6 ms·

Based on what you're describing, I think you're going to have a tough sell for the merits of this process if the "win" case and the "lose" case have identical o

by moxie 14y ago

Based on what you're describing, I think you're going to have a tough sell for the merits of this process if the "win" case and the "lose" case have identical outcomes, but differ only in the language that is used.

leetrout 14y ago
I think everyone has their expectations set too high for A. what a petition will really achieve and B. that the executive branch has any position to change laws. The parent to your comment seems to sum this up pretty well. So while I see your point that many may view this as ineffective and therefore a loss I definitely consider it a win in agreement with the parent. 1. Petition was made 2. Signature goal was met 3. WH responded favorably in agreement with petition supporters. 4. ... 5. Profit! ;)
- smsm42 14y ago
  So the argument here is: detractors say petitions are inefficient since no matter what happens with it nothing changes. But we say - look! WH responded! True, nothing changed, but you couldn't expect anything to change from a mere petition! So you were wrong to say nothing would change! Somehow this argument does not sound convincing. Yes, one shouldn't expect too much from a mere petition - but that's what was said from the very beginning! As for president's apparent inability to change laws - give me a break. He's the leader of the major US party who just won the elections, he controls the Senate, he has wide range of supporters in the press, he can successfully solicit billions in donations - and he's absolutely powerless to do any effort towards fixing this little thing? Somehow I have hard time believing it.
  - dhimes 14y ago
    You need to understand that nothing could change. The White House has responded that they are on our side. Obama is not a tsar: he can't go in and change the law. So to detractors, I say: You turned the key in the ignition and the car started. You still have to drive the damn thing to get where you need to be.
    - smsm42 14y ago
      He can't go in and change the law by himself. He can go in and initiate the process that would lead to the change in the law - and he successfully did it many times for things that matter to him, like raising taxes. When we see that happening, then we could say something changed. But before that it's just words, and politicians are professionals in telling people what they want to hear, it costs them nothing. >>>> You still have to drive the damn thing to get where you need to be. Driving the car is not done by internet petitions, though. That's the whole point - having WH say something on some page worth nothing, they did it many times on many issues, and they can keep doing what they did before regardless, and renege on all promises, and people would just say "oh, we can't expect too much from them - they're just the President and the ruling party, who could expect they could actually do anything?" If they can't - who can?
      - aioprisan 14y ago
        Actually, he can issue an executive order with the same language used by the Library of Congress, but he chose not to do so.
        chris_wot 14y ago
        I'm curious though, under what authority is the Librarian of Congress allowed to modify the DMCA exclusion list?
        britta 14y ago
        This exemption process is part of the DMCA. The Copyright Office's rulemaking statement begins with several pages answering your question: http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2012/2012-26308_PI.pdf http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2012/2012-26308_PI.pdf And http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac... has a quick explanation: > In addition to the safe harbors and exemptions the statute explicitly provides, 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1) requires that the Librarian of Congress issue exemptions from the prohibition against circumvention of access-control technology. Exemptions are granted when it is shown that access-control technology has had a substantial adverse effect on the ability of people to make non-infringing uses of copyrighted works. > The exemption rules are revised every three years. Exemption proposals are submitted by the public to the Registrar of Copyrights, and after a process of hearings and public comments, the final rule is recommended by the Registrar and issued by the Librarian. Exemptions expire after three years and must be resubmitted for the next rulemaking cycle. Consequently, the exemptions issued in the prior rulemakings, in 2000, 2003 and 2006 are no longer valid.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    > As for president's apparent inability to change laws - give me a break. He's the leader of the major US party who just won the elections, he controls the Senate, he has wide range of supporters in the press, he can successfully solicit billions in donations - and he's absolutely powerless to do any effort towards fixing this little thing? Somehow I have hard time believing it. Sure he's not powerless to change it. But it's a little issue that doesn't matter to more than a few people, so he's not going to use his time or political capital to do the legwork himself. What he's doing is giving you the thumbs-up to proceed on the issue yourself. This statement is something you can take to your house representative and go: "look, the President supports this!" You can petition the FCC to exert pressure. You can get some of those 100,000 people who signed the petition to call their Congress-people. And you can tell them, "hey, the President has gone on the record as supporting this.". To a Congress-person it suggests that it might be worth someone's time to draft up a bill and score some easy points. It gives you something to build a coalition around. That's huge.
