Talk:You on Signal and Me on Telegram – Messenger Interoperability by EU Regulation – TOPIC 01 Sub 03 2024

Org Team – Planning Meeting, 7th of May, 3 pm

Peter Koch, Roberto Gaetano, Wout de Natris, Sabrina Heber, Karen Mulberry

During this meeting the orgteam slightly adapted its vision for the key participants and agreed to include someone who is affected by the DMA, a regulator, and the end user. As the session is set up for 45 minutes three key participants and a moderator are enough. There are some key questions that might be addressed by the moderator concerning the interoperability of messaging services: What are the end users gaining or losing? How does it affect messaging services providers? Which opportunities does it create? Why have messaging services not cooperated from the beginning? Is there a will to interconnect? A lot of people select a particular messaging service because of privacy issues, but what happens if messaging services become interoperable? Does it affect competition?

Since everybody is using messaging services, we still want to highlight in the session teaser that everybody will be affected by the interoperability of the messaging services and can now witness a standard development in the making.

We have already tried to get someone from the Youth involved as a key participant. While we were looking for someone from a standardisation organisation before, we are now looking for someone who wants to represent the end user’s perspective. Our next steps include approaching Nadia whether somebody from Youth DIG might be interested in representing the end user’s perspective and getting in touch with Sandra to establish contact to the Lithuanian regulator. Peter will ask his contacts in the MIMI working group to join the session as a key participant. The focal points will edit the session teaser and the session description. By the end of Monday, the orgteam wants to come up with a session title that will be discussed via the mailinglist.

The final planning meeting is scheduled for the 17th of May at 3 pm.

Org Team – Planning meeting, 19th of April 12pm

The session teaser that has been put together by the Programme Committee hints in the direction of the Digital Markets Act or the Cyber Resilience Act. It further mentions standard development processes, especially the IETF. While the DMA is not named in the teaser, it forces messaging services to work together to develop standards that allow interoperability between different messengers. The messaging services, while not tasked by the European Commission, decided to come together in the IETF MIMI Working Group and work on according standards. Therefore, Peter Koch suggested to use the DMA as an ongoing example for the interplay between standards-setting and the EC competition requirements.

There has been some concern that if the IETF standard remains voluntarily and is not included in any laws, different jurisdictions might come up with their own standards of interoperability which might result in fragmentation. This could be an interesting point the discussion in the session might be heading towards.

The session’s key participants could be someone participating in the IETF MIMI working group, a researcher in market competition and someone from the regulatory side, maybe even someone from Lithuania.

The org team agreed that the session needs to give the audience the opportunity to understand this fairly new and niche topic. Considering the time restraint, it would be realistic to have one round of specific questions to the three key participants. After they gave the audience their views on the topic, there might be a fourth key participant who challenges the statements of the presenters to engage the audience in taking sides. If there are some conflicting views on stage, it might be easier for the audience to ask questions or make comments. As a Plan B, the org team might brief some people in the audience with questions that can act as an icebreaker, if necessary.

The next meeting will take place in about two weeks and will be agreed on via a Doodle poll. Until then, the focal points prepare a session description that will be circulated in the org team before it will be uploaded to the Wiki.

First Call – Session Submitters Topic 1 /Sub 3

Zoom, 3^rd of April, 4-5 pm

Roberto Gaetano, Wout de Natris, Peter Koch, Sabrina Heber

After the introductions and a short update on the session principles as outlined in the focal points briefing, we were discussing the submitted proposals. Under Topic 1/Sub 3 Standard setting vs. regional legislation there are five submissions that have been bundled. There has been agreement that the proposals should somehow align and interact with each other. We identified two overarching issues:

1. the nature of standards: those developed for interoperabilty vs. those developed for other goals, e.g., product safety
2. the triangular relation between
   • development and setti ng of standards (in SDOs)
   • deployment of standards ("voluntary adoption of standards" vs. regulatory requirements)
   • regulation pre or post standards development

One of the questions raised concerned the inclusion of the proposal on satellites. The main questions in that area relates to spectrum management and what to do if there is a regulatory gap. Roberto explained that while he has no concrete ideas about this topic yet, the proposal is about initiating talks about standard setting regarding the non-terrestrial internet. Will there be a few major players that impose their ideas on everyone, or should we bring more stakeholders together and set the rules for governance? One of the biggest challenges for that topic would be to explain all the necessary details to the audience and to connect this proposal to the rest of the submissions. When it comes to the format of the session, everyone would like to avoid a panel discussion. One idea is to include the audience with questions at the beginning of the session and ask the same questions again towards the end of the session. Potential questions that need to be clarified during the session are:

• What types of standards are we talking about?
• What needs to be governed?
• Why do market participants sometimes intentionally decide not to deploy certain standards?

Next steps:

• Schedule another meeting in two weeks via the mailing list and agree on whether moving forward meetings will take place on a regular basis or on a step by step basis → Focal Points
• Get in touch with people in the relevant regulatory field to join the OrgTeam → Focal Points
• Reach out to someone from the Youth with a relevant background to join the OrgTeam → Focal Points
• Reflect on how to compromise on a topic relating to that triangle between standard setting standard deployment and regulation that includes as many submissions as possible → OrgTeam