Live data from Hacker News

Whitehouse.gov petition to veto SOPA

wwws.whitehouse.gov

1–10 of 84 posts

Re: Whitehouse.gov petition to veto SOPA

#4
post #3

I expect that this petition will be just as effective as all the others.

Governmental e-petitions: ignoring the public more efficiently than ever before.

Actually now in britain we have it set up so whenever one of these gets 100,000 votes, it must be debated in parliament. One of the few useful or interesting things cameron has done. Of course they are quite rightly not bound to do anything more than debate it, and in the long run it will probably just be a more efficient way of shutting people up. "Look, we've debated it, we've given parliamentary time to your issue, what more do you want? This is a representative democracy you know!"

Re: Whitehouse.gov petition to veto SOPA

#5
post #3

I expect that this petition will be just as effective as all the others.

It's a data point on public opinion. Remember that all the lobbying money spent in the US is there only to swing public opinion ~10% on an election.

In the truth-vacuum of DC, it's pretty relevant.

Re: Whitehouse.gov petition to veto SOPA

#6
I was on a conference call w/ Zoe Lofgren (CA congress woman who is on the Judiciary fighting the hell out of this bill) and a bunch of NYC tech companies last weekend and she said petitions are essentially ignored, and instead to make phone calls to your reps and directly into the capital.

This isn't to say don't sign this, but if you are really concerned, the absolute bottom line is phone calls. Anything you can do to funnel phone calls in is what counts.

Edit: Let me add this, which makes it absurdly easy: http://fightforthefuture.org/

Post reply on HN