Disability Access Legislation: The End of Free IM?

My post below on the impact of Chairman Markey's draft Internet disability access legislation quickly struck a cord with a few readers. They agree on the video part that I focused on, but are focusing their worries on possible near-term impact on instant messaging. The essence of their collective perspectives is that the potential mandates placed on IM could have the ironic impact of hindering an extremely popular tool of the disabled community.

A few of their points:

--The legislation would require the FCC to regulate IM and make it interoperate across all services and platforms, including old-school telephones on old-school networks.

--The bill creates massive annual reporting obligations on IM providers and forces them to contribute to the FCC's Telecommunications Relay Fund.

--It would force IM applications to transmit real-time text. This means that my IM contacts will see me write a word one letter at a time and then watch as I delete, re-enter a word, change my thought and then ultimately quit trying to come up with a pithy thought. Does the FCC really need to mandate this window into my soul?