
Whitehouse.gov petition to veto SOPA - orbenn
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/veto-sopa-bill-and-any-other-future-bills-threaten-diminish-free-flow-information/g3W1BscR
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wdewind
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.

Edit: Let me add this, which makes it absurdly easy:
<http://fightforthefuture.org/>

~~~
lkx
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?

~~~
eftpotrm
They wouldn't be trying to buy this sort of legislation if they didn't think
it was, in balance, in their commercial interests. They've likely already
modelled the effect of any consumer backlash in their analysis, so why would
they listen to you? They were expecting to lose you anyway.

~~~
lkx
By "people" I refer to the human beings who run the corporations, not the
corporations themselves. I doubt very much that executives behind these moves
at corporations have taken being held responsible _personally_ into account.
In my opinion, they should be held accountable personally, not only by
shareholders, but by society at large.

I believe that corporate executives act with impunity because society, as a
whole, has come to consider corporations as people (beyond the legal fiction
of Personhood). Executives hide behind this "personhood". Why should we stop
at: "BigCo is doing something evil", when the individual board members and
executives of BigCo are ultimately the ones who make the decisions?

Zuckerberg, and in an earlier era, Gates, are examples of two CEOs who are
held personally liable in the court of public opinion for the misdeeds of
their corporations. In my opinion, more of that would be healthy.

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vectorpush
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.

~~~
rhizome
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.

~~~
ericd
So you're saying that some online petitions are actually meant to diffuse
dissent about the thing they're petitioning? That would be a stroke of evil
genius if it's true. Doesn't strike me as being the case so much as their
being driven by naive idealism, but in the case of the whitehouse one, it's at
least conceivable. In the long run, it's probably just going to demonstrate to
a lot of people that online petitions are mostly counterproductive.

~~~
gamble
Online petitions exist to harvest email addresses so they can hit you up for
donations and volunteering during the campaign. They're an easy way for
campaign staff to build a mailing list of people politically engaged enough to
be worth spamming.

~~~
ericd
This is definitely one of the reasons for online petitions. I doubt that's why
Whitehouse.gov exists.

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orthecreedence
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.

~~~
dpeck
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.

~~~
orthecreedence
Lack of communication and inaction are two very different things though. In
the case of SOPA, they would pass the bill next week, then email petition
singers 6 months after the fact on how anti-American the petition is. The
petition in this hypothetical situation didn't delay anything, but prompted a
communication at a later date.

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akavlie
I expect that this petition will be just as effective as all the others.

~~~
JonnieCache
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!"

~~~
viraptor
I think you're spreading FUD really. Have a look at current UK petitions which
have passed the 100k votes:

fuel prices - <http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/347> (small decrease
implemented, plans for the future shared)

immigration - <http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/19658> (basic plans
shared, recently implemented changes listed, already heard some people having
visa issues, so something is happening)

summer riots - <http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/7337> (no direct
actions, but response means pretty much "this is happening anyways", there's
some more information about what the local authorities can do)

Hillsborough 1989 - <http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/2199>
(accepted, disclosure will happen)

financial education - <http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/8903> (this
one does look like a non-answer, but maybe they're really doing the reviews
now)

private pensions - <http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/1535> (no
response yet, only crossed the line recently)

While I'm not crazy about all the answers, there was some effect (or at least
an explanation or a commitment to the original plan). They're quite far from
"a more efficient way of shutting people up" the way it's presented in the
comments here.

~~~
JonnieCache
All that stuff is relatively non-controversial though, I don't consider the
system to have been really tested until the people demand something the
government really doesn't want to do.

When we get a million signatures against war in iran, or to unilaterally leave
the EU or something, then we'll see what happens.

~~~
estel
Uncontroversial to remove all Government benefits from those convicted of
involvement in the Summer Riots?

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orbenn
What is SOPA and why should you care about it?

Short serious video: <http://youtu.be/1ngRPuXpCIw>

Long sarcastic video with a British accent: <http://youtu.be/JhwuXNv8fJM>

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anrope
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.

Edit: I suppose I mean "funny" in a darker sense.

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msluyter
I created an account in order to sign this, but when I try to sign in I get a
404 -- using Chrome. Anyone else get that?

~~~
slamdunc
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...

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
I just tried in Chrome and Firefox. Finally tried IE. Guess what? It worked.
Sigh.

~~~
jtheory
I saw the 404 the second time I tried to sign in. The first time worked --
seemingly -- but returning to the petition page gave me this riddle:

<http://imgur.com/Flzuk>

Notice the bar on the bottom showing I'm signed in. And the prompt to sign in
before I can vote.

Can't seem to get past that no matter what I try. I'll try IE, I guess.

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waffle_ss
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).

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joshuahedlund
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.

See
[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45176460/ns/technology_and_scien...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45176460/ns/technology_and_science-
space/t/white-house-theres-no-sign-et-or-ufo-cover-up/)

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neilparikh
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.

~~~
ComputerGuru
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.

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Joakal
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.

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omouse
Petitions don't work. The Founding Fathers knew that...

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nestlequ1k
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.

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TheCapn
I like the tactic the petition used by even if they took the time to treat it
seriously this is the only 2 outcomes...

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?

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dlikhten
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"

We need a better methodology.

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dmauro
Can't sign in or register in Chrome 15 ?

~~~
ktom
Oddly enough, I browsed around to another page and was able to create an
account from there.

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.

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lukejduncan
Every time I've tried logging in with an existing account to sign anything
I've always gotten a 404 after.

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ComputerGuru
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.

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twainer
Something shady going on with this petition? I logged in - first time every
looking at it - and it says "You've already signed this petition."

???

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pud
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.

Neat. <https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions>

~~~
rhizome
That's by design.

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kodisha
8k votes... that is just sad...

~~~
dpe82
In a couple hours. On a Sunday.

~~~
polymatter
on a law that is one step shy of banning the whole internet world-wide. since
pretty much every site allows some user content and a single accusation will
down that entire site, i'd hope for a better response than that.

edit: banning is too harsh. censored to the agreement of all corporate
interests, all potential corporate interests and the interests of those rich
and American enough to have influence

~~~
dpe82
Well quit griping about the lack of involvement and go tell some people about
it to help increase the number.

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rorrr
Our government showed us many times that they don't give a shit about these
petitions.

