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What exactly do these petitioners expect? A) there are far more important things to do, IMHO, then spending time wrestling telco companies over this, and B) the
by duaneb 14y ago
What exactly do these petitioners expect? A) there are far more important things to do, IMHO, then spending time wrestling telco companies over this, and B) the White House has to do zilch but respond.
I love petitions, but people getting angry over e.g. repeatedly not legalizing marijuana after 0.03% of americans signed something I find confusing and frustrating.
It's almost as if people are easier to ignore if they solely protest through these petitions....
- pyre 14y agoThis was a recent change by made by the copyright office, to revoke "phone unlocking" as an exception to the DMCA. The copyright office is under the President, IIRC, so the White House has the ability to directly affect this. The other route is to just codify the exception into law, but pushing a law through about this takes time.
- nodata 14y agoEither you are being naive or you are puroposefully misunderstanding or simplifying the issue. 1. It doesn't matter if there are "more important things to do". If it did, Silicon Valley wouldn't exist, and poverty wouldn't exist. 2. If the Whitehouse invents a petition system to allow people to show what is important to them, people expect the Whitehouse to react and do something about those things.
- prawks 14y agoIt appeases the throngs of slacktivists that run amok on the Internet, primarily. As has been stated elsewhere, the only real effect this can have is if it gains media traction. Which, given than there are celebrities and murders to report on, is always very unlikely in the US. If 100,000 people wrote personalized letters to their congressmen and women, it would likely have a much more substantial affect. The problem is that people prefer a "fix my problem" button.
- gknoy 14y agoI wonder what it would take for the EFF to have, in addition to their "Email/Fax my senators now ..." button, a "Create a printable PDF" (or similar) link which would let me print out the letter, and mail it myself? The biggest thing keeping me from writing actual letters is the writing -- if I had a letter that I could just print, I'd be much more likely to find an envelope and stamp and put them to use. If there were a convenient way to automatically print the letter as well as an envelope that had the mailing information already on it, that would overcome even more friction.
- icelancer 14y agoThey should go a step further - mail a physical letter for you with your printed signature on it (some HTML5 app that lets you draw your signature with the mouse). Charge you $1 via Stripe or some other mechanism to recover postage/labor.
- damoncali 14y agoI tend to agree. Think about the difference between signing a petition and doing what effective grass roots organizations (the NRA is a good example) do. They flood the offices of the legislature with phone calls, letters and emails. Although the numbers may be equal, the impact is much greater because it takes a lot more passion to pick up the phone than to sign a petition. It's the difference between stumbleupon traffic and google traffic.
- stfu 14y agoPetitions are just the White House way to troll the people of the internet. Gives a sense of accomplishment but leads to zero results i.e. the same as arguing on the internet.