
Petition to make unlocking phones legal again passes 100,000 signatures - Lightning
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/21/petition-to-make-unlocking-phones-legal-again-passes-100000-signatures-white-house-is-required-to-respond/
======
sinak
Hey everyone, I started this petition. Very glad we made it to 100k, and
excited to see how the White House responds.

I'm well aware that the WH may not take any real action though. Please sign up
at <http://fixthedmca.org> if you care about this issue and want to continue
helping the move to fix this issue permanently.

~~~
nateabele
Yeah, I hate to be that guy, but the 'petition to end all petitions' comes to
mind. Particularly the bits about 'politically safe non-answers' and
'channeling public activism into a cul-de-sac'.

:-/

~~~
kaybe
I can recommend this article:

<http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/31/we-the-people/>

It argues that the reason for petitions to exist is the possibility to open a
dialog to the people who are concerned about certain topics (because the
petition website gets your email adress), and that in the time of fractioning
news consumption it is a useful way to keep communicating, whatever that
means.

edit: Ok, why the heck do they call their page Swampland?

~~~
nateabele
Maybe I'm just cynical (okay, I'm _probably_ just cynical), but that looks
like a slightly more positive spin on essentially the same idea: a whole lot
of 'communicating' and no action.

> edit: Ok, why the heck do they call their page Swampland?

Probably because it's about politics, and according to popular myth, DC was
built on a swamp.

~~~
carlisle_
First step to action is communication. Politicians aren't mind readers, they
need to communicate with their constituents to understand their wants.

Whether or not a petition is an effective means of communication I'm not
qualified to answer, but it seems like a better option than doing nothing at
all.

~~~
nateabele
In response to both you and dragonwriter, those are all totally fair points.
My thought is this might be a case of poorly-managed expectations.

Specifically, people generally think of petitions as things where, given n
signatures, some kind of action is _going_ to be taken (as in 'the right to
petition government for redress of grievances'). In that context, it's easy to
forget that the most you can 'win' is a response. Hence, 'victory' feels
hollow, which can take more energy away from a movement than not having had a
petition to rally around in the first place.

Hope that makes sense. I'm not arguing against the system itself, but I think
it's overplaying its hand by calling itself a petition system.

------
jobu
Fast forward to next week:

"The White House announces a new threshold of 500,000 signatures before it
will respond to online petitions."

I was initially enthusiastic about these online petitions, but it doesn't seem
like any of them have had an effect.

~~~
ajross
What kind of effect were you expecting? The president promises to do whatever
you want as long as you get N "signatures" on a weakly authenticated website?
Even if you got those N people to all show up in person at the White House
door, wrapping policy around the desires of a vocal minority is not a valid or
just way to structure a government.

They promised to respond, which is about all they can promise. And this gives
them a reasonable metric for how many voters care about an issue, which is a
good thing. And they can probably even infer some demographic data from the
results, which is another good thing.

Basically this is a tool to better inform policy decisions, and the evidence
is that it's "working". If you were expecting more then I think your hopes
were a little unfounded.

~~~
jlgreco
> _Basically this is a tool to better inform policy decisions_

No, it is _actually_ a safety valve. If the public gets a little too agitated
about anything they can go sign a petition to let of some steam. This petition
site furthers couch-potato politics; it enables people to 'do their bit'
without actually moving their ass. It neutralizes those who are naturally
prone to apathy already.

~~~
ajross
Fair enough. Let's just agree to disagree on that. Your explanation is a bit
too far on the "been reading a bit too much dystopian pulp" side of the
spectrum.

To argue that the practice of policy is cynical and easily corrupted is a
truism. To say that the white house _deliberately_ threw up a petition system
to actively "neutralize" inconvenient opinions is just ridiculous, sorry. The
white house staff are people just like you and I, and they care about many of
the same things you do and truly want to do the right thing in the face of
many competing interests. Don't turn them into Orwellian villains, it's not
helpful.

~~~
jlgreco
The less dystopic version of my interpretation is that the site is just a way
of keeping people happy, rather than "neutralized". Does that seem so
implausible to you?

> _The white house staff are people just like you and I_

See, that realization is what enables me to believe they would make a petition
site just to keep people happy. It is something rather frequently seen in the
"real world" from "normal people" (see: suggestion boxes in the breakroom at
work), and is exactly the sort of thing I could see myself doing. Hell, I
_have_ done it. Have someone that is mad at you? Let them vent for a while
until they calm down, _then_ tell them why they are wrong.

This sort of tactic isn't unique bizarre super-villian behavior. It is
standard bullshit.

If the intent were completely pure, _merely_ to educate, they wouldn't have
people perform a meaningless action before they got their cookie. You don't
get that far in politics by being clueless about how to gauge public interest
in a topic without resorting to an online tally of interest. That is simply
inconceivable.

