I think interopability (and as a consequence, greatly improved customer choice and competition) is a value in its own right.

[WanderPanda]

I am not too sure you can have that cake AND eat it (historical datapoints suggest otherwise I think)

[xg15]

Please explain.

[laser]

The anti-monopoly benefits of interoperability can be offset by the regulatory capture of forced interoperability if companies too small are subject to such rules, placing them at a disadvantage relative to largest players and increasing the likelihood that the status quo remains in place. That's the "Can't have your cake and eat it too" that's being referred to above I think—in other words, if you regulate the second-tier like the first-tier, the second-tier will never have a chance at becoming the first tier.

[Reelin]

Slightly off topic, but you managed to clearly articulate what bothers me about a lot of well meaning regulation. GDPR in particular comes to mind - I was never worried about what some small time blogger was doing with my personal info, only (for example) Google and PayPal.

[mjevans]

The number I think I'd like is something like 1/3rd or greater of a market. However that has the semantics issue of defining a market.

Instead I'd like to see the targets be an ANY OF (logical or):

A) Userbase of 25% or greater of the target demographic.

B) 33% or greater of the userbase files a request with (E.G. the FCC) for this service to be recognized as large enough to be under the requirements.

C) Any company making a 'sales revenue' (or other income side) of 500x the minimum wage, or 50x the 'net profit' (income after expences) could also be compelled by a regulatory body (court, FCC, FTC, whatever) without any other evidence.

[vsskanth]

Can interoperability and data portability still be legislatively mandated if APIs were ruled copyrightable in the Supreme Court (Oracle vs Google) ?

Can monopolies go further and claim their user graph and user data is also under copyright ?

[chabad360]

Sure, the bill would need to include a clause that specifies that the API must not be copyrighted, or something to that effect.

[nobody9999]

>Sure, the bill would need to include a clause that specifies that the API must not be copyrighted, or something to that effect.

I don't believe that would be an issue, since Federal government works are not entitled to copyright and are in the public domain[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_t...

[p_l]

But the interoperability API would be created by private entities, not Federal government works, and AFAIK even federal-but-subcontracted work is copyrightable.

[nobody9999]

>But the interoperability API would be created by private entities,

That's true. I was wrong.

However, the interoperability specs will be developed by NIST as specified in Section 6(c):

"(c) Technical standards.—Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology shall develop and publish model technical standards by which to make interoperable popular classes of communications or information services, including—

(1) online messaging;

(2) multimedia sharing; and

(3) social networking."

Those standards certainly can't be copyrighted, and as such, it's still not really an issue.

[CKN23-ARIN]

NIST. Hmm. Isn't this the IETF's job?

[xg15]

As the courts only interpret the existing law, couldn't the bill simply restrict the copyright on APIs enough to avoid those kind of contradictions?

[amelius]

Methods of communication should (imho) never be copyrightable. That would include APIs, filesystems, codecs, programming languages, and possibly fonts.

[amelius]

Why would FAANG write the APIs when they can be good old RFCs?

[treis]

Copying APIs for interoperability is protected fair use.

[ebcode]

It’s possible that the Supreme Court will decide this in the negative. https://www.zdnet.com/article/supreme-court-takes-on-google-...

[munfred]

Those are good questions. My take is that it would be similar in spirit to the way government can act to prevent price gouging with drug patents. Notice that platforms are allowed to charge and regulate access to the API, but it has to be "reasonable". Here is what is stated on section 4 on interoperability:

------------

SEC. 4. INTEROPERABILITY.

(a) General Duty Of Large Communications Platform Providers.—A large communications platform provider shall, for each large communications platform it operates, maintain a set of transparent, third-party-accessible interfaces (including application programming interfaces) to facilitate and maintain technically compatible, interoperable communications with a user of a competing communications provider.

(b) General Duty Of Competing Communications Providers.—A competing communications provider that accesses an interoperability interface of a large communications platform provider shall reasonably secure any user data it acquires, processes, or transmits.

(c) Interoperability Obligations For Large Communications Platform Providers.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—In order to achieve interoperability under subsection (a), a large communications platform provider shall fulfill the duties under paragraphs (2) through (6) of this subsection.

(2) NON-DISCRIMINATION.—

(A) IN GENERAL.—A large communications platform provider shall facilitate and maintain interoperability with competing communications services for each of its large communications platforms through an interoperability interface, based on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms.

(B) REASONABLE THRESHOLDS, ACCESS STANDARDS, AND FEES.—

(i) IN GENERAL.—A large communications platform provider may establish reasonable thresholds related to the frequency, nature, and volume of requests by a competing communications provider to access resources maintained by the large communications platform provider, beyond which the large communications platform provider may assess a reasonable fee for such access.

(ii) USAGE EXPECTATIONS.—A large communications platform provider may establish fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory usage expectations to govern access by competing communications providers, including fees or penalties for providers that exceed those usage expectations.

(iii) LIMITATION ON FEES AND USAGE EXPECTATIONS.—Any fees, penalties, or usage expectations assessed under clauses (i) and (ii) shall be reasonably proportional to the cost, complexity, and risk to the large communications platform provider of providing such access.

(iv) NOTICE.—A large communications platform provider shall provide public notice of any fees, penalties, or usage expectations that may be established under clauses (i) and (ii), including reasonable advance notice of any changes.

(v) SECURITY AND PRIVACY STANDARDS.—A large communications platform provider shall, consistent with industry best practices, set privacy and security standards for access by competing communications services to the extent reasonably necessary to address a threat to the large communications platform or user data, and shall report any suspected violations of those standards to the Commission.

