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

Hello Cory,

thanks for the reply. I just have a clarification on a specific point:

> Il 10/02/2022 16:09 Cory Doctorow <cory@eff.org> ha scritto:
> 
> In both cases, there is no suggestion that all dominant firms will adopt the *same* standard. Rather, they contemplate that each platform will have its own interop standard because each does something different - Google is not Facebook, Facebook is not iOS. That means that any interoperator seeking to take advantage of these bills' new regimes will already have to implement a separate function, with separate libraries and API calls, for each platform they wish to interoperate with.

In practice, there are either zero or one gatekeeper(s) per each core platform service covered by the DMA. So if you are not a competing platform, but (as it happens much more frequently) a competitor only for that specific platform service, you only have to implement one API/standard. You want to create an IM app, you only implement Whatsapp's interface - etc.

All in all, my argument is that having that interface defined by an "open SDO + policy oversight" process, while still open to capture, will be more likely to produce fair results than having that interface defined and changed unilaterally by the gatekeeper within a broadly defined set of requirements. Even just reversing the order of the arguments in an API call can create significant havoc for third party implementers, especially small ones, especially if the gatekeeper does that every two months. That is not something you can address by setting functional requirements on the interface, but only by taking change control away from the hands of the gatekeeper.

Moreover, there is also the issue of whether the gatekeeper could copyright their APIs and exert control that way, for example by preventing other parties from offering the same interface so that those who manage to interoperate with the gatekeeper can also interoperate with them (incidentally, this would be the kind of beneficial network effect that we'd hope to get with the "open standard" solution). As I understand, the current Supreme Court ruling in the US is that APIs can be copyrighted, but can be copied as a form of fair use. I don't know about other countries, though. We'd just remove this risk altogether if we used an open standard owned by an independent party.

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

Received on Friday, 11 February 2022 15:01:57 UTC