~~~
writtles
Yeah, lets just go back to the days of hitting the streets with those paper
petitions, and gathering signatures at bus stops and Phish concerts! Why get
the internet involved in politics at all?

~~~
zanny
Because anonymous forums on the internet have proven for a decade sane
discourse goes out the window due to the Internet Fuckwad Theorem. It is an
entirely different dynamic to be in someones face and have to fear
consequences beyond words from your behavior, and honestly, that is what
almost any protest in history was for - to try to shake the boots of those who
are gifted with power.

An internet petition is just a number and a paragraph that people clicked a
thumbs up on. Nobody would ever care unless those people actually started
voting differently, and by differently, that means something other than just
going across the isle and shaking hands with their neighbor politician in the
other camp.

It is the same reason you don't argue with businesses with petition letters,
you argue with them with their bottom line. If you are in a state of demanding
something, the other party has a power and influence you don't, and you need
some pull in the relationship or else you will be walked all over.

~~~
writtles
After rereading your contribution, I realize you were agreeing. therefore, I
had become for a moment the "Internet Fuckwad" you warned me of. Sorry. Dis
acknowledge previous post. ... I've been drinking...

~~~
1123581321
You have been one your entire time on Hacker News. Please contribute, not
argue.

------
diminoten
We need to stop calling these "Petition to <thing>". These are not petitions
for things to happen. This is not a petition to make phone unlocking legal
again, it's a petition for the Whitehouse to write a response.

Furthermore, these petitions aren't going to be seen by lawmakers, as someone
in the below comment says. Strictly speaking, the President is part of the
executive branch, not the legislative branch, so in _any_ event, no "lawmaker"
will be seeing these petitions at all.

~~~
Shivetya
oh I am pretty many of the lawmakers have interns or the likes whose job it is
to watch certain sites for trends and such.

~~~
diminoten
I sure hope so, but I just wanted to be clear that it's not part of the
workflow for one of these things to pass in front of any elected member of
congress.

I have this fear that people will think signing these petitions is "enough"
(or "anything" really) and won't do more to push their particular issue. This
_literally_ does nothing but solicit a response from the White House, and 99%
of the time (likely 100% but I don't know that for sure), the response could
have been written by anyone familiar with the White House's already-public
stance on the issue.

------
aleyan
I am glad this thing is happening. Unlike most other petitions that require
changing law through Congress, this rests on a single individual. DMCA
exemption can be made, and in case of phone unlocking have been made, by the
Librarian at Library of Congress. He is appointed by the President and works
at the behest of the Congress. The decision to allow the exemption to DMCA is
completely up to him, and could be potentially influenced by such a petition.

------
manaskarekar
It's funny how you have to petition to have lawmakers pay attention to an
issue, when by definition, those people are there to represent the interest of
the majority in the first place.

~~~
adrr
If all 100k people chipped in a $100, it would have more effect than this
petition. We live in a time where it takes money to get elected.

~~~
mtgx
That's why I think financing campaigns should only be done by individuals and
with a cap of $100 each to "equalize" the money vote, just like you equalize
the regular vote, by giving a person the same vote everyone gets. But the way
the system works now, the "money vote" seems to be much more powerful than the
real vote, and because certain individuals or corporations can put as much
money as they want on that vote, that ends up skewing the election and the way
the politician will fight for certain bills, greatly.

So put a cap on how much you can donate, and ban corporations from donating.
Only individuals should be able to donate. I don't care that they think they
need $100 million to get elected, and with this they'd only get $10 million.
The point is their competitors will only get by with that much, too, but in a
much fairer system, where the voices of many more people have to be listened
to, instead of just the voices of a few.

