Concerning the idle time you're most probably right, but I feel better spending two minutes of my idle time at work by signing such a petition instead of just smoking or drinking coffee without doing anything productive :)
Being unproductive is the only thing I do real well though =)
I guess the question is how much noise will a petition make? I've never seen one make it to the evening news. I'd rather see some of the want-to-be technical journalists for CNN and MSNBC pick this up and roll with it. Until lawsuits are filed, it's pretty much an invisible issue.
