Signing a petition is a symbolic act that causes you to commit to yourself the idea "I am the sort of person who cares about this issue". Petitions are, at best, only secondarily for influencing the powers that be. They are primarily for influencing the people who sign them.
>Is there any evidence to show that signing a petition makes a person more inclined to take additional practical action?
Yes, there is some evidence. In Chapter 3 of Influence: Science and Practice, Robert Cialdini discusses this kind of self-image effect, citing several studies including one in particular about petitions[1]. These kinds of "commitments" (even though they are not actually binding) really do affect our behavior, although the end results are not necessarily particularly issue-focused or predictable.
One thing we can say though with some certainty: if you convince someone to sign their name to a petition that says "stop X", it will take significant mental effort for them to later decide that they actually support X.
Remember, these were innocuous requests from a non-profit group with relatively non-controversial goals. This technique may not produce the same results for more political or more controversial requests.
The petitions are not meaningless. They just are not doing what you want them to do. The point of these petitions is to get a response from someone in the administration who is familiar with the topic [1]. They have done this over and over again. In some instances, after reviewing the instances they have also changed policies [2].
Considering an official whitehouse.gov petition led to the White House response that eventually turned the tide on SOPA the last time, actually that's not true.
I agree in a sense of actually changing something. It is somewhat useful in letting people not involved know what's going on by spreading the information around.
They didn't exist before the current president, so it's logically impossible for him to have made them meaningless. Whatever miniscule approximately-zero meaning they have now is more than they had before they existed.
Perhaps this is just another case where the Obama administration is "speaking in shorthand."
It sounds like the president is supporting SOPA, but in actuality he is speaking in some law professor dialect where words do not mean what they seem to mean.
Yes, because we're not capable of understanding his "shorthand" descriptions of things--SOPA, ObamaCare, etc. Instead, we need another entity to translate what we're supposed to hear--e.g. the media.
IIRC, Reagan's "shorthand" descriptions were directly on point and were not mis-understood by even foreign countries.
I guess Obama isn't the great communicator everyone thought he was...
If you compare some of Reagan's speeches with what he did and you can find plenty of cases of 'short hand'. Politicians need to communicate so stupid people like what they are saying, taken out of context they don't say anything embarrassing, AND still convey nuanced ideas to other politicians out there.
Consider back when Clinton wanted to change healthcare many Republicans advocated for 'ObamaCare' which directly copied a host of republican ideas. Republicans did not actually mean what they where saying, they just wanted to shift the debate without saying we like the current system. Which is why you can find so many old speeches that are at great odds with what the party is saying today.
I know it's 7 years ago, but Mitt Romney is probably the next Republican presidential candidate and it's not like the party penalized him for his past stance. Or even really talks about it. And if you really want to dig into it, look at who voted for in in that states legislator.
I think it's more likely that the President supports the increased IP protections of SOPA but not the protection measures (DNS tampering) of SOPA.
I think it's a bit self-defeating of groups like fightforthefuture.org to label any type of support for increased copyright protection as "pro-SOPA", as there is nothing in this statement that says "the Administration supports protecting copyrights even if it means blacklisting DNS entries".
I can't find the source for the quote, "we still need legislation for blocking foreign websites." The referenced document doesn't actually say that, in fact, the word "blocking" doesn't even appear in the document at all.
Seems like the author of the petition assumed the reader would thing tl;dr and just assume it was accurate.
"For petitions, open letters, or similar public communications that you've signed or completed, we treat your name, city, state, and comments as public information."
Nice. So if I sign the petition they are allowed to sell my data?
Isn't this the way petitions work? I mean, if a group brings a petition to a city council, what good is it if it's full of names? Simply saying "15,000 people support this" without enumerating those supporters doesn't seem very effective.
For petitions and surveys you've signed or completed, we treat your name, city, state, and comments as public information - for example, we may provide compilations of petitions, with your comments, to the President and legislators, other targets, or to the press. We will not make your street address publicly available, but we may transmit it to members of Congress and to the President as part of a petition. This is a standard industry practice in such situations. In no such case will we disclose your email address or phone number without your permission. We may also make your comments, along with your first name, city, and state available to the press and public online.
Under circumstances where we determine that members may be misusing our systems for malicious purposes (for example, using the numbers we provide to make harassing phone calls), such activities may be reported to law enforcement agencies. In such cases, MoveOn may release personally identifiable information, including name and address, to those agencies.
