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30-606: A later version of the bill, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act , was introduced in 2013, 2015 and 2017. The FRPAA would require that those eleven agencies with research expenditures over $ 100 million, create online repositories of journal articles of the research completed by that agency and make them publicly available. They must be maintained and preserved by the agency, or another repository that permits free and open access. It must be available to users without charge within six months after it has been published in

60-538: A peer-reviewed journal. The agencies included in this bill are: (R-TX) (D-PA) (R-KS) (I-CT) (D-PA) (R-TX) In addition to Senator John Cornyn and Senator Joe Lieberman , Representative Michael F. Doyle , along with Frederick Boucher , Michael Capuano , Jerry Costello , Bill Foster , Barney Frank , Gregg Harper , Paul Hodes , Tim Holden , Dennis Kucinich , Rick Larsen , Zoe Lofgren , Stephen Lynch , Dana Rohrabacher , Fortney Stark , Debbie Wasserman Schultz , and Henry Waxman have co-sponsored

90-641: A full house of Congress. The bill is often compared to and discussed in conjunction with the Public Access to Public Science (PAPS) Act , also introduced in 2013. As of 2024 the bill has not been enacted, partially due to lobbying by anti-open access publishers and trade groups such as Elsevier and the Association of American Publishers . Days after FASTR was introduced in 2013, the Executive Branch's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued

120-558: A memorandum that "hereby directs each Federal agency with over $ 100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government." The change was in part prompted by an online Whitehouse petition to "Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research." We

150-480: A paywall." FASTR has been described as "The Other Aaron's Law", named for open-access activist Aaron Swartz who died in a dramatic case in support of open access research in January 2013. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs unanimously approved the bill on July 29, 2015. It was the first time that the bill or any of its predecessors had gained committee approval and been forwarded to

180-614: A petition, users only need to provide their name and their email address, and they will receive an email with a link that they must click to confirm their signature. It is not necessary to have a whitehouse.gov account to sign a petition. Under the Obama administration's rules, a petition had to reach 150 signatures ( Dunbar's Number ) within 30 days to be searchable on WhiteHouse.gov, according to Tom Cochran , former director of digital technology. It had to reach 100,000 signatures within 30 days to receive an official response. The original threshold

210-551: A similar bill in the House of Representatives (H.R. 5037). As of July 19, 2010, 120 Higher Education Leaders support this bill. On March 28, 2012, 52 Nobel Laureates signed an open letter to the US Congress expressing their support for this bill. The Association of American Publishers opposes the bill on behalf of 81 scholarly publishing organizations alleging that the bill forces the same deadline for disciplines in which that deadline

240-551: A work of the United States federal government and licensing under the GPL v2 . On December 19, 2017, the Trump administration announced its intention to temporarily shut down the website and replace it with a "new platform [that] would save taxpayers more than $ 1m a year", though ultimately it was retained in its initial form. On January 20, 2021, the day of the inauguration of Joe Biden ,

270-528: Is burdensome, limits the options of government-funded researchers, forces a change in publishers' business models, and will create a cost burden on federal agencies. Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act ( FASTR ) is a bill in the United States that would mandate earlier public release of taxpayer-funded research. The bill has been introduced in 2013, 2015, and 2017. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) introduced

300-539: The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14, 2012, a petition for new gun control measures achieved 100,000 signatures within 24 hours. In February 2013, a petition started by OpenSignal co-founder and digital rights activist Sina Khanifar reached the 100,000-signature threshold required for a response from the White House. Two weeks later, the Obama administration issued a response urging

330-503: The digital divide means that poor communities may have had difficulty participating equally in We The People. During the first weeks of the presidency of Donald Trump, The Independent and The A.V. Club reported that many popular petitions did not appear to be receiving any signatures. Additionally, certain URLs to the petitions led to error pages. Macon Phillips, the man behind We

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360-516: The Director oppose all attempts to legalize the use of illicit drugs in any form. Other complaints of We the People focused on its technical glitches, democratic rationale, and political dilemmas. There was criticism about the willingness of the administration to answer petitions that meet the threshold for response, when several qualifying petitions have been unanswered for months or years. In addition,

390-671: The FCC and Congress to legalize cell phone unlocking . A year later, Congress passed the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act , the first piece of legislation driven by an online petition. The bill was signed into law by President Obama on August 1, 2014. In March 2015, as the United States and the P5+1 group were negotiating with Iran on an agreement to restrain Iran's nuclear program , 47 Republican Senators sent an open letter to

420-498: The Logan Act in attempting to undermine a nuclear agreement" , passed the 100,000-signature threshold within one day. The petition had reached the number 1 spot, garnering more than 320,000 signatures by April 8, 2015, more than three times the number of signatures required to qualify for a response from the White House. "Within hours" of President Donald Trump 's inauguration on January 20, 2017, two petitions had been started on