- moxie 14y ago
  Exactly, I just think it's a tough sell when the difference between the non-believer case which sees this as ineffective, and the believer case that sees this as a "win," is sufficiently low expectations about what this achieves (nothing). The larger question is a tension, not about what this process produces, but about what this process reproduces. The really dangerous aspect of ineffective but affirming processes like these is the implication that We the People have the power no matter how much evidence accumulates to the contrary. It follows logically that when The People don’t affect changes in our system, we must not want to change it. Hypothetically, we believe in justice, freedom, etc. or we would not have formed a democracy. Since we freedom-loving, democratic people would naturally act to end oppression as soon as we found it out, it follows that if a policy, law or practice does not change then it must not truly oppress people. Clearly, this train of thought has not, does not and will never transport us to a genuinely free society.
  - snowwrestler 14y ago
    There are still disagreements within a genuinely free society, and those are what the government exists to adjudicate. We The People do have the power, but to exercise it in one's preferred direction, one needs to get most of the People to agree on the same direction and priorities. That is not easy to do, regardless of how self-evident the benefits of a particular policy direction might appear to oneself individually.
  - sinak 14y ago
    So I think we've achieved a "win" in getting the White House to say publicly that they support this. The original petition them to either convince the Librarian to reverse the decision (which I realized at the time was kind of impossible), or to champion a bill in Congress. They aren't quite championing a bill, but the response indicates that "The Obama Administration would support a range of approaches to addressing this issue, including narrow legislative fixes." I'd much prefer a broad fix, repealing Section 1201 of the DMCA, So that's what I'm working on next. Having the WH says that there are real problems that need to be addressed by Congress seems like a "win" - but perhaps of the milder kind. A loss would have been if they defended carrier/CTIA positions, or simply stated that the Librarian of Congress has authority and that they can't take action. Both of those were definitely a possibility. Generally, I agree about the danger of affirming processes that don't result in real action. If the bombard-congress-campaign I'm working on at FixtheDMCA.org works, we've got the abstraction in place to let other people create similar campaigns relatively easily. Which will hopefully those freedom-loving, democratic folk get more involved in the political process, which is ultimately what we want. I think other similar platforms, for example Causes or Change.org fall woefully short in actually affecting change legislatively. Hopefully what we're working on will be better in those regards.
- ncallaway 14y ago
  I believe step 4 is something like Jed Bartlet's response to Ted Marcus in the West Wing episode "20 Hours in LA" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc77OgcrSW8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc77OgcrSW8). The president is a human starting gun. If Obama made a press release saying "We will fix this," it _instantly_ becomes a major part of the national dialog. Putting out a positive response saying "we support this and want to make it happen" is a weaker form of that. It puts it in articles, newspapers, on the minds of the FCC, the Library of Congress, Representatives and Senators. Getting legislation changed is (and probably should be) a _huge_ hurdle. Step 1 is to put the problem in front of people that have the power to make changes. This does that in a big way.
- trotsky 14y ago
  I think you're accepting B without giving it enough thought. Very few wireless carrier issues are legislated by congress - that falls on the regulator, the FCC. If you want to let customers switch carriers that's who will make it happen. If the president told Genachowski to make it happen for real, it's very likely he would. At worst it would end up on terms on upcoming wireless auctions, but that wouldn't be too bad given that they're going in to converged networks. If someone tells you to go to congress to get a bill passed to amend the DMCA they may not hate you but they're certainly not helping you. Anything altering the DMCA will attract amendments like crazy, and anything anti-carrier will get tons of lobbyist attention. And then even if you win you've still left me with a phone that the existing people who are perfectly happy to break the law and unlock your phones for a fee have no idea how to unlock - so I'll still be tied to my carrier anyway.
- hakaaaaak 14y ago
  > B. that the executive branch has any position to change laws. I am so glad that someone actually said this! We used to understand that the president's primary job was command-in-chief of the armed services and to represent the strength of our nation, in a diplomatic way of course. More recently people think that the president is the commander-in-chief of the legislature. WTF. That is not his primary job. He can veto and try to enforce law, but not legislate.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 14y ago
> merits of this process I can't really imagine a more effective outcome in any representative democracy of 300 million people where 99% of them don't give a shit about your "right" to tinker with your cell phone.
nl 14y ago
They don't have identical outcomes at all - but your expected outcome timeline sounds like it is unrealistic. Changing laws (generally) takes years.

