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Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

So the argument here is: detractors say petitions are inefficient since no matter what happens with it nothing changes. But we say - look! WH responded! True, nothing changed, but you couldn't expect anything to change from a mere petition! So you were wrong to say nothing would change!

Somehow this argument does not sound convincing. Yes, one shouldn't expect too much from a mere petition - but that's what was said from the very beginning!

As for president's apparent inability to change laws - give me a break. He's the leader of the major US party who just won the elections, he controls the Senate, he has wide range of supporters in the press, he can successfully solicit billions in donations - and he's absolutely powerless to do any effort towards fixing this little thing? Somehow I have hard time believing it.

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You need to understand that nothing could change. The White House has responded that they are on our side. Obama is not a tsar: he can't go in and change the law. So to detractors, I say: You turned the key in the ignition and the car started. You still have to drive the damn thing to get where you need to be.

He can't go in and change the law by himself. He can go in and initiate the process that would lead to the change in the law - and he successfully did it many times for things that matter to him, like raising taxes. When we see that happening, then we could say something changed. But before that it's just words, and politicians are professionals in telling people what they want to hear, it costs them nothing.

>>>> You still have to drive the damn thing to get where you need to be.

Driving the car is not done by internet petitions, though. That's the whole point - having WH say something on some page worth nothing, they did it many times on many issues, and they can keep doing what they did before regardless, and renege on all promises, and people would just say "oh, we can't expect too much from them - they're just the President and the ruling party, who could expect they could actually do anything?" If they can't - who can?

Actually, he can issue an executive order with the same language used by the Library of Congress, but he chose not to do so.

I'm curious though, under what authority is the Librarian of Congress allowed to modify the DMCA exclusion list?

This exemption process is part of the DMCA. The Copyright Office's rulemaking statement begins with several pages answering your question: http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2012/2012-26308_PI.pdf

And http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac... has a quick explanation:

> In addition to the safe harbors and exemptions the statute explicitly provides, 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1) requires that the Librarian of Congress issue exemptions from the prohibition against circumvention of access-control technology. Exemptions are granted when it is shown that access-control technology has had a substantial adverse effect on the ability of people to make non-infringing uses of copyrighted works.

> The exemption rules are revised every three years. Exemption proposals are submitted by the public to the Registrar of Copyrights, and after a process of hearings and public comments, the final rule is recommended by the Registrar and issued by the Librarian. Exemptions expire after three years and must be resubmitted for the next rulemaking cycle. Consequently, the exemptions issued in the prior rulemakings, in 2000, 2003 and 2006 are no longer valid.

ah, but this is not a law that needs changing, it's the Librarian's opinion that needs changing. It's a ruling, not a law. Basically, Obama just told everyone to shut up and suck a lemon. If he wanted to change it, he could call the Librarian and say "Hey, I need you to change something for me", or just publish an executive order - change it or get on my kill list.

He could change it, but he's not interested enough to change it.

> As for president's apparent inability to change laws - give me a break. He's the leader of the major US party who just won the elections, he controls the Senate, he has wide range of supporters in the press, he can successfully solicit billions in donations - and he's absolutely powerless to do any effort towards fixing this little thing? Somehow I have hard time believing it.

Sure he's not powerless to change it. But it's a little issue that doesn't matter to more than a few people, so he's not going to use his time or political capital to do the legwork himself. What he's doing is giving you the thumbs-up to proceed on the issue yourself.

This statement is something you can take to your house representative and go: "look, the President supports this!" You can petition the FCC to exert pressure. You can get some of those 100,000 people who signed the petition to call their Congress-people. And you can tell them, "hey, the President has gone on the record as supporting this.". To a Congress-person it suggests that it might be worth someone's time to draft up a bill and score some easy points. It gives you something to build a coalition around. That's huge.

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