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Re:Google Talk Is Being Discontinued by pbhjpbhj on Friday March 24, 2017 @08:03PM (#13953248)
Good questions.

If a company doesn't publish the protocol in use within, let's say 3 months of a valid request by a third-party then they'd be liable to a fine, perhaps something like $1 per day per registered user, plus costs of government and registered third parties in pursuing the interoperability request.

Small companies might escape, but if Facebook tried it they can't really run away. You'd need to be able to issue notices to ISPs to block those convicted of breaking the law, such orders are already part of UK law (against torrent discovery websites for example). Again you'd get some leakage but big providers like Microsoft couldn't feasibly expect enough customers to move to VPNs to bypass such a block.

IM client definition could be hard but in practice you'd have clauses requiring a judge to decide if the traffic exchange amounted to an IM communication. I see no problem with having a broad definition, if the definition were narrow then it would just get worked around. The definition would probably include email as a subset.

Were there other person-to-person communications protocols you are concerned would fall in the scope that definitely shouldn't be open?

Re:Google Talk Is Being Discontinued by simplyluke on Monday March 27, 2017 @12:46AM (#13965240)
> You'd need to be able to issue notices to ISPs to block those convicted of breaking the law, such orders are already part of UK law (against torrent discovery websites for example)

And most of us in the US hope we never lose the right to open access in the way citizens of the UK have. I can't think of a worse thing to happen to the internet. The UK has proven that once you allow a government to censor the content of the internet they will aggressively and rapidly expand that power to censor and control.

Re:Google Talk Is Being Discontinued by cortesoft on Saturday March 25, 2017 @01:33PM (#13956661)
I can think of a few... one example that comes to mind is a video game. The communication protocol to synchronize the game could fall in scope, and I think video game companies have the right to have their own proprietary game network protocol.