181–190 of 284 posts
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Refuse to enforce this clause of the DMCA and pardon anyone imprisoned because of it.
Has this actually been enforced against anyone so far?
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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…
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.
>>>> 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?
On a different note... After reading the library of Congress response to the White House response here http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2013/13-041.html I'm not sure what their actual response is.
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No it's not. I emigrated from the US after it became clear they weren't going to reinstate the rule of law. Your military-industrial complex is the reason that it's so hard to change things around... there. This is why you have bullshit laws like the DMCA in the first place.
How exactly is the DMCA "bullshit"? It provides an (addmitedly imperfect, yet better than the alternative) notification/takedown/reinstatement process and indemnifies content providers from the infringing acts taken by their users. There might be many BS copyright laws and extensions, but the DMCA ain't one of them.
What you're talking about is USC 512 (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512), 17 USC § 512 - Limitations on liability relating to material online
These are more or less completely unrelated apart from being introduced in the same legislative act (which also did a fair number of other changes to the law.)
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This is as good of a response as you can expect. This is a win. If you expected anything else (sneak, I'm looking at you here too) then you've never received a response from the White House on an issue on which they truly disagree. That letter would have said something like "While we respect your opinion, we believe that the current law best satisfies the needs of blah blah blah." Here, they are saying: yeah. We agre…
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.
Hey guys, petition starter here. Just wanted to thank anyone who signed for their support. I just got off the phone with the White House and they're really enthusiastic about getting this fixed. We also discussed fixing Section 1201 of the DMCA permanently, and they've agreed to continue the conversation on that. When I originally posted this to HN at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112020 there were a lot of ve…
For those getting all worked up about how it is still illegal to unlock cell phones, think of it like this. The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent/crack software security - period. You phone is locked by software. Up til January, there was an exemption for phones. Now there's not. The problem isn't "unlocking phones". The problem is "you can't alter something expensive you've bought and paid for in full".
In a way this is good. Regular people will get pissed at the carrier for not unlocking their phone at the end of their contract. And suddenly regular people will see how bad the DMCA is. The DMA targets not just Movie Pirates.
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If he just got off the phone with the White House, I'd imagine he has a pretty good idea of what their response was. Your cynicism is a big part of the reason it's so hard to change things around here.
No it's not. I emigrated from the US after it became clear they weren't going to reinstate the rule of law. Your military-industrial complex is the reason that it's so hard to change things around... there. This is why you have bullshit laws like the DMCA in the first place.
There is a problem with some skeptics that purposely lead people on goose chases, but the true ones will attack key problems that we can then focus our efforts.
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I hate to break it to you, but their response was effectively: "we agree with you but we respect the process that brought us to this fucked-up state and look forward to continuing to work with congress". Petitions don't have any effect other than getting a response that's designed to get you to stop complaining from a false sense of achievement. In that sense, they work perfectly.
If they (the White House) can point to the guilty parties here (congressmen, senators, lobby groups) or even point to relevant bills or decisions, it will help us in terms of knowing which politicians we should not vote for. Remember: vote with your wallet/ballot. Outrage works when it is concentrated and directed at the right people.