Re: Safe harbo(u)rs: A structural proposal for interop

> Il 09/02/2022 15:14 Cory Doctorow <cory@eff.org> ha scritto:
> 
> What do you all think?

There has been a lot of discussion around this problem in the European open source policy community that works on the DMA.

There seems to be rough consensus that mandating the use of a standard, rather than mandating the opening of a custom API, is a superior solution because the API only enables "centralized" interop, i.e. each other app/provider towards the gatekeeper and back, while a standard would naturally prompt full interoperation, i.e. everybody speaking with everybody else. 

This would make a big difference especially for SMEs, startups and open source projects, which would never have the resources to keep up with multiple different APIs independently managed by each dominant/big player. 

Also, by pointing to an open standard developed through an open process at one of the existing SDOs, we avoid the risk of the gatekeepers manipulating their APIs to make interop hard to impossible (e.g. frequently making non-bw-compatible changes - this is e.g. what Youtube does to break third party downloaders all the time). There is some concern that open SDOs can be captured by the gatekeepers, and there will be safeguards against that, but still this process would be much more favourable to the community than the gatekeeper just doing their own or negotiating in private with the regulators.

The point around innovation is mostly moot; moreover, only the gatekeeper has obligations (all the others could actually choose not to interoperate) and they only relate to "industry-standard features", i.e. a set of basic features that can be defined in a relatively objective way (for example, you pick the top 10 services on the market and you see which features are available in at least 7 of them; something like this). Also, Internet standardization has always worked in cycles; you standardize some features, then someone innovates on top of them, then the others copy, then the new feature is brought into the standard. We just need to keep doing what we already did.

The FSFE actually managed to table an amendment to this effect that unfortunately was rejected. As a company coalition, we are now pushing the following text: 

"through the use of open standards and through contractual and technical conditions that do not [unnecessarily] hinder the interoperation by any kind of third party providers[, including SMEs and non-commercial entities]." 

It's very hard to push new text at this stage, but we'll see.

-- 
Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
vittorio.bertola@open-xchange.com 
Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy

Received on Thursday, 10 February 2022 09:54:01 UTC