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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
by 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.
- dvogel 14y agoIn the 3rd paragraph of your petition you allude to unlocking your phone for use on multiple carriers: "Consumers will be forced to pay exorbitant roaming fees to make calls while traveling abroad." If their response only applies to situations where you've let your service contract expire, it doesn't seem to allow you to unlock your phone for use on multiple carriers while under contract with the carrier from which the phone was purchased. Could you clarify whether you're satisfied that their approach would avoid criminal liability in such a situation?
- morpher 14y agoYou can be a current customer with outside of the (typically two year) contract period. Currently AT&T (and possibly other carriers?) will unlock the phone for you in this situation. But, it wouldn't be terrible to have this specifically allowed/required.
- trotsky 14y agoYou sound like you've thought a lot about the issue, so i'm curious what impact you think the WIPO Copyright Treaty will have. Since anti-circumvention is required by a treaty that we ratified, doesn't that make trying to totally repeal it an extremely uphill battle? Are there any recent examples where we did that? What is the impact on the US with WIPO if we officially contradict it? What are the pros and cons versus trying to amend it down until it didn't apply to much of anything?
- sinak 14y agoYep, this is definitely a tricky part of it. Trying to figure this out with the EFF at the moment. Will try and elaborate soon, on a really tight deadline at the moment.