Re: U.S. Senate: READI Act 2019 re-introducted

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

Number of apps available in leading app stores 2019

Google Play: 2,470,000
Apple App Store: 1,800,000
Windows Store: 669,000
Amazon Appstore: 487,000

Likely hood all, a majority, a minority or even a tiny percentage of App 
developers will do the right thing?  Close to zero.  How many Apps are 
written in other countries, and don't follow requirements across borders.

Its not even a hypothetical, we know this from experience with cellular 
telephones in the early 2000s.  The cellular industry and mobile device 
OEMs claimed for 10 years that they should NOT supply emergency alerts, 
because all the Apps would do that.  The cell phone was "just the platform...."

Didn't happen. There were a few, very few apps, which implemented alerts; 
but default settings is a powerful thing.  Almost none of the public 
installed or used them.  Even when cell telephone companies 
isntalled alert apps by default, they failed to maintain them and 
often didn't work when needed.

Eventually, Congress passed the AWARN legislation requiring cell phone 
operators and manufacturers to implement emergency alerts.  A subscriber 
can opt-out, but by default all cellular telephone OEMs and OSs must 
implement emergency alerts.  A decade later, Netflix, Hulu, Spotify or 
whatever App you are using on your phone still rarely implement alerts. 
Wireless Emergency Alerts are nearly always triggered by the base cell 
phone operating system.

Amazon Alexa (echo operating system), Google Assistant (Google home/nest 
operating system), etc. are avoiding it much like the old cell phone OEMs 
in the mid-2000s.

But eventually I expect there will be a disaster, and lots of people 
won't get warnings, and will die.  Cable TV operators fought implementing 
EBS/EAS through the 1980s. Cable TV didn't have EBS/EAS, and several 
hundred people died watching premium cable in the midwest and didn't get 
the tornado warnings being broadcast by the local TV stations.  A few 
years later, Congress passed the law requiring Cable TV operators to 
implement EAS/EBS.

Much like seatbelts and car manufacturers, I expect tech firms to dodge as 
long as possible.

I appreciate your belief that somehow industry will do the right thing on 
its own.  History isn't on your side.

I do not expect Apple, Amazon or Google to do something until forced too.