(C) PROHIBITED CHANGES TO INTERFACES.—A change to an interoperability interface or terms of use made with the purpose, or substantial effect, of unreasonably denying access or undermining interoperability for competing communications services shall be considered a violation of the duty under subparagraph (A) to facilitate and maintain interoperability based on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms.

(3) FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENCE.—A large communications platform provider that maintains interoperability between its own large communications platform and other products, services, or affiliated offerings of such provider shall offer a functionally equivalent version of that interface to competing communications services.

(4) INTERFACE INFORMATION.—

(A) IN GENERAL.—Not later than 120 days after the date of enactment of this Act, a large communications platform provider shall disclose to competing communications providers complete and accurate documentation describing access to the interoperability interface required under this section.

(B) CONTENTS.—The documentation required under subparagraph (A)—

(i) is limited to interface documentation necessary to achieve development and operation of interoperable products and services; and

(ii) does not require the disclosure of the source code of a large communications platform.

(5) NOTICE OF CHANGES.—A large communications platform provider shall provide reasonable advance notice to a competing communications provider, which may be provided through public notice, of any change to an interoperability interface maintained by the large communications platform provider that will affect the interoperability of a competing communications service.

(6) NON-COMMERCIALIZATION BY A LARGE COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM PROVIDER.—A large communications platform provider may not collect, use, or share user data obtained from a competing communications service through the interoperability interface except for the purposes of safeguarding the privacy and security of such information or maintaining interoperability of services.

(d) Non-Commercialization By A Competing Communications Provider.—A competing communications provider that accesses an interoperability interface may not collect, use, or share user data obtained from a large communications platform provider through the interoperability interface except for the purposes of safeguarding the privacy and security of such information or maintaining interoperability of services.

(e) Exemption For Certain Services.—The obligations under this section shall not apply to a product or service by which a large communications platform provider does not generate any income or other compensation, directly or indirectly, from collecting, using, or sharing user data.

[vsskanth]

So Sec.4.2.B.iii says the large communication providers are allowed to charge a fee to access the network but doesn't say anything about the same charges being applicable to themselves. Wouldn't this create a competitive advantage to the larger network ?

Also, it seems awfully similar to the treatment for cellular communication providers. What are the differences here ? Or would Verizon/ATT be rolled into this since the statute just mentions large communications provider ?

[camgunz]

This bill is pretty smart (agreed about the limit though, I'd even put it at 1M MAU). Could it be we're finally at a point where Congress is listening to competent tech lobbying instead of just megacorp media/tech companies?

[munfred]

I'm every bit as surprised as you. I don't think it's a significant fraction of congress though, I think it's specifically senator Mark Warner. He did work with tech before, and my take is that he knows what he is talking about and was waiting for a good political moment to present such unpalatable proposals (unpalatable to the tech companies, that is).

See his Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Warner#Early_life,_educat...

Last year he (meaning, most likely his staff under his supervision) put out a "whitepaper" outlining 20 possible proposals to regulate social media and tech companies. Notably, 4 of the things discussed were introduced as bills in one form or another.

I posted about them last year, see the discussion and links here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21389809

[dangus]

> Facebook and it’s messenger platform is likely to be the only one meeting the threshold.

And iMessage! There should absolutely be a requirement to have it interoperate with other platforms.

[jeethsuresh]

Unfortunately I don't think the act as written would apply to iMessage. Seems like section 4e:

> Exemption for certain services.—The obligations under this section shall not apply to a product or service by which a large communications platform provider does not generate any income or other compensation, directly or indirectly, from collecting, using, or sharing user data.

would cut iMessage (and any other Apple service) out. I guess the argument could be made that Apple indirectly generates income from collecting data and making it available across their devices as a form of vendor lock-in, but that's shaky.

[duhast]

Cost of iMessage (software & service) is included in the price of iPhone/Mac. This is similar to MacOS/iOS - both are free to use but only on Apple hardware.

[duskwuff]

iMessage is end-to-end encrypted. It is unlikely that Apple collects any personal data from it -- at most, they might be collecting some aggregate data, like the frequency with which various features are used.

[crossroadsguy]

> iMessage is end-to-end encrypted

That's what Apple says. I don't think it's ever been independently audited at all; and of course to say source code is not available for the public.

[mmm_grayons]

As far as the user is concerned, imessage does mostly operate with another "open" platform, SMS. Certain features don't work for apple users texting others, but core functionality is intact. This is also because apple innovated by creating those features while retaining SMS interoperability, and RCS didn't exist at the time.

[jameshart]

How does this legislation define 'communications platform' in a way that doesn't risk capturing online games?

I have no idea what it would mean to force Fortnite to be interoperable with other platforms...

[cdirkx]

Why not? I have loads of different accounts from gaming services with friend lists and chat: Steam, Epic Games Store, Blizzard's Batte.net, etc. It would be nice if those were interoperable.

[munfred]

If you open the text and look at section 2 of bill S.2658, you will see the definition of "Large Communications Platform Providers": (7) LARGE COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM.—The term “large communications platform” means a product or service provided by a communications provider that—

    (A) generates income, directly or indirectly, from the collection, processing, sale, or sharing of user data; and
    
    (B) has more than 100,000,000 monthly active users in the United States.

[webmaven]

> Facebook and it’s messenger platform is likely to be the only one meeting the threshold.

I would be surprised if none of Google's chat services exceeds 100M MAU, even if only users in the USA are being counted.

[thekyle]

I don't think most people could even name a Google communication service other than GMail. Even if they could it might be one that no longer exists.

[tzs]

It is not at all clear to me from the bill text just what "interoperability" actually means.

[amelius]

I think there are a lot of things that the bill is not clear about, and in fact I don't think it would live up to any legal standards in its current form (IANAL). It is very easy to read though.