It's a great way for the whitehouse to build contact lists for potential contributors. The petitions are meaningless. Pressuring Congress is far more effective and time-tested.
When I saw that Obama picked Biden as VP I knew that something this would happen. He has been a friend of Hollywood's for a very, very long time.
Furthermore he and Obama agreed to the Carter/Mondale model of how to run the VP office, where the VP is in the white house, in every meeting with the President and is the last man in the room. That gives Biden zero visibility..and a finger in every decision. Hence real power. (As opposed to the way that Reagan/Bush reportedly did things, where Bush's job consisted of checking each day that Reagan was still alive, and then taking the rest of the day off.)
Victoria Espinel is not the same as Obama. She is on her last legs in the Whitehouse, and I think most agree that she was a bad hire who has assembled an even worse team. She is the typical B hires C and C hires D players.
She'll be on her way out soon enough. I'm sure she'll land in MPAA land or somewhere equally gross.
Obama Admin needs to straight up create a position that is the OPPOSITE of the Copyright Czar...someone who can internally bat against much of what the Copyright Czar comes up with.
supporting opposition to bills like this is only the first step.
there needs to be a campaign to make them pass a law or even an amendment to the constitution to prevent them from trying to slip by when noone is looking
they only need to get lucky once...and its a 100x harder to repeal a law than it is to implement it.
The article provides a citation as their source. The source is a PDF file on whitehouse.gov, published by the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC). All the document says is that IPEC supports SOPA. Does this mean the White House supports the legislation?
so I am totally in support of blocking SOPA/ACTA and as a developer it is really important to me but the call to action at the bottom is a little misguided.
It actually makes me proud of humanity that more people want to petition for "stop expanding trade with vietnam at the expense of human rights" than stopping ACTA. the latter being somewhat of a #firstwordproblem and the former dealing with human slavery, death, etc.
so when you go sign the petition, sign the "stop ACTA" one AND something else that is, in the grand scheme of things, more inportant to human life.
Question is, how many of us would even know about human slavery in Vietnam without the Internet? I grew up when people got their news from whatever the networks chose to squeeze into 30 minutes of primetime news (Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather at their peak), and from the morning paper which varied in quality around the country.
Society as a whole is much better informed now, yet a handful of rent-seeking assholes are running a scorched earth campaign to protect their obsolete sacred cows, potentially at the expense of all of society being better informed about what matters in the world.
If you can vote for both, by all means do it. But if you have to choose one or the other, then I'd argue it's not so black and white which is more important to human life and liberty.
Although I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment about 1st world problems, can you expand on why as a developer you are in favor of more piracy? I feel the big guys will always be able to protect themselves and it is the little guys who really suffer.
Being against SOPA/ACTA/etc. should not be construed as being pro-copyright infringement. He might simply be pro-due process and pro-innocent until proven guilty. Those positions alone are enough to cause one to not support these sorts of bills.
By the same token, saying that one wants to block bad foreign websites is not the same thing as "voicing support for SOPA"--which is the connection the linked petition tries to make. And no surprise, since the SOPA protest was so huge. I expect every single IP-related issue to be called "SOPA" for the next couple years as a result. It has become a power word.
That the original commenter is pro-piracy does not follow from pg having voiced an opinion on copyright. Claiming as much only serves to mask the problems with these bills. Perhaps you meant to limit your statement on wanting more copyright infringement to pg?
Thanks for your thoughtful responses. I in no way meant to put words in the original commenters mouth and truly want to know why being a developer means you are very concernered about a bill that protects intellectual property. Anyone can be concerned about the rule of law. What is it as a developer that causes concern about SOPA? Surely you want your products to make you money. Many new users of this site think that not paying for stuff is a good enough reason.
Speaking for myself (I am also a developer), I am concerned with the circumvention of due process and presumption of guilt that is built into these bills. If I am operating a service that someone files a complaint against, especially if I am a startup, I have very little recourse before my business is trashed. This is independent of whether or not I am guilty of anything, or my users have submitted infringing content to my service. Content owners and federal agencies have a historical lack of concern about the accuracy of their claims, so I would like to ensure that they have to be rigorous before they can take down my service. They should have to prove to a judge that I am in fact in violation of the law before they can cut off my source of income.
