Nintendo, Sony, EA, and Microsoft have all come out in support of SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act. If you haven’t heard of SOPA, it’s essentially a bill that aims to curb piracy by allowing the US government to censor sites with any links that they deem questionable via a number of methods.
Those four companies aren’t the only ones behind the bill, however. The entire ESA has thrown its weight behind SOPA, which includes 34 members – most of which are fairly large gaming studios. It’s disappointing to see an industry that thrives on creativity supporting a piece of legislation that will cripple freedom of speech. While we all can understand why the big guns want to stop piracy, this is clearly not the way to go about it.
It’s not all bad news, though. Valve, Activision-Blizzard, CD Projekt, and Bethesda are all notably missing from the list. While that doesn’t mean that they oppose the bill, it does give us a little bit of hope for the time being.
Anyone interested in more information is urged to watch the video after the break.
PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.
Oh Nintendo, you so silly, pretending you know anything about the internet and online infrastructure.
Ugh. Good thing I have a Venezuelan citizenship. Since murder and kidnapping rates are through the roof, nobody cares about what you do on the internet. I have a Canadian citizenship, too, but they were messing around with data caps and that makes me sad.
WHY NINTENDO WHY. I THOUGHT WE WAS FRANS.
C’mon Nintendo… Don’t be an asshole. =(
now i’m going to have to stop playing consoles until these companies stop being asshats
Yeah, but playing on a PC is still perfectly acceptable. Right.
Can companies in Japan get American Bills passed?
Did anyone else get the feeling that this is one step closer to that basic premise of government controls every aspect of life movies? I can only hope it’s something like Equilibrium because that movie was awesome. But really, things like this just scare me more than a little. Even if we get this shut down… how many more times are they going to try? Until they get what they want is the answer I fear is right.
Sony supporting a bill to hack the internet as a whole? Oh the irony is too thick to be cut by a chainsaw.