While I definitely support the notion of this petition, it's time that people realize that things like these won't do shit, to put it bluntly.
To stop this madness, we have to attack and bring down the people who cause this retardation - the content industries. They won't somehow come to their senses and stop pushing for insane laws and regulations.
It's a very dangerous illusion that petty petitions will change anything, at least on their own. Fight the real enemy, and fight it with all means necessary - may those be alternative licenses, spreading the word, piracy, or straight out aggression[1]. Until the content industries are either out of power or simply gone (and I doubt the former can be achieved without the latter), this war on freedom for the sake of corporate profits will continue.
[1]: I'm talking about stuff like Operation Payback and Anonymous in general. I dislike calling it "cyber warfare" because the term is retarded newspeak, but it's essentially what I mean.
To stop this madness, we have to attack and bring down the people who cause this retardation - the content industries.
The content industries don't cause this. They go to politicians and say "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". That's the only thing they have the power to do.
Politicians are not helpless babies who have no choice but to give big content what it wants. They are intelligent adults who choose to side with big content.
The people you need to bring down are Biden/Obama, Orrin Hatch, etc.
"It's time that people realize that things like these won't do shit, to put it bluntly."
That's simply false. They raise public awareness and support of any given issue. People say that the petitions to legalize marijuana have done nothing, but if that's true then why has public support for legalization gone from 36% to 50% in just five years? It's not magic, it's because every time there is a petition that the white house ignores it generates dozens or hundreds of news articles, which all push people's opinions in favor of reform.
I think your best bet is to have the tech companies acquire the media companies and be done with it. Tech in general dwarfs the content industries that propagate this by several orders of magnitude. Media also drives a large proportion of sales in the tech industry.
Or tech can start lobbying in proportion to their size, they could put them to shame in no time flat.
If they actually acquire media although, would they do the right thing? I doubt it.
They don't mind Operation Payback or Anonymous much at all, because their actions are inconsequential relative to the unimaginable amounts of money they're making.
You can't attack Big Content in any meaningful way, because the unimaginable (again) amounts of money they spend bribing Congress and the White House makes you absolutely insignificant as a voice.
And there's your solution:
Stop giving them money! Period.
We bitch and moan about all the bribery (I guess some people still call it lobbying, or access) that goes on, while at the same time we give them all of the exact same money that they're doing the bribing with.
If you want things to change, stop giving them money. Choke off their air supply.
You might think that your choice to not buy CDs and movies won't make a bit of difference. And you might be right. But there is no other way to stop them except by cutting off their supply of money.
Make them irrelevant in your life. Don't buy their music or their movies. Read books (I know), from the library if possible. Read more from the Internet (I know) and blogs, there's an amazing amount of free, quality content swimming around out there.
Make your own content, and be content with less content.
Yea, why is this going to the White House instead of Congress in the first place? Anyway, personally I think it will deadlock in Congress for years like the net neutrality mess thanks to companies like Google. The key would to be keep it going until the content industry dies (or at least the lobbying) which will take years (I like to compare it to end of support for XP).
>This bill is a direct assault on a free internet and a shameful attempt by copyright lobbyists to destroy net neutrality.
Shouldn't have used that term here. This petition just lost any Republican/Tea Party support it might have had. And though there may be some overlap, this isn't really about Net Neutrality vs. the telecoms anyway.
There was actually a meta-petition[1] recently that was asking for the White House to pay more attention to these petitions, so it seems like these petitions are mostly ignored
The petitions are looked at if they receive enough signatures, right now this one needs a little over 23,000 more signatures by November 30th.
I would view it as one more avenue of making your opinion known to elected officials. In addition to informing your congressperson and senator to try to prevent the bill from passing this would be a way to endorse a veto from the executive branch.
I believe it does as much good as anything else you can do in the amount of time it takes to sign it.
Not sure about how these work in the US but I know in Britain our e-petitions have some rule whereby if they get over a certain threshold of signitures (around 100,000 I believe) then the house of commons must assign time to talk about the issues.
The problem being that most of the petitions that get any significant number of signitures are predictable , populist stuff like "Britain should leave the EU" , "bring back hanging" and "legalise Marijuana" , basically stuff that if the government had any inclination to do they would have already done by now so really all it does is waste everybody's time.
I find it even stranger that this petition is on whitehouse.gov. The real issue though is that this bill wont die, I'm sick of hearing of its lunacy and the fact that it's even in the house irks me to no end. That's why I signed it.
The following link will take you to an EFF page. You can enter your address and get the contact info for your Congress members. It also lets you email them automatically about the other version of this bill, Protect IP, which is just as bad.
I had an account on whitehouse.gov the last time they did this petition thing and now I can't log in.
Not that it won't let me, but if I hit "sign in" there's no fields in which to enter a username and password. Like there's no sign in option there at all. What the fuck?
Signed this petition, just like I filled out the EFF form a while back. If you want to be heard it is better to call your representatives as that way at least one of their staffers has to spend a couple of minutes getting you off the phone.
Where do you live that is safe from the content industries?
