5 ms·

Hey everyone, I started this petition. Very glad we made it to 100k, and excited to see how the White House responds. I'm well aware that the WH may not take a

by sinak 14y ago

Hey everyone, I started this petition. Very glad we made it to 100k, and excited to see how the White House responds. I'm well aware that the WH may not take any real action though. Please sign up at http://fixthedmca.org http://fixthedmca.org if you care about this issue and want to continue helping the move to fix this issue permanently.

nateabele 14y ago
Yeah, I hate to be that guy, but the 'petition to end all petitions' comes to mind. Particularly the bits about 'politically safe non-answers' and 'channeling public activism into a cul-de-sac'. :-/
- kaybe 14y ago
  I can recommend this article: http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/31/we-the-people/ http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/31/we-the-people/ It argues that the reason for petitions to exist is the possibility to open a dialog to the people who are concerned about certain topics (because the petition website gets your email adress), and that in the time of fractioning news consumption it is a useful way to keep communicating, whatever that means. edit: Ok, why the heck do they call their page Swampland?
  - nateabele 14y ago
    Maybe I'm just cynical (okay, I'm probably just cynical), but that looks like a slightly more positive spin on essentially the same idea: a whole lot of 'communicating' and no action. > edit: Ok, why the heck do they call their page Swampland? Probably because it's about politics, and according to popular myth, DC was built on a swamp.
    - carlisle_ 14y ago
      First step to action is communication. Politicians aren't mind readers, they need to communicate with their constituents to understand their wants. Whether or not a petition is an effective means of communication I'm not qualified to answer, but it seems like a better option than doing nothing at all.
      - nateabele 14y ago
        In response to both you and dragonwriter, those are all totally fair points. My thought is this might be a case of poorly-managed expectations. Specifically, people generally think of petitions as things where, given n signatures, some kind of action is going to be taken (as in 'the right to petition government for redress of grievances'). In that context, it's easy to forget that the most you can 'win' is a response. Hence, 'victory' feels hollow, which can take more energy away from a movement than not having had a petition to rally around in the first place. Hope that makes sense. I'm not arguing against the system itself, but I think it's overplaying its hand by calling itself a petition system.
    - dragonwriter 14y ago
      Its worth noting that Barack Obama, even before he was President, was very big on encouraging people to reject the "big hero to rescue us" model and take action to make change themselves. If you recognize that people who want change have been writing individually to the White House to get it for generations, redirecting some of that mostly-invisible-to-others mechanism of feedback (which, because of the volume, is pretty much guaranteed to generally produce generic responses and little action) to a mechanism where requests and the responses can be highly visible and serve as vehicle for groups to raise interest and propel a conversation that then extends beyond the WH petition forum, it has some value. If you look at the response from the WH as the end of the process that the petition starts, sure, its not particularly useful. But that's, I think, misunderstanding the point rather badly.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  Yeah, I hate to be that guy There seems to be quite a crowd of you saying the same thing every time the subject of a petition comes up. Perhaps you could club together and have a support group.
  - dylangs1030 14y ago
    Do you have a problem with the comment or the people? It's just a gentle way to deliver constructive comments that are sensitive. You bring them down softly. There's no need to be especially cruel in delivering negative opinions, and this is a forum. Negative opinions are warranted; so long as they are at least valid, they need not be particularly liked.
    - anigbrowl 14y ago
      I'm not convinced that the negative opinions are valid in this case. The petitions are an imperfect and newly implemented system, but the denunciations of them are sweeping, final, and tend to substitute speculation for fact when it comes to discussing the intent of the system architects. Most of the time, comments like the grandparent are little more than a reiteration of the poster's personal outlook.
- markdown 14y ago
  > I hate to be that guy Then don't be. If you have nothing positive to contribute, don't.
  - nateabele 14y ago
    You're right. Who needs realistic expectations?
malandrew 14y ago
Seems like we'd be better off with a system just like the Whitehouse one but designed for petitioning both the President and our representatives at the same time. At the end of the day, the executive branch doesn't make laws. It just signs them at the end of the process. Fixing the DMCA needs to start in the legislative branch (or be ruled unconstitutional by the judicial). The petition system should geolocate you, suggest who your representative is and make sure that you sign a petition on a national issue that is delivered to your representative together with only the signatures of other constituents in that representatives district. I reckon the system should also prompt you to forward the petition not only to friends and family with the same representative as yourself, but also friends and family who live in districts that haven't received many signatures yet (i.e. it should help fill in the holes).
- wmeredith 14y ago
  If you want to petition your representative you can call their office.
- sinak 14y ago
  Yep, these are all great ideas. Building a platform for doing this is going to be tricky though. If anyone out there wants to help, please email me at sina.khanifar@gmail.com. I'm an amateur ruby/rails dev, and a pretty decent designer, but I definitely need help.
pasbesoin 14y ago
At this point, publicizing their hypocrisy (and semi-secret dealings) is a pretty good action, in itself.

