This is the first White House petition I've ever seen that actually got a response that wasn't just some vapid equivocation.
I'm impressed.
White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”
231–240 of 284 posts
Re: White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have some information from the phone call that wasn't in the official response, then it's probably worth sharing it here. Otherwise, the official statement seems to absolutely confirm the doubts of the original skeptical responses.
Honest question: what do you think they should have said that they didn't? (Keeping in mind that the Librarian of Congress doesn't work for the Whitehouse)
To offer at least one answer to my own question: "The White House only supports unlocking when consumers have fulfilled their contractual obligations. It’s silent on whether it supports a consumer’s decision to unlock their phone in the middle of their contract."
http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/obama-s-stance-on-unlock...
Re: White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
There has been no transition of power. Power is still in the hands of those who have bought it. All democracies are far from perfect, but the US have allowed theirs to be dominated by money from the very foundation. Even quite corrupt democracies are more open to be changed by popular vote than the US, were not being bought and paid for beforehand means you don't have the means to successfully stand for election. Hel…
This goes for all of you: Bullshit. Learn some recent political history, starting here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement#2010_electio... The Tea Party didn't sweep because they had money (although they did), but because they got people to vote . They were elected with a mandate to destroy the Federal government, and by God, they almost pulled it off. Whether you're progressive or libertarian, the reaso…
Bullshit. The Tea Party was swept into power because they had financial backing from rich extremists and mass media support. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the point you're trying to make, but you could not have picked a worse example.
Yes, the Tea Party started out as a grassroots thing, but it was quickly co-opted by the existing power structure and its message lost.
Re: White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”
#234This is the first White House petition I've ever seen that actually got a response that wasn't just some vapid equivocation. I'm impressed.
Or so you think. Read it again.
Re: White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We the People You're confused about who "We the People" are. "We the People" are not the technolgenstia that hangs out on HN. "We the People" are my wife's parents in rural Oregon. There are things they care about, but this is not one of those things. "What this process reproduces" is inaction on issues that don't rile up more than a tiny minority of people. I'm not sure why this is surprising.
""" > "We the People" are not the technolgenstia that hangs out on HN. "We the People" are my wife's parents in rural Oregon. There are things they care about, but this is not one of those things. """ Processes like this affirm the logic that government fails us because we the people are too apathetic, or too unaware, or too stupid, or too anything at all to yield our immense power (!) as we ought. That, yes, if we e…
> we the people are too apathetic, or too unaware, or too stupid, or too anything at all to yield our immense power
This is what has been happening: We've been too hesitant to wield our immense power, meaning we've been yielding it by default to those who are willing to use it.
(The autocorrect error here was way too apropos to pass up.)
Re: White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.…
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.
Re: White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
You 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?
Re: White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Republicans and democrats collude together, and are both paid off by almost every major company in the US to vote in their favor. Not exactly. There are two things that win elections: Money and votes. And money only because it can be used to buy votes. When the major parties agree on an issue it's because that issue has a stable equilibrium: Either the parties both side with the electorate or the monied interests be…
We had the ability to pressure with votes 50 years ago. Today, the vast majority of congressional districts are so heavily gerrymandered the ruling party can do anything and the political climate of that region is so fanatic that people will never not vote for their choice party candidate. Out of 435 house representatives, each election every two years, only a dozen or two seats will change party. At best. That often…
You're absolutely right about this and this is why third parties have to be a huge part of any reform effort. The system has been gerrymandered to support two parties, but not three. If someone can attack the entrenched party from either the left or right and gain passion about specific, focused issues the whole corrupt system falls apart, hopefully long enough to pass a widespread reform effort.
Re: White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The rule of law is not mutually exclusive with a "military-industrial complex."
Anyway, where did you move that's so much better? Somewhere else you can organize a petition against the interest of major corporations and receive a phone call from the highest levels of government agreeing with you and asking to work with you. Sure, some small uniform Scandinavian governments might be more accessible, but I'm curious what your choice was.
Re: White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They don't have identical outcomes at all - but your expected outcome timeline sounds like it is unrealistic.
Changing laws (generally) takes years.