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.
Be sure to read the petition -- unlike most of them, it's actually smart political commentary: It mocks SOPA by having whitehouse.gov itself link to a website that's infringing copyright. The joke is that whitehouse.gov could itself be removed from the DNS system under SOPA.
This is the first use of the White House petitioning system that I think is actually really clever. (Honorable mention: Petition to Please Take Petitions Seriously.)
If Congress can be bought, why not expose the people doing the buying, and their lobbyists, and exert pressure on them instead of writing or calling Congressmen who don't care?
I understand the present day practical reason why she thinks that phone calls matter more, I really do, however phone calls are a time inefficient way of accomplishing that result. There are just so many things people could be doing with their lives, including communicating opinion about other political issues, that we should allow all of them to be done as efficiently as possible. An online petition is more efficient. The key is trust. What we really need is some sort of highly automatable, electronic way of voting or expressing political positions in a way that is trustable. We shouldn't not trust some expression of political intent merely because it's fast/efficient, that's almost ridiculous, instead we should only not trust it if it is forged or shilled.
I don't understand this fascination with internet petitions. Hasn't it been demonstrated to the point of absurdity that our government does not care?
Before anyone claims "OH, so we should just do nothing instead????". Posting a dubious e-signature to an internet petition does nothing. There are people out in the streets sleeping in parks getting pepper sprayed and arrested because the government can't simply ignore it (unlike every single internet petition).
Filling out a whitehouse petition is like getting punched in the face by your boss then slipping a folded piece of paper into the complaint box he put in the break-room next to the donuts.
Internet petitions establish in everyones minds that people are for the petition. That's a real effect, whether it is to de-legitimize the government's "reaching out" campaign of the online petitions, or to bolster support by showing other supporters how many others out there support their cause. It's not real in the sense that it will do the thing that the petition is for, but it's real in the sense that it builds support for the thing.
The fascination is with poisoning the well. A lot of people have the interest and energy to do exactly one thing politically, and in this age of OWS and global uprising it's in the interests of the status quo to eliminate the effect of this low-hanging fruit. The people who create and post internet petitions are evil and/or stupid, without exception.
Every time I've voted on a whitehouse.gov petition, I've gotten an email 6 months later saying why the petition will be completely ignored, answering none of the points the petition brought up.
The petition system is an ineffectual smokescreen.
Seems quite effective to me if it keeps the signers from taking any additional action for 6 months.
Its likely doing exactly what those setting it intended.
You could imagine that one of these petitions might bring an issue that they weren't aware of to some staffer's attention. But this administration clearly already has a very strong view in favor of intellectual property protection by any means available, regardless of the consequences. It's one they've made manifest by pushing ACTA (among other things), and it's really hard to imagine a petition like this changing it.
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!"
Everyone is mentioning how petitions don't work, which I agree with.
(Sidenote: I think it is an extra step worse that the government put up a website for petitions, and still ignores their own system. Random petitions (e.g. "\signed" forum posts) are one thing, but this is more like toying with people.)
That said, I think this petition has something important that other whitehouse.gov petitions don't: in that, under SOPA, there is actually technically a possibility that the government would censor itself (via whitehouse.gov), which is pretty funny if you think about it.
I got it as well, in FF. Most of the time, these things get a one-strike-and-adios policy for me, but on this it seems important enough to try again later...
The WH petition system is to political activism what Twitter is to people's social commentary... effectively redirect everything to /dev/null and make them think they've made their voices heard (although I think that this particular one is quite clever).
For all the discussion about worthless Internet petitions, it should be noted that the White House form is specifically set up to at least elicit a response if a certain threshold is reached. The threshold was originally 5,000 signatures but was raised to 25,000 after the White House responded to pleas for information about extraterrestrials. If they gave a response to that arguably silly request, it is reasonable to think they will at least respond to this one.
I'm in Canada, and I've realized that SOPA would damage me too, since the domain would be removed from the DNS.
People here are suggesting calling their representatives, but which one should I call? Would they even bother listening to someone, who ate the end of the day, is not going affect their chance of reelection?
I'd still like to be able to do something since SOPA and Protect IP are quite horrible laws.
FWIW, when you call a Senator or Congressperson, they ask for your name and zip. Nothing else. You can theoretically grab any zipcode in their district off of Google and use it. Just saying.
