It's not a solution, but as a mitigation, I'm trying to push the idea of an internet right of way into the public consciousness. Here's the thesis statement from my write-up:

I propose that if a company wants to grow by allowing open access to its services to the public, then that access should create a legal right of way. Any features that were open to users cannot then be closed off so long as the company remains operational. We need an Internet Rights of Way Act, which enforces digital footpaths. Companies shouldn't be allowed to create little paths into their sites, only to delete them, forcing guests to pay if they wish to maintain access to the networks that they built, the posts that they wrote, or whatever else it is that they were doing there.

As I explain in the link, rights of way already exist for the physical world, so it's easily explained to even the less technically inclined, and give us a useful legal framework for how they should work.

[–] psivchaz@reddthat.com 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I agree but I think it needs to be slightly more practical. Sometimes a line of business just dries up and it would damage the company to try and keep that service going. It wouldn't make sense to force a company into bankruptcy to keep one line going that few people use anymore.

Earlier today, though, I was thinking about sunsetting guarantees. Companies can and should decommission things when it makes business sense, but the user generated content it has gathered shouldn't just disappear, and they shouldn't be allowed to destroy the user experience of things people have bought.

So I would propose rules like:

If a service is being decomissioned or an entry point to that service being shut down, the content available on that service must be made available as a bulk export. Personal data, such as account data, messages, etc should be made available to users individually, while publicly accessible content should be made available publicly.
If a public service is being taken down completely, source code should be made available publicly.
If the service for a device which was physically purchased by consumers is being taken down, an update must be provided to allow users to use a local or alternative backend service. The source code for the service must be released publicly.
If features are being removed from a service which backed a physically purchased device, an update must be offered which allows users to point to a local or alternative service for either all functionality or, at minimum, the removed functionality. Looking at you, Google, keep removing features...

[–] theluddite@lemmy.ml 11 points 10 months ago

Yeah, as always, the devil is in the details. For now I think that we need a simple and clear articulation of the main idea. In the exceedingly unlikely event that it ever gets traction, I look forward to hammering out the many nuances.