Not that such places don't exist, but the problem is much wider than the US, partly but not entirely because of the US's ability to strongarm other countries into passing their own legislation, e.g. ACTA. You wouldn't be safe in Canada, or Australia, or the UK, or France, or ... .
Not necessarily. I think this petition holds more water than the other two given that the bill is specifically about the internet. If the internet reacts it only makes sense to listen. Then again, making sense is not one of the government's strong points.
Is anyone talking about the concerns of having people store a password with the whitehouse? Most people use the same password everywhere. IANL but this could easily be a huge phishing scam...
[+] [-] slowpoke|14 years ago|reply
To stop this madness, we have to attack and bring down the people who cause this retardation - the content industries. They won't somehow come to their senses and stop pushing for insane laws and regulations.
It's a very dangerous illusion that petty petitions will change anything, at least on their own. Fight the real enemy, and fight it with all means necessary - may those be alternative licenses, spreading the word, piracy, or straight out aggression[1]. Until the content industries are either out of power or simply gone (and I doubt the former can be achieved without the latter), this war on freedom for the sake of corporate profits will continue.
[1]: I'm talking about stuff like Operation Payback and Anonymous in general. I dislike calling it "cyber warfare" because the term is retarded newspeak, but it's essentially what I mean.
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|14 years ago|reply
The content industries don't cause this. They go to politicians and say "pretty please take away people's freedom to protect our profits". That's the only thing they have the power to do.
Politicians are not helpless babies who have no choice but to give big content what it wants. They are intelligent adults who choose to side with big content.
The people you need to bring down are Biden/Obama, Orrin Hatch, etc.
[+] [-] Alex3917|14 years ago|reply
That's simply false. They raise public awareness and support of any given issue. People say that the petitions to legalize marijuana have done nothing, but if that's true then why has public support for legalization gone from 36% to 50% in just five years? It's not magic, it's because every time there is a petition that the white house ignores it generates dozens or hundreds of news articles, which all push people's opinions in favor of reform.
[+] [-] mahyarm|14 years ago|reply
Or tech can start lobbying in proportion to their size, they could put them to shame in no time flat.
If they actually acquire media although, would they do the right thing? I doubt it.
[+] [-] cheez|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixtofour|14 years ago|reply
You can't attack Big Content in any meaningful way, because the unimaginable (again) amounts of money they spend bribing Congress and the White House makes you absolutely insignificant as a voice.
And there's your solution:
Stop giving them money! Period.
We bitch and moan about all the bribery (I guess some people still call it lobbying, or access) that goes on, while at the same time we give them all of the exact same money that they're doing the bribing with.
If you want things to change, stop giving them money. Choke off their air supply.
You might think that your choice to not buy CDs and movies won't make a bit of difference. And you might be right. But there is no other way to stop them except by cutting off their supply of money.
Make them irrelevant in your life. Don't buy their music or their movies. Read books (I know), from the library if possible. Read more from the Internet (I know) and blogs, there's an amazing amount of free, quality content swimming around out there.
Make your own content, and be content with less content.
[+] [-] yuhong|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|14 years ago|reply
Shouldn't have used that term here. This petition just lost any Republican/Tea Party support it might have had. And though there may be some overlap, this isn't really about Net Neutrality vs. the telecoms anyway.
[+] [-] tmvphil|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhimes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phsr|14 years ago|reply
[1] https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/actually-...
[+] [-] tekante|14 years ago|reply
I would view it as one more avenue of making your opinion known to elected officials. In addition to informing your congressperson and senator to try to prevent the bill from passing this would be a way to endorse a veto from the executive branch.
I believe it does as much good as anything else you can do in the amount of time it takes to sign it.
[+] [-] jiggy2011|14 years ago|reply
The problem being that most of the petitions that get any significant number of signitures are predictable , populist stuff like "Britain should leave the EU" , "bring back hanging" and "legalise Marijuana" , basically stuff that if the government had any inclination to do they would have already done by now so really all it does is waste everybody's time.
[+] [-] nicki_easy|14 years ago|reply
While you're there, I'm also a fan of the petitions that the petitions be taken seriously.
[+] [-] wizard_2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cushman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JadeNB|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomaslangston|14 years ago|reply
https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?...
[+] [-] jreposa|14 years ago|reply
http://www.opencongress.org/contact_congress_letters/7509-H-...
[+] [-] Aloisius|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scythe|14 years ago|reply
Not that it won't let me, but if I hit "sign in" there's no fields in which to enter a username and password. Like there's no sign in option there at all. What the fuck?
[+] [-] jim-greer|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eschulte|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tensafefrogs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgag|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] altrego99|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waqf|14 years ago|reply
Not that such places don't exist, but the problem is much wider than the US, partly but not entirely because of the US's ability to strongarm other countries into passing their own legislation, e.g. ACTA. You wouldn't be safe in Canada, or Australia, or the UK, or France, or ... .
[+] [-] delinquentme|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TruthElixirX|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicki_easy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gregw100|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukejduncan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugh|14 years ago|reply
What?
[+] [-] lukejduncan|14 years ago|reply