<story><title>White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”</title><url>https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-unlocking-cell-phones-legal/1g9KhZG7?update</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sneak</author><text>I hate to break it to you, but their response was effectively: &quot;we agree with you but we respect the process that brought us to this fucked-up state and look forward to continuing to work with congress&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Petitions don&apos;t have any effect other than getting a response that&apos;s designed to get you to stop complaining from a false sense of achievement.  In that sense, they work perfectly.</text></item><item><author>sinak</author><text>Hey guys, petition starter here. Just wanted to thank anyone who signed for their support. I just got off the phone with the White House and they&apos;re really enthusiastic about getting this fixed. We also discussed fixing Section 1201 of the DMCA permanently, and they&apos;ve agreed to continue the conversation on that.&lt;p&gt;When I originally posted this to HN at &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112020&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112020&lt;/a&gt; there were a lot of very skeptical responses to the effect of &quot;petitions don&apos;t have any effect&quot;. The optimist in me is glad they were wrong. The White House seem to be genuinely committed to helping push through a piece of legislation to fix this. If there&apos;s something about government that bugs you, it&apos;s worth trying to do something about it.&lt;p&gt;Also, we&apos;re launching a campaign to ask Congress to change Section 1201 of the DMCA, with backing from the EFF, Reddit and others.&lt;p&gt;Sign up at &lt;a href=&quot;http://fixthedmca.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fixthedmca.org&lt;/a&gt; - should be launching the site tomorrow.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Cushman</author><text>If he just got off the phone with the White House, I&apos;d imagine he has a pretty good idea of what their response was. Your cynicism is a big part of the reason it&apos;s so hard to change things around here.</text></comment>
<story><title>White House Response to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal”</title><url>https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-unlocking-cell-phones-legal/1g9KhZG7?update</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sneak</author><text>I hate to break it to you, but their response was effectively: &quot;we agree with you but we respect the process that brought us to this fucked-up state and look forward to continuing to work with congress&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Petitions don&apos;t have any effect other than getting a response that&apos;s designed to get you to stop complaining from a false sense of achievement.  In that sense, they work perfectly.</text></item><item><author>sinak</author><text>Hey guys, petition starter here. Just wanted to thank anyone who signed for their support. I just got off the phone with the White House and they&apos;re really enthusiastic about getting this fixed. We also discussed fixing Section 1201 of the DMCA permanently, and they&apos;ve agreed to continue the conversation on that.&lt;p&gt;When I originally posted this to HN at &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112020&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112020&lt;/a&gt; there were a lot of very skeptical responses to the effect of &quot;petitions don&apos;t have any effect&quot;. The optimist in me is glad they were wrong. The White House seem to be genuinely committed to helping push through a piece of legislation to fix this. If there&apos;s something about government that bugs you, it&apos;s worth trying to do something about it.&lt;p&gt;Also, we&apos;re launching a campaign to ask Congress to change Section 1201 of the DMCA, with backing from the EFF, Reddit and others.&lt;p&gt;Sign up at &lt;a href=&quot;http://fixthedmca.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fixthedmca.org&lt;/a&gt; - should be launching the site tomorrow.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tzisc</author><text>Well, I&apos;d argue that cynical responses like these are the most detrimental response of all.&lt;p&gt;Pessimism is not realism. Getting the full verbal support of a second-term lame-duck administration with nothing to lose is not a negligible achievement. Some progress != no progress. You&apos;re right that petitions have limited scope and effect, but in successful efforts like these, they can generate publicity and political momentum, giving ammunition and gravitas to Congressmen who would co-sponsor legislation. At the very least it is a step in the right direction.&lt;p&gt;The system is broken, but sitting back and needlessly berating those who would try to take small steps to achieve small goals is hardly an acceptable response. It&apos;s calculus; if you integrate a positive attitude over a large enough population of believers, you can effect large-scale change. If you integrate so-called &quot;cynical realism&quot; over the same intelligent population, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy of defeatism which is nothing to pat yourself on the back about, either. I applaud sinak&apos;s achievement and I hope that this conversation shifts to what steps need to be taken next.</text></comment>