Below is a paragraph from a bill that is currently being considered by Congress. I was reading this bill and the end of the paragraph caught my attention. It would essentially require credit card companies to give away some of the copyright benefits for their operating rules. This could represent a new approach to government regulation and the dissemination of knowledge.

H.R. 2382: Credit Card Interchange Fees Act of 2009

This is an excerpt from the text of the bill (status: Introduced in House). Jump to this paragraph in the full text. .

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‘(a) Disclosure of Contract Terms- An electronic payment system network, and any agent, processor, or licensed member of the network, may not establish or maintain, directly or indirectly by contract or through a licensing arrangement, any agreement with a merchant, unless the network, agent, processor, or licensed member has made available to the merchant all of the rules, terms, and conditions to which such merchant will be bound under such agreement, including the complete operating rules of the relevant payment system using payment cards bearing any logo of such network, without restrictions on the merchant’s use of any such information.

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