by moxie 14y ago

leetrout 14y ago

I think everyone has their expectations set too high for A. what a petition will really achieve and B. that the executive branch has any position to change laws. The parent to your comment seems to sum this up pretty well. So while I see your point that many may view this as ineffective and therefore a loss I definitely consider it a win in agreement with the parent. 1. Petition was made 2. Signature goal was met 3. WH responded favorably in agreement with petition supporters. 4. ... 5. Profit! ;)

smsm42 14y ago
So the argument here is: detractors say petitions are inefficient since no matter what happens with it nothing changes. But we say - look! WH responded! True, nothing changed, but you couldn't expect anything to change from a mere petition! So you were wrong to say nothing would change! Somehow this argument does not sound convincing. Yes, one shouldn't expect too much from a mere petition - but that's what was said from the very beginning! As for president's apparent inability to change laws - give me a break. He's the leader of the major US party who just won the elections, he controls the Senate, he has wide range of supporters in the press, he can successfully solicit billions in donations - and he's absolutely powerless to do any effort towards fixing this little thing? Somehow I have hard time believing it.
- dhimes 14y ago
  You need to understand that nothing could change. The White House has responded that they are on our side. Obama is not a tsar: he can't go in and change the law. So to detractors, I say: You turned the key in the ignition and the car started. You still have to drive the damn thing to get where you need to be.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    He can't go in and change the law by himself. He can go in and initiate the process that would lead to the change in the law - and he successfully did it many times for things that matter to him, like raising taxes. When we see that happening, then we could say something changed. But before that it's just words, and politicians are professionals in telling people what they want to hear, it costs them nothing. >>>> You still have to drive the damn thing to get where you need to be. Driving the car is not done by internet petitions, though. That's the whole point - having WH say something on some page worth nothing, they did it many times on many issues, and they can keep doing what they did before regardless, and renege on all promises, and people would just say "oh, we can't expect too much from them - they're just the President and the ruling party, who could expect they could actually do anything?" If they can't - who can?
    - aioprisan 14y ago
      Actually, he can issue an executive order with the same language used by the Library of Congress, but he chose not to do so.
      - chris_wot 14y ago
        I'm curious though, under what authority is the Librarian of Congress allowed to modify the DMCA exclusion list?
        britta 14y ago
        This exemption process is part of the DMCA. The Copyright Office's rulemaking statement begins with several pages answering your question: http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2012/2012-26308_PI.pdf http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2012/2012-26308_PI.pdf And http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac... has a quick explanation: > In addition to the safe harbors and exemptions the statute explicitly provides, 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1) requires that the Librarian of Congress issue exemptions from the prohibition against circumvention of access-control technology. Exemptions are granted when it is shown that access-control technology has had a substantial adverse effect on the ability of people to make non-infringing uses of copyrighted works. > The exemption rules are revised every three years. Exemption proposals are submitted by the public to the Registrar of Copyrights, and after a process of hearings and public comments, the final rule is recommended by the Registrar and issued by the Librarian. Exemptions expire after three years and must be resubmitted for the next rulemaking cycle. Consequently, the exemptions issued in the prior rulemakings, in 2000, 2003 and 2006 are no longer valid.
- rayiner 14y ago
  > As for president's apparent inability to change laws - give me a break. He's the leader of the major US party who just won the elections, he controls the Senate, he has wide range of supporters in the press, he can successfully solicit billions in donations - and he's absolutely powerless to do any effort towards fixing this little thing? Somehow I have hard time believing it. Sure he's not powerless to change it. But it's a little issue that doesn't matter to more than a few people, so he's not going to use his time or political capital to do the legwork himself. What he's doing is giving you the thumbs-up to proceed on the issue yourself. This statement is something you can take to your house representative and go: "look, the President supports this!" You can petition the FCC to exert pressure. You can get some of those 100,000 people who signed the petition to call their Congress-people. And you can tell them, "hey, the President has gone on the record as supporting this.". To a Congress-person it suggests that it might be worth someone's time to draft up a bill and score some easy points. It gives you something to build a coalition around. That's huge.
moxie 14y ago