Speaking to the philosophical issue that pg raised, I believe people have a right to attempt to make money from their efforts. I also believe that they most definitely do not have a right to be successful in that attempt, regardless of how much effort they have put in. They also do not have a right to continued success if the world around them changes. What works on Monday may not work on Friday, and the fact that it worked Monday should not serve as a guarantee that Friday's endeavor has a right to success. If the effort it takes to secure a number of the size required to represent a 3 minute song becomes a burden on society, then I do not think they have a right to be successful in doing so. The same goes for the software I produce. If my securing it from copying that I do not approve of becomes a burden on society, then I do not have a right to be successful in securing it. Personally, I interpret a circumvention of due process and an attitude of "guilty until a successful appeal is filed" as a burden on society.
This is the most salient explanation that I have seen on HN, although some points need rebutting. For instance
>If the effort it takes to secure a number of the size required to represent a 3 minute song becomes a burden on society, then I do not think they have a right to be successful in doing so.
That is only true after the law has been changed, at least from a legal standpoint.
> If my securing it from copying that I do not approve of becomes a burden on society, then I do not have a right to be successful in securing it.
Same as above.
Most responses on HN have been something like "if you want to make money from your creation you should use kickstarter and give it away after that". This is a very foolish attitude both realistically and philosophically. I have every right to use the current laws to my advantage and an obligation to my investors to do exactly that.
I have no problem with flouting laws if they are truly unjust, but I have no sympathy for piracy profiteers like Kim Dotcom because he knew very well what he was doing. Copying between friends can never be stopped but if you make enough money from it you are a valid target.
I would consider the law unjust once it crosses the line into being a burden on society. That's obviously not a black and white transition, although I gave part of what I consider to be over that line in my last response. From my perspective, SOPA, as proposed, was (is?) an unjust law, in that it meets the criteria I specified for what I consider a burden.
It's worth making the distinction between legal rights and natural rights. Obviously, if a particular draconian and unjust law were passed that guaranteed the right to secure your 3kb of data, then you have the legal right to do so. That fact has mostly no bearing on your natural right to do so.
It's also worth noting that sharing between friends and someone making a large profit off of sharing are not the only options. It is not hard to envision a situation with a large amount of sharing and no one profiting directly the way kim dotcom did. It has the scale of the profiteers, but the intent and profitability of the between-friends sharing. I think it is a lot harder to find someone worthy of being called a criminal in such a situation.
Actually this issue is important enough for me that I would.
I'm curious who is going to run as the Republican candidate for Senator this year in California. Because if they manage to pick a relative moderate (like Meg Whitman, but not Carly Fiorina), I'll be voting Republican.
Agreed. But I'm not advocating sticking our heads in the sand. What I do think is that, if we let ourselves get sucked into playing the game by their rules we (the tech industry) will lose. They have more lawyers, politicians, and even law enforcement officers in their pockets than we do.
The only way to win is to do what they cannot do: Innovate and build platforms and technologies for sharing information so quickly that it becomes impossible to stop the sea change. If we spend time and brainpower trying to compete in their arena we will get crushed just as surely as they would if they tried to compete in ours.
The problem is that the tech industries are nice guys. We aren't prepared to play to win, we won't bribe politicians, blackmail them with pictures of their affairs when they won't take the bribes, have the law firms involved debared, have the CPS take their children. Spread rumors and destroy the friendships, connections and trusts the lobbiests depend on.
That we cannot comeup with such ideas are åroperly a good thing but it is also a pretty large handicap when we are up against people like the MPAA (who, granted may not be playing as dirty as these suggestions).
"I object to teaching of slogans intended to befog the mind, of whatever kind they may be." ~Franz Boas
(Hmm, someone didn't like that quoteback. Okay, here's another one, from yours truly. "Gentlemen, I'm just as concerned as you are about those Redcoats overrunning our town! I just don't think my front yard is an adequate, let alone optimal, place to defend it.")
What percentage do you estimate of HN users would never hear about this if it never was submitted here?
What probability do you estimate that anything (clarification: anything significantly benefiting "our interests") is going to happen conditional on every HN user having heard about this?
On a scale of 1 to 10, "hardly" to "very", how surprised were you to hear about this?
Edit: And one more, since the downvote police haven't gotten this one yet, what probability do you estimate that by HN ignoring the political world for two months any of your nightmares will come true?