by sinak 14y ago

nateabele 14y ago

Yeah, I hate to be that guy, but the 'petition to end all petitions' comes to mind. Particularly the bits about 'politically safe non-answers' and 'channeling public activism into a cul-de-sac'. :-/

kaybe 14y ago
I can recommend this article: http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/31/we-the-people/ http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/31/we-the-people/ It argues that the reason for petitions to exist is the possibility to open a dialog to the people who are concerned about certain topics (because the petition website gets your email adress), and that in the time of fractioning news consumption it is a useful way to keep communicating, whatever that means. edit: Ok, why the heck do they call their page Swampland?
- nateabele 14y ago
  Maybe I'm just cynical (okay, I'm probably just cynical), but that looks like a slightly more positive spin on essentially the same idea: a whole lot of 'communicating' and no action. > edit: Ok, why the heck do they call their page Swampland? Probably because it's about politics, and according to popular myth, DC was built on a swamp.
  - carlisle_ 14y ago
    First step to action is communication. Politicians aren't mind readers, they need to communicate with their constituents to understand their wants. Whether or not a petition is an effective means of communication I'm not qualified to answer, but it seems like a better option than doing nothing at all.
    - nateabele 14y ago
      In response to both you and dragonwriter, those are all totally fair points. My thought is this might be a case of poorly-managed expectations. Specifically, people generally think of petitions as things where, given n signatures, some kind of action is going to be taken (as in 'the right to petition government for redress of grievances'). In that context, it's easy to forget that the most you can 'win' is a response. Hence, 'victory' feels hollow, which can take more energy away from a movement than not having had a petition to rally around in the first place. Hope that makes sense. I'm not arguing against the system itself, but I think it's overplaying its hand by calling itself a petition system.
  - dragonwriter 14y ago
    Its worth noting that Barack Obama, even before he was President, was very big on encouraging people to reject the "big hero to rescue us" model and take action to make change themselves. If you recognize that people who want change have been writing individually to the White House to get it for generations, redirecting some of that mostly-invisible-to-others mechanism of feedback (which, because of the volume, is pretty much guaranteed to generally produce generic responses and little action) to a mechanism where requests and the responses can be highly visible and serve as vehicle for groups to raise interest and propel a conversation that then extends beyond the WH petition forum, it has some value. If you look at the response from the WH as the end of the process that the petition starts, sure, its not particularly useful. But that's, I think, misunderstanding the point rather badly.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
anigbrowl 14y ago
Yeah, I hate to be that guy There seems to be quite a crowd of you saying the same thing every time the subject of a petition comes up. Perhaps you could club together and have a support group.
- dylangs1030 14y ago
  Do you have a problem with the comment or the people? It's just a gentle way to deliver constructive comments that are sensitive. You bring them down softly. There's no need to be especially cruel in delivering negative opinions, and this is a forum. Negative opinions are warranted; so long as they are at least valid, they need not be particularly liked.
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    I'm not convinced that the negative opinions are valid in this case. The petitions are an imperfect and newly implemented system, but the denunciations of them are sweeping, final, and tend to substitute speculation for fact when it comes to discussing the intent of the system architects. Most of the time, comments like the grandparent are little more than a reiteration of the poster's personal outlook.
markdown 14y ago
> I hate to be that guy Then don't be. If you have nothing positive to contribute, don't.
- nateabele 14y ago
  You're right. Who needs realistic expectations?

malandrew 14y ago

Seems like we'd be better off with a system just like the Whitehouse one but designed for petitioning both the President and our representatives at the same time. At the end of the day, the executive branch doesn't make laws. It just signs them at the end of the process. Fixing the DMCA needs to start in the legislative branch (or be ruled unconstitutional by the judicial). The petition system should geolocate you, suggest who your representative is and make sure that you sign a petition on a national issue that is delivered to your representative together with only the signatures of other constituents in that representatives district. I reckon the system should also prompt you to forward the petition not only to friends and family with the same representative as yourself, but also friends and family who live in districts that haven't received many signatures yet (i.e. it should help fill in the holes).

wmeredith 14y ago
If you want to petition your representative you can call their office.
sinak 14y ago
Yep, these are all great ideas. Building a platform for doing this is going to be tricky though. If anyone out there wants to help, please email me at sina.khanifar@gmail.com. I'm an amateur ruby/rails dev, and a pretty decent designer, but I definitely need help.

pasbesoin 14y ago

At this point, publicizing their hypocrisy (and semi-secret dealings) is a pretty good action, in itself.