Exactly, I just think it's a tough sell when the difference between the non-believer case which sees this as ineffective, and the believer case that sees this as a "win," is sufficiently low expectations about what this achieves (nothing). The larger question is a tension, not about what this process produces, but about what this process reproduces. The really dangerous aspect of ineffective but affirming processes like these is the implication that We the People have the power no matter how much evidence accumulates to the contrary. It follows logically that when The People don’t affect changes in our system, we must not want to change it. Hypothetically, we believe in justice, freedom, etc. or we would not have formed a democracy. Since we freedom-loving, democratic people would naturally act to end oppression as soon as we found it out, it follows that if a policy, law or practice does not change then it must not truly oppress people. Clearly, this train of thought has not, does not and will never transport us to a genuinely free society.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  There are still disagreements within a genuinely free society, and those are what the government exists to adjudicate. We The People do have the power, but to exercise it in one's preferred direction, one needs to get most of the People to agree on the same direction and priorities. That is not easy to do, regardless of how self-evident the benefits of a particular policy direction might appear to oneself individually.
- sinak 14y ago
  So I think we've achieved a "win" in getting the White House to say publicly that they support this. The original petition them to either convince the Librarian to reverse the decision (which I realized at the time was kind of impossible), or to champion a bill in Congress. They aren't quite championing a bill, but the response indicates that "The Obama Administration would support a range of approaches to addressing this issue, including narrow legislative fixes." I'd much prefer a broad fix, repealing Section 1201 of the DMCA, So that's what I'm working on next. Having the WH says that there are real problems that need to be addressed by Congress seems like a "win" - but perhaps of the milder kind. A loss would have been if they defended carrier/CTIA positions, or simply stated that the Librarian of Congress has authority and that they can't take action. Both of those were definitely a possibility. Generally, I agree about the danger of affirming processes that don't result in real action. If the bombard-congress-campaign I'm working on at FixtheDMCA.org works, we've got the abstraction in place to let other people create similar campaigns relatively easily. Which will hopefully those freedom-loving, democratic folk get more involved in the political process, which is ultimately what we want. I think other similar platforms, for example Causes or Change.org fall woefully short in actually affecting change legislatively. Hopefully what we're working on will be better in those regards.
ncallaway 14y ago
I believe step 4 is something like Jed Bartlet's response to Ted Marcus in the West Wing episode "20 Hours in LA" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc77OgcrSW8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc77OgcrSW8). The president is a human starting gun. If Obama made a press release saying "We will fix this," it _instantly_ becomes a major part of the national dialog. Putting out a positive response saying "we support this and want to make it happen" is a weaker form of that. It puts it in articles, newspapers, on the minds of the FCC, the Library of Congress, Representatives and Senators. Getting legislation changed is (and probably should be) a _huge_ hurdle. Step 1 is to put the problem in front of people that have the power to make changes. This does that in a big way.
trotsky 14y ago
I think you're accepting B without giving it enough thought. Very few wireless carrier issues are legislated by congress - that falls on the regulator, the FCC. If you want to let customers switch carriers that's who will make it happen. If the president told Genachowski to make it happen for real, it's very likely he would. At worst it would end up on terms on upcoming wireless auctions, but that wouldn't be too bad given that they're going in to converged networks. If someone tells you to go to congress to get a bill passed to amend the DMCA they may not hate you but they're certainly not helping you. Anything altering the DMCA will attract amendments like crazy, and anything anti-carrier will get tons of lobbyist attention. And then even if you win you've still left me with a phone that the existing people who are perfectly happy to break the law and unlock your phones for a fee have no idea how to unlock - so I'll still be tied to my carrier anyway.
hakaaaaak 14y ago
> B. that the executive branch has any position to change laws. I am so glad that someone actually said this! We used to understand that the president's primary job was command-in-chief of the armed services and to represent the strength of our nation, in a diplomatic way of course. More recently people think that the president is the commander-in-chief of the legislature. WTF. That is not his primary job. He can veto and try to enforce law, but not legislate.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 14y ago

> merits of this process I can't really imagine a more effective outcome in any representative democracy of 300 million people where 99% of them don't give a shit about your "right" to tinker with your cell phone.

nl 14y ago

They don't have identical outcomes at all - but your expected outcome timeline sounds like it is unrealistic. Changing laws (generally) takes years.