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Posted By Robert G. about 1 year, 4 months ago
And the battle rages on…
The Entertainment Software Association, or the ESA, has made an official statement regarding their stance on the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. For those not in the know, SOPA is a piece of legislation that, due to the wording of the law, will give content owners the power to shut down websites over copyright infringement claims.
Other than the very loose wording of the law and the likely “witch-hunt” mentality that will occur if SOPA is passed, the other goal of the law is to attempt to curtail online piracy, effectively shutting down torrent sites and pirated material for sale and for download. Suffice to say, many following the ongoing war have pulled support for SOPA, including Channel Awesome, our parent company.
But, the ESA has recently issued a statement regarding their support for the legislation.
“As an industry of innovators and creators, we understand the importance of both technological innovation and content protection, and do not believe the two are mutually exclusive. Rogue websites – those singularly devoted to profiting from their blatant illegal piracy – restrict demand for legitimate video game products and services, thereby costing jobs. Our industry needs effective remedies to address this specific problem, and we support the House and Senate proposals to achieve this objective. We are mindful of concerns raised about a negative impact on innovation. We look forward to working with the House and Senate, and all interested parties, to find the right balance and define useful remedies to combat willful wrongdoers that do not impede lawful product and business model innovation.”
According to the ESA website, “The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is the U.S. association exclusively dedicated to serving the business and public affairs needs of companies that publish computer and video games for video game consoles, personal computers, and the Internet. The ESA offers a range of services to interactive entertainment software publishers including a global anti-piracy program, business and consumer research, government relations and intellectual property protection efforts.”
The ESA has numerous companies in the video game industry as primary members, including Nintendo, Sony, and Electronic Arts, who last week silently pulled their support for SOPA. To say the least, this is a mixed message of sorts, although several developers and companies have begun to urge fellow publishers to remove their support of the ESA.
The battle lines are being drawn every day over SOPA. Only time will tell if things come to a head.
| PROS: | Great shooting mechanics, Paintball is fun, Diverse gun selection |
| CONS: | Soundtrack is terrible, game has no story mode |
| WTF: | WTF Text Here |
Ahhhhhh….
The bitter sweet smell of bribery in the air….
I call bullsh–
Oh yes, Nintendo, Sony (the video game part) and EA magically decided they don’t want to be a part of it, but yet the major Association they are a part of stand it’s ground as a supporter. And who of us is being fooled here? The video game companies just want it to look like they’re only involved with the people who support SOPA while keeping face with their fans by showing that they themselves don’t support it.
I don’t see it as Nintendo,EA, and Sony’s Video Game Division magically pulled their support for SOPA,I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again. When they first heard of SOPA they probably thought it would only stop Piracy,then news of the Go Daddy incident came and they probably read the bill fully and thought “Oh Shit this is bad” Although the ESA themselves have not pulled support but as the folks at ScrewAttack mentioned they are big players in that association and can change the ESA’s mind. Hell maybe other organizations(obviously except the RIAA MPAA and Hollywood) to change their stance on SOPA.
Publishers will not loose money if people pirate games, they just don’t profit from the sale. Loosing money involves already existing money being taken from you and illegal downloads don’t do that. Not making enough profit to break even causes you to loose money. And if that happens its probably because your game was crap. Now I’m not supporting piracy because I like collecting those sexy little game cases with their sexy little manuals that should be in colour. But if your game is good chances are people who pirate it will buy it. I know 20 people who pirated Skyrim and then bought it because it was so good. I also know people who pirated Battlefield 3 and broke down and used Origin because they liked it so much. Sure we can’t stop piracy and it would be great if it didn’t exist but it does and it always will. All we can do is encourage people to support great people like Bethesda or that guy who made Minecraft, these people who deserve our money. Instead of punishing people by censoring the internet or putting crappy protection on games. We should encourage people to buy our games by making great ones and guilt tripping our pirating friends into buying the game. I believe in a policy built solely on great games that everyone wants to support, because damn this industry is looking fine and I never want to see it go away.
100% agree! This is the way should be. You get it completely, treat your customers as people who love your product not as criminals who are going to steal it. Honestly the theft takes up a small amount and that is not going to change. If a company just puts it out there that you are stealing their work before you even get it, guess what more people are just going to steal it just out of spite and wont look back.
If someone likes a product, let the have it, its pretty simple here. Why does there have to be rules and stipulations and agreements on how I can watch it, where I can watch it, at what time. Putting rules and regulations on stuff people want to see, buy or consume just is a sad attempt at trying to make people do what you want them to. Guess what! The pirates will still find ways to steal it and get it with out even losing a breath, but you’ll be harming the consumer and the fans.
I live in Ireland and feel sorry for American gamers and internet critics because you guys are the most entertaining thing about the internet. Hosts on TV are annoying. Far too positive on everything. I don’t want Julia Hardy, I want Angry Joe!