450-554: The People (petitioning system) User submissions: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 We the People , launched by the Obama administration on September 22, 2011, active until January 20, 2021, the day of the inauguration of Joe Biden , is a defunct section of the whitehouse.gov website used for petitioning the administration's policy experts. Petitions that reached a certain threshold of signatures were reviewed by Administration officials who in most instances would subsequently provide an official response. Legal proceedings in

480-543: The People , told BuzzFeed News that the issue stemmed from issues with its cache . He also thought that Trump's administration "is still trying to get their heads around how it works". On January 20, 2021, the day the Inauguration of Joe Biden took place, the website's address started redirecting to the White House's main web address. First reported by the Ron Paul Institute , the White House declined comment when

510-747: The People have been raised since before the first White House responses were published. On August 13, 2013, the Washington Post website published an article about 30 petitions that had been left unanswered for an average of 240 days despite each having met the signature goals. The article refers to the website www.whpetitions.info for taking "its own tally and highlights petitions that have received enough signatures but have not received responses." As of 16 October 2016, 323 White House petitions have met their signature thresholds. The White House has responded to 321 of them (99%) with an average response time of 117 days. Average waiting time for unanswered petitions

540-577: The Senate version, while the bill was introduced to the House by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) and Kevin Yoder (R-Kans.). The bill is a successor to the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), which had been introduced in 2006, 2010, and 2012. Senator Wyden advocated for the passage of the bill by arguing that "taxpayer funded research should never be hidden behind

570-467: The United States were not subject to petitions, rather, the site served as a public relations mechanism for the presidential administration to provide a venue for citizens to express themselves. On August 23, 2012, the White House Director of Digital Strategy Macon Phillips released the source code for the platform. The source code is available on GitHub , and lists both public domain status as

600-464: The cost of building a real Death Star has been estimated at $ 852 quadrillion and at current rates of steel production, would not be ready for more than 833,000 years. The response also noted that "the Administration does not support blowing up planets" and questions funding a weapon "with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship" as reasons for denying the petition. Following

630-494: The day that Trump was inaugurated, noting that the Trump administration that same day "archived" (that is, deactivated) all petitions in progress on the 'We the People' site. New petitions were created, but only two petitions—both created on Inauguration Day—soared above the 100,000-signature threshold within the Trump administration's first week, while other petitions created subsequently seemed not to count signatures at all. The website

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660-450: The leaders of Iran strongly suggesting that a future president or Congress could nullify any such agreement. This action was widely construed as deliberate interference with the negotiations, and possibly a violation of the Logan Act . In response, several similar petitions were posted on March 9, 2015. One petition, entitled "File charges against the 47 United States Senators in violation of

690-405: The petition, stating "Although Federal law provides a mechanism to designate and sanction foreign terrorist organizations and foreign state sponsors of terrorism, there is currently no analogous mechanism for formally designating domestic terrorist organizations. Nonetheless, law enforcement has many tools at its disposal to address violent individuals and groups." Concerns about the efficacy of We

720-513: The petitions had over 385,000 and 119,000 signatures, respectively, with the former being a record number of signatures for any petition on the site. By the February 17 deadline to reach 100,000 signatures, it had exceeded one million signatures, making it the first petition on the site to do so. In August 2017, a petition requesting that Antifa be classified by the Pentagon as a terrorist organization

750-474: The site. One, for the release of his taxes, "with all information needed to verify emoluments clause compliance" reached the 100,000 signature threshold within twenty-four hours. Another, for the President to divest himself of his assets or put them in a blind trust, had some seventy-seven thousand. On January 22, Presidential aide Kellyanne Conway declared that the tax returns will not be released. On January 27,

780-546: The website's address started redirecting to the main whitehouse.gov domain, marking the discontinuance of the feature by the incoming administration. It has not been relaunched since. The right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" is guaranteed by the United States Constitution's First Amendment. Users who wished to create a petition are required to register a free whitehouse.gov account. To sign

810-556: Was 23 days, according to whpetitions.info. The Obama White House faced criticism for the choice of administration official selected to answer petitions regarding the legalization of marijuana . Gil Kerlikowske , the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy , was chosen to craft the administration's response. The criticism stemmed from the Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 1998, which legally required that

840-419: Was later fixed to count signatures but the Trump administration did not respond to any of the petitions until March 2018. In November 2012, a petition was created urging the government to create a Death Star as an economic stimulus and job creation measure gained more than 25,000 signatures, enough to qualify for an official response. The official (tongue-in-cheek) response released in January 2013 noted that

870-401: Was launched. The petition had over 100,000 signatures within three days. The final count before White House responded was 368,423. The originator of the petition, who goes by the pseudonym "Microchip", remarked to Politico that getting conservatives to share and discuss the petition was the entire point, rather than prompting any concrete action by the government. The White House responded to

900-511: Was set at 5,000 signatures on September 1, 2011, was raised to 25,000 on October 3, 2011, and raised again to 100,000 as of January 15, 2013. The White House typically would not comment when a petition concerned an ongoing investigation. "It's unclear whether Trump's advisors will make a tradition of publicly responding to petitions from the American people", Dell Cameron wrote for the Daily Dot on

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