“A bill to promote competition and reduce consumer switching costs in the provision of online communications services.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section defines terms used in the Act, including (1) Commission, as the Federal Trade Commission; (2) communications provider, as a consumer-facing communications and information services provider; (3) competing communications provider, as another communications provider offering or planning to offer similar products or services as a large communications platform provider; (4) competing communications service, as a similar product or service offered by a competing communications provider; (5) custodial third-party agent, as an entity authorized by a user to manage the user's interactions, content, and account settings on a large communications platform; (6) interoperability interface, as an electronic interface maintained by a large communications platform for achieving interoperability; (7) large communications platform, as a product or service that generates income from user data and has more than 100 million monthly active users in the United States; (8) large communications platform provider, as a communications provider that provides, manages, or controls a large communications platform; and (9) user data, as information collected directly by a communications provider that is linked or reasonably linkable to a specific person (excluding de-identified, anonymized, or otherwise unusable information).
This section requires large communications platform providers to maintain transparent, third-party-accessible interfaces (including application programming interfaces) for each platform they operate to enable secure transfers of user data to a user or a competing communications provider acting at the user's direction, in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format. Competing communications providers must reasonably secure any ported user data received. The obligations do not apply to products or services that generate no income or compensation, directly or indirectly, from collecting, using, or sharing user data.
This section requires large communications platform providers to maintain transparent, third-party-accessible interfaces (including APIs) to facilitate interoperable communications with users of competing communications providers and imposes reciprocal data security duties on competing providers. To achieve interoperability, large providers must (1) provide access on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms, including reasonable proportional fees and usage expectations with public notice, industry-best privacy and security standards, and no prohibited changes that undermine access; (2) offer functionally equivalent interfaces to competitors as provided to their own products or affiliates; (3) disclose complete and accurate interface documentation to competitors not later than 120 days after enactment (limited to necessary information, excluding source code); (4) provide reasonable advance notice of interface changes; and (5) refrain from collecting, using, or sharing data obtained via the interface except to safeguard privacy and security or maintain interoperability. Competing providers must adhere to parallel data non-commercialization restrictions, and the obligations exempt services generating no income from user data collection, use, or sharing.
This section requires large communications platform providers to maintain transparent third-party-accessible interfaces allowing a user to delegate a custodial third-party agent to manage the user’s online interactions, content, and account settings on the same terms as the user. It directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to establish, not later than 180 days after enactment, rules and procedures for authenticating such agents and for their registration with (and deregistration by) the FCC. Custodial third-party agents must (1) safeguard user privacy and security; (2) manage accounts without benefiting themselves to the user’s detriment, causing foreseeable harm, or deviating from user directions or expectations; and (3) refrain from collecting, using, or sharing user data for their commercial benefit, though they may charge users fees; platforms may revoke access for unregistered agents or those repeatedly facilitating fraud or malice, and agents gain no greater access rights than users.
This section directs the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to promulgate regulations implementing specified provisions within one year of enactment; to establish, within 180 days of enactment and in consultation with industry stakeholders, rules and procedures for verifying requests to obtain user data; and to regularly assess compliance by large communications platform providers and to establish complaint procedures for users, providers, and agents. It further requires the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, within 180 days of enactment, to develop and publish model technical standards for interoperability among online messaging, multimedia sharing, and social networking services. The section treats violations of the Act or its regulations as unfair or deceptive acts under FTC Act section 18(a)(1)(B) (15 U.S.C. 57a(a)(1)(B)); authorizes FTC enforcement under the FTC Act (15 U.S.C. 41 et seq.), including against common carriers subject to the Communications Act of 1934 notwithstanding FTC Act jurisdictional limits on nonprofits and common carriers (15 U.S.C. 44, 45(a)(2)); directs the FTC to consider each affected user as a separate violation for fines; and entitles large communications platform providers using open standards under the NIST process to a rebuttable presumption of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory access. This section preempts inconsistent state laws and takes effect on the date the FTC promulgates regulations under subsection (a).
This section specifies that nothing in the Act modifies, limits, or supersedes the operation of specified federal privacy and security laws, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA; 20 U.S.C. 1232g).