~~~
eshvk
I think the logic behind corporate financing/lobbying is that if you allow
individuals to contribute money separately, there is no reason why organized
groups should not band together, analyze the election, choose a candidate and
pay $100 for every one of their members to that candidate's campaign. This
organized machine is going to always trump a bunch of individuals haphazardly
contributing money.

~~~
warfangle
Organizations should not be able to donate to campaigns or political action
committees. Unions, superpacs, all of it.

If an organization wants to petition its members to donate to a campaign or
political action committee, go for it. But it cannot coerce, it cannot apply
punitive measures to members that do not donate, and it cannot be a religious
institution that receives tax-exempt status.

~~~
yakiv
Why does it matter here if the tax-exempt organization is religious or not?
Pretty much every tax-exempt organization is going to have an agenda---if it
didn't, it probably wouldn't exist. Why are religion-based agendas less
tolerable here?

~~~
warfangle
Religious organizations have the bonus of being able to coerce not only
through threat of firing and social ostracization, but also through the threat
of eternal damnation.

Tax-exempt religious organizations such as churches can (but often don't) have
their tax-exempt status revoked for urging their congregation to vote for
specific political candidates already.

------
speeder
This is something that I like in Brazillian laws, in Brazil carriers are
supposed to always provide "portability", this mean that you can keep your
phone numbers when you change your carrier.

The "portability" laws, also say that the carriers themselves have to unlock
your phones if you want to change carrier.

This ensures that a carrier cannot make you locked to them by using phone lock
or number lock. It is highly interesting. Maybe facilitated by the fact that
all carriers here use GSM (people think that CDMA is shit, and like the fact
that GSM chips are harder to clone than CDMA phones).

~~~
breckenedge
In the US, we also get to port our numbers to new carriers. It's been this way
for a while.

Do Brazilian carriers offer contract-subsidized phones? Many carriers here
will unlock your phone once your contract is complete. See AT&T's unlock
details at [1]

[1] <https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/client/en_US/>

~~~
speeder
Yes, a lot actually, in fact carriers here are infamous for offering phones
even for free depending on the contract, resulting into one carrier once
making a ad, saying that their bonuses for long term costumers were cash,
because "paying" with phones was silly.

But the law says that if the costumer want to end his contract, then he will
pay his fines or whatever, but the carrier must unlock the phone.

Also you see "unlocking stores" frequently on metro stations for example, it
is perfectly legal, and encouraged by the government, to incentive some free
market between carriers (here we have 4 big GSM carriers, some people even own
prepaid GSM chips of all of them).

------
gesman
Would be great to have this: collect 1,000,000 votes for petition and it goes
to Senate for mandatory voting.

Otherwise it's impossible to penetrate the wall between government and people
via "your vote, we write response, maybe" - type of approach.

~~~
sp332
That's not a bad idea. In fact many states have implemented this already.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiatives_and_referendums_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiatives_and_referendums_in_the_United_States#Initiatives)

~~~
dreamdu5t
Majority rules is just another tyranny.

~~~
sp332
It really has nothing to do with majorities.

------
duaneb
What exactly do these petitioners expect? A) there are far more important
things to do, IMHO, then spending time wrestling telco companies over this,
and B) the White House has to do zilch but respond.

I love petitions, but people getting angry over e.g. repeatedly not legalizing
marijuana after 0.03% of americans signed something I find confusing and
frustrating.

It's almost as if people are easier to ignore if they solely protest through
these petitions....

~~~
pyre
This was a recent change by made by the copyright office, to revoke "phone
unlocking" as an exception to the DMCA. The copyright office is under the
President, IIRC, so the White House has the ability to directly affect this.

The other route is to just codify the exception into law, but pushing a law
through about this takes time.

~~~
khuey
It's the Library of Congress, and they didn't revoke the exception so much as
they failed to renew it.

------
smogzer
What about a petition to prevent lawmakers from creating legislation that
turns regular people into criminals. One simple legislation to rule them all.
The GOML (Get off my lawn) law.