I disagree, although I'll sign it. A petition should be created to not only stop SOPA but demand INTERNET FREEDOM laws. This will make it impossible to present any SOPA without repealing the law as there's a direct conflict.
Otherwise there'll be another attempt at SOPA after outrage fatigue. And there had been many before.
Not a chance. Election is coming up and we're talking about 100s of millions of dollars of contributions from the entertainment industry. He'll sign it.
On the other hand, if he veto's maybe we can make up the difference. I'd be happy to contribute to a president who is a proven proponent of internet liberty. I just don't have the bankroll of the hollywood execs. Maybe some of the recent internet billionaires can fill in the gaps.
I received another letter from the white house. I am going to say it now. whitehouse.gov is BS. It is complete and utter bs. You are lucky if an intern looks at it, probably just a pre-canned response to any media whatever. All these petitions say is "bla bla bla write me some bs"
Guys, the link doesn't load properly if you have Ghostery enabled. I'm not sure what WH.gov is doing to load that petition from another domain via JS, but disabling Ghostery makes things work OK.
I didn't realize that anyone could create petitions on WhiteHouse.gov. Were it not for the casual writing style, I might have thought this was an official petition from the White House.
[+] [-] wdewind|14 years ago|reply
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/
[+] [-] nostromo|14 years ago|reply
This is the first use of the White House petitioning system that I think is actually really clever. (Honorable mention: Petition to Please Take Petitions Seriously.)
[+] [-] lkx|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkramlich|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshuahedlund|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vectorpush|14 years ago|reply
Before anyone claims "OH, so we should just do nothing instead????". Posting a dubious e-signature to an internet petition does nothing. There are people out in the streets sleeping in parks getting pepper sprayed and arrested because the government can't simply ignore it (unlike every single internet petition).
Filling out a whitehouse petition is like getting punched in the face by your boss then slipping a folded piece of paper into the complaint box he put in the break-room next to the donuts.
[+] [-] daenz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orthecreedence|14 years ago|reply
The petition system is an ineffectual smokescreen.
[+] [-] dpeck|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rst|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akavlie|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JonnieCache|14 years ago|reply
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!"
[+] [-] lallysingh|14 years ago|reply
In the truth-vacuum of DC, it's pretty relevant.
[+] [-] orbenn|14 years ago|reply
Short serious video: http://youtu.be/1ngRPuXpCIw
Long sarcastic video with a British accent: http://youtu.be/JhwuXNv8fJM
[+] [-] anrope|14 years ago|reply
(Sidenote: I think it is an extra step worse that the government put up a website for petitions, and still ignores their own system. Random petitions (e.g. "\signed" forum posts) are one thing, but this is more like toying with people.)
That said, I think this petition has something important that other whitehouse.gov petitions don't: in that, under SOPA, there is actually technically a possibility that the government would censor itself (via whitehouse.gov), which is pretty funny if you think about it.
Edit: I suppose I mean "funny" in a darker sense.
[+] [-] msluyter|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rgbrgb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slamdunc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waffle_ss|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshuahedlund|14 years ago|reply
See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45176460/ns/technology_and_scien...
[+] [-] neilparikh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ComputerGuru|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joakal|14 years ago|reply
Otherwise there'll be another attempt at SOPA after outrage fatigue. And there had been many before.
[+] [-] omouse|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nestlequ1k|14 years ago|reply
On the other hand, if he veto's maybe we can make up the difference. I'd be happy to contribute to a president who is a proven proponent of internet liberty. I just don't have the bankroll of the hollywood execs. Maybe some of the recent internet billionaires can fill in the gaps.
[+] [-] TheCapn|14 years ago|reply
1) The petition gets removed for containing infringing content
or worse...
2) The government moves towards removing imgur.com because it is doing the hosting of the infringing content
I know, I know its absurd, but who really believes that that link can bring down whitehouse.gov?
[+] [-] dlikhten|14 years ago|reply
We need a better methodology.
[+] [-] dmauro|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktom|14 years ago|reply
You apparently just cannot create an account from that particular page.
For whatever reason account creation doesn't work from the 'Stop SOPA' petition page.
[+] [-] mrinterweb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukejduncan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ComputerGuru|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twainer|14 years ago|reply
???
[+] [-] pud|14 years ago|reply
Neat. https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions
[+] [-] rhizome|14 years ago|reply