I think it's not such a rudimentary and obvious question whether they are a money-service-business or not. Their argument would be that they are only providing

I think it's not such a rudimentary and obvious question whether they are a money-service-business or not. Their argument would be that they are only providing a protocol, and those using the protocol are money-service businesses. The counter-argument of course being that they are charging XRP for use of their protocol ergo: money-service-business like any other. On the other-hand what about Bitcoin in that case? Is Gavin Andresen running a money-service-business because he's developing a protocol? Are the miners because they are collecting transaction fees? There are a lot of open questions here.