Plus how is the likes of E3 gonna get any kind of press coverage at all? If we read magazines, the reports will already be a few weeks old.
I just think they can fight piracy in other ways.
This is just terrible.
I’ll be out right frank: You can’t stop piracy. You just can’t. I just don’t see it possible, no matter what law they pass. They shouldn’t try to stop piracy.
They need to attack it.
Its like drugs. You’ll never stop it being made, sold or being shipped across borders but you can attack at its business. If people would make an aggressive push, find ways to push their products like streaming movies on the internet and ways to get it into consumer’s hands for a decent price(and find ways to cut the pirate’s way of getting that material as best as possible), it’d cut into piracy at LEAST a little bit.
They need to get smart about it. With enough work, they can at least put a big dent in it. Will it stop piracy? No but it’ll make sure more money goes into the right hands to the people who worked hard for it.
Thats my idea, anyway.
To be honest, I have nothing against the pirates, in a sense. They could easily be countered if they had used already existing methods that have proven themselves through time, but instead companies had to get all butthurt and throw legal bullshit at them that they will evade anyway, all up until this, at which point they will calmly go away and do other things to piss rich people off. Master trolls at work, people.
Okay, just to make sure we’re all in agreement: piracy is bad. Stealing is wrong. Pirating video games is wrong. Pirating movies, music, anything like that is wrong.
The reason that we are against this bill is because it is so vague that legitimate websites like TGWTG, BlisteredThumbs, Cinemassacre and the like could be taken down under it, correct?
Just making sure, it’s hard to tell with people sometimes.
The irony is that this kind of government regulation was what the ESA was fighting against in the 90s and what led to the establishment of the ESRB. Because of that, I cannot fathom what makes the ESA think that SOPA is a good thing.
Dear ESA.
http://fernahndo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/tumblr_lqvssiK6nQ1qlnl25o1_500.gif
The ESA is really using the “Piracy costs us Jobs” Card for their support for Sopa? In which legit companies wants to see Sears,Ebay and other services as a rogue website?
Piracy doesnt hinder or restrict companies competition…in fact all we ever hear in when a Game Company shuts another game company down is either due to the Economy or poor poor game sales due to a game or a series of games SUCKING…..NOT PIRACY….looks like Nintendo has a fight on their hands with the ESA.
that’s it i am droping the nukake
As far as I see it, it doesn’t matter if they silently pulled their support, as long as those companies are still associated with the ESA they are still “silently” backing this bill. The “pulling of support” was just an attempt to curb anger toward the individual companies.
I agree. Not that I’ve had a good opinion of Nintendo or Sony on piracy before. It’s been at least five years since I’ve bought anything from either company.
I get the sinking suspicion this is going to turn into an “I told you so” debacle. If it really does go through and the proverbial feces hits the fan there are going to be a lot of extremely unhappy people in the good ol’ US of A and people don’t take things like this sitting down.
Even if people generally won’t get off their lazy arses to show them that we disagree because it doesn’t effect them yet, once it actually DOES start to effect them…well, you know how people behave when deprived of their addiction – and yes, that IS what the internet has essentially become for a great many people.
This is going to blow up in their faces and all I’m gonna be able to think of is “I told you so.”
The bill itself won’t last even if it’s implemented. What worries me is what people will do for the short time it’s in effect and how drastic an effect it will have on this country. It’s going to cause some serious damage and I’m worried that there just won’t be any recovering from it. If nothing else, it’ll shake what little faith we have in our government and their ability (or lack there of) to do their job.
The sad thing about this is that now the bill will only affect American citizens, many of those who were apathetic around the world and only acted because they didn’t want their free videos and suchlike taken down will not be proactive enough to voice their opposition to it. Also, the point is that it is easier to stop it being implemented in the first place than it would be to stop it after the fact. By that point someone will have some bullshit figures saying how effective it has been, people would have lost their jobs and the entire economy would have been affected. When some of these MANY apathetic people are affected directly, then and ONLY then, will they act in any sort of way; by which point it will be too late. Rules for internet companies is that they should NEVER take their servers down, or have them down, except in the most dire of circumstances because, when they are down people: a) Lose faith in the security of the website and b) Break out of the habit of visiting the site, meaning that the site could have permanently visitors. Whichever way you look at it, the masses need to make their voices heard because the masses do not want this!
What, they took away the ability to punish foreign sites for infringing content, the only legitimate purpose of the bill? It’s the only thing the DMCA didn’t cover. That was the only thing that made sense to try to stop. The DMCA has worked on American sites.
And again, it’s not as if these people are hurting for money. Even their own highest piracy estimates show it costs them less than 0.1% of their revenue. And even if it were to work, this won’t change, as more than 1 in every 1000 people know how to get around any attempt at blocking piracy, and the willingness to use this knowledge only goes up with more and more drastic measures.