------
StevenXC
I'm interested in the White House's response, but anticipate the issue
basically being blown off.

~~~
TheCapn
People have it in their heads that a successful petition is supposed to mean
there will be change but that was never promised.

I've always felt petitions were used by lawmakers to help filter noise. If you
set a threshold for the amount of support any cause needs before you'll
address it (preventing you from having to listen to each person individually)
the petition system seems only logical. If the lawmakers now see that 100,000+
people are against their decisions they promised to make a response but have
no obligation to change anything.

This is where people's voting power is supposed to matter. If the
representatives are always ignoring the issues that are deemed important by
petition/protest groups then why should the be expected to get re-election?

Its sort of a shit deal where we're hoping the channels they provide will show
some benefit or marshal of change but I haven't seen that happen yet. I'm not
American so I'm somewhat distanced from everything but it has always seemed
like these petitions were just another campaign tool and never intended to be
taken seriously by gov't.

~~~
homosaur
Filter noise? You mean like concerns of citizens instead of concerns of
lobbyists?

A Kickstarter might be more useful than a petition in getting the attention of
the US government.

~~~
pekk
Concerns of how many citizens? 10? 1000? Out of how many millions?

~~~
zanny
I have absolutely no idea how you any cause would get even 10% of Americans to
actually get up off their couches and away from the tv long enough to make
their voice heard on anything.

I mean, the closest thing is recent history, the Occupy movement, was still
only a few tens of thousands at most.

~~~
homosaur
I wish I thought you were being grumpy and cynical instead of accurate.

------
Karunamon
Welp, got halfway down the page before the pessimist, defeatist "It's just a
petition, you're wasting your time" responses started.

Better than usual, I suppose.

------
dfrey
I would rather see locking phones become illegal. Locked devices only serve to
keep people stuck with a provider.

------
codex
This petition asks the President to interfere with the implementation of law,
and to politicize the decisions of the Librarian of Congress, a non-partisan
post.

While the President may use his office to champion new laws, he cannot make
them himself, or overturn them.

------
analyst74
OK, something I don't understand. What's to stop someone from opening a store
that sells unlocked phones?

Is it because of the lack of carrier discount? If that's the case, people have
already voted with their money on what they value more.

~~~
betterunix
"people have already voted with their money on what they value more"

1\. We do not vote with money in America. Poor people get as much of a vote as
rich people in this country.

2\. By making jailbreaking illegal, the government is giving carriers a
_special legal status_ that makes it harder for anyone else to compete. If you
want a market-based solution to life's problems, you cannot have the
government swoop in and give special privilege to certain players.

~~~
jzworkman
Your point number 1 is a little naive. Money and interest groups drive policy.
While the poor may have just as much vote in an election, the power to change
policy generally is focused on the interest groups that most support that
politician. So while people may not "vote with money" policy is very much
money driven.

~~~
betterunix
Sure, that is how it works _in practice_ , but nothing in the constitution of
this country says, "Money buys laws!" We are generally unhappy with the idea
that wealthy corporations have hijacked our legal system, because most
Americans believe their vote matters just as much as every other person's vote
(or at least every other person in their district).

~~~
gnaritas
> Sure, that is how it works in practice

Which is all that matters. How it should work in theory, matters very little.

> If you want a market-based solution to life's problems

Big "if", for many things, many don't want the depth of their wallet to
determine their access to necessary services.

------
datalus
What if I told you...

Obama doesn't give a shit?

------
znowi
A mere fact that there's a White House petition for something that in other
countries is an indefeasible right - use your phone with any carrier you
please - greatly saddens me. I find it astonishing how the Land of the Free
can tolerate such treatment.

~~~
bluedanieru
There's a reason you had to capitalize it.

------
donniezazen
When someone is not paying the full price of a phone, how can they expect to
do anything with the phone? People don't actually own them.

~~~
darkarmani
> People don't actually own them.

I think you need to read up on property law or show me what law I'm ignorant
of that says you don't actually own the phone.

~~~
zanny
The contract you sign with the carrier says you don't own the phone until
after the contract period expires. Same reason you can't just make copies of a
cd of any band you like and hand them out to your friends, in the eyes of the
law you may own a plastic disc but the information stored on it isn't yours to
own, it is yours to borrow and use in a restricted set of circumstances the
rights holder approves of.

~~~
darkarmani
> The contract you sign with the carrier says you don't own the phone until
> after the contract period expires

You mean like when you sign a mortgage to buy a new home? Only it isn't true.
You own your house even if you default which is why you can rip all of the
copper and sell it for money before they foreclose on your home.

The contract with the carrier definitely doesn't say they own your phone. It
makes no sense for them to say that since they have you for early termination
fees.

