Call Congress today to support HR 1892, "The Unlocking Technology Act" | Hacker News Reader

Call Congress today to support HR 1892, "The Unlocking Technology Act"

fixthedmca.org

130 pointssinak16 comments

When I posted this page last week with an "email your reps" form, a lot of people commented to say that calling your representatives is much more effective than emailing.

So I scrambled around, and was eventually introduced to the folks at Call2Action, who've built a Twilio integration that makes calling really easy. It took a couple of all-nighters (mostly because I redesigned the entire site), but the page now has a number that you can dial that'll request your zip code and then connect you to talk to your representatives.

At the moment, the leading bill in Congress on this issue is the "Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act." That bill is proposed by the heads of the judiciary committee. It does absolutely nothing to correct the problems with Section 1201 of the DMCA; instead it simply reverses the Librarian of Congress's removal of the unlocking exemption. The problem is that those exemptions only cover personal acts of circumvention, and not the tools and services needed to make it happen. I'd be willing to bet that even here on HN, very few of us have the skills to unlock a smartphone from scratch. For unlocking software to exist, it needs to be feasible for developers to invest time in building those tools.

The "Unlocking Technology Act" would not only make tools and services legal, but would amend the DMCA to make circumvention of "technological protection measures" legal as long as the purpose isn't piracy. That'd cover unlocking, jailbreaking, modding game consoles, but also it'd enable removing DRM for "fair use." For example, it'd make it significantly easier for documentary filmmakers, teachers, archivists and remix artists to access content for use in the course of there day to day work. And it would prevent security researchers from being threatened under the DMCA when they try and publish research about DRM.

This has become a bit of a personal project for me while I'm between startups, and I'd really appreciate you taking the time to support it.

tl;dr Please take a few minutes today and call - this bill deserves our support.

That's really cool how you got the phone stuff working!

What do you instead about having the user enter their own phone number and zip code on the site and click submit. Then twilio calls the rep and the user? That way the user doesn't have to even dial.

I'm not totally sure, but I think it's helpful if the call comes from a local area code. But, many of us have legacy area codes from places we lived 10-15 years ago, so it may not matter too much.

Relevant XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1129/

In all seriousness, though, calling from a local area code does make a huge difference.

If you don't have a local phone number for some reason (recently moved, etc.), then you can still call and identify yourself by name and say that you're a constituent (note: say "constituent", not "voter").

I got one actual person out of my three reps, the other two dumping me to a voicemail that said only "that mailbox is full."

Being able to call one number, enter zip, and press * was fantastic. I actually got to speak to three humans in the offices of my VA representative and senators. All took down my information, and even asked me to repeat which bill I was calling about just to be sure. Great experience.

Bill Text for 113th Congress (2013-2014) H.R.1892.IH http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113hr1892ih/pdf/BILLS-113... [pdf]

The system worked flawlessly for me, and hitting * to automatically connect to the next representative or senator saved a ton of time. Great work!

Called. Thanks for putting this together! Slick experience.

I had some complaints that I was hard to hear; not sure if that was Twilio or that I was calling through Google Voice.

Thanks for calling!

If anyone else has call quality problems, please let me know.

Do you have analytics? How is the response?

I started talking about supporting the bill and the lady answering the phone (for Nancy Pelosi) rather abruptly switched me to the dedicated voicemail system for these types of calls. I was expecting her to listen to it, but I guess this would more efficient.

I was surprised to reach real people on the other end of the line, and for the sake of brevity shortened my message to say that I was a voter and business owner in the area that wished to voice support for H.R. 1892, and would appreciate said representative's support as well.

Big ups for helping me get off my ass and pick up the phone. It feels empowering.

The one actual person I got was nice and listened to me, even though they knew nothing about the issue at all. Everyone else dumps you to a full voicemail box, which is pretty sad.

Done! Thanks.

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