The last time I wrote This Week In Gaming was one one month ago and the leading story was that of SOPA, also known as the Stop Online Piracy Act. To save recapping what's already been written, this is what I wrote in that newspost:
"A possible outcome of this bill passing would be that websites that we use would be shut down. You can say goodbye to megaupload, youporn and thepiratebay. TotalBiscuit has made a YouTube video explaining it which you can see here. The short story here is that a number of large American corporations including Sony, EA, UFC, NFL, NBA, Universal and 350+ more are supporting a bill which:
Of course, you will be wondering how this affects you or why you should care at all, you're not American, right? Well the problem is that all of our major international entertainment industries are American ... the games we play, the music we listen to, the porn we watch ... It's all in jeopardy. I'm honestly not being sensationalist in writing this. This isn't exaggeration for exaggeration's sake, this bill is BAD NEWS for anyone who regularly uses the internet. Simple as that. Watch TotalBiscuit's video, he explains it better than I do."
One month later and SOPA remains in the headlines. One of the most popular sites on the internet, reddit.com, has taken their stance by declaring they will be blacking out on January 18th in protest of SOPA. Their official post can be found here. All major headlines over the past month have been pertinent to the fight against SOPA, including many major gaming developers voicing their stance against the bill. Nintendo and Sony both publically dropped their support for SOPA and Major League Gaming dropped all of their domains from GoDaddy (who are public SOPA supporters). Trust EA to support SOPA, ofcourse. After all, since when did EA actually give a damn about gamers? NVIDIA also announced they don't support SOPA.
There have been calls for more public sites such as Facebook, YouTube or Google to show their opposition to SOPA, particularly as these are some of the sites with the most to lose and have the SOPA-ignorant userbase. Unfortunately it seems that these calls have landed on deaf ears. Media-mogul Rupert Murdoch (CEO of News Corporation, the second largest media conglomerate in the world) launched a public attack on Google for not taking action against SOPA, and branded them a "piracy leader" for their lack of participation.
Today, January 16th it was announced that SOPA is set to be shelved after American President Barack Obama publicly stated that he would not support it. The trick here is that SOPA has a sister bill, known as PIPA, which is slightly less radical and has flown under the radar thanks to the public awareness of SOPA. As someone smarter than I said:
You may think that there is nothing you can do, and perhaps in the grand scheme of things, nobody on Crossfire can stop SOPA or PIPA passing. But raising awareness is key and it's because of this that so many large gaming-orientated companies have come out in public opposition of these bills, further raising public awareness - it's a cycle.
American Congress will basically decide the future of the internet. It really is as simple and as sad as that.
"A possible outcome of this bill passing would be that websites that we use would be shut down. You can say goodbye to megaupload, youporn and thepiratebay. TotalBiscuit has made a YouTube video explaining it which you can see here. The short story here is that a number of large American corporations including Sony, EA, UFC, NFL, NBA, Universal and 350+ more are supporting a bill which:
Of course, you will be wondering how this affects you or why you should care at all, you're not American, right? Well the problem is that all of our major international entertainment industries are American ... the games we play, the music we listen to, the porn we watch ... It's all in jeopardy. I'm honestly not being sensationalist in writing this. This isn't exaggeration for exaggeration's sake, this bill is BAD NEWS for anyone who regularly uses the internet. Simple as that. Watch TotalBiscuit's video, he explains it better than I do."
One month later and SOPA remains in the headlines. One of the most popular sites on the internet, reddit.com, has taken their stance by declaring they will be blacking out on January 18th in protest of SOPA. Their official post can be found here. All major headlines over the past month have been pertinent to the fight against SOPA, including many major gaming developers voicing their stance against the bill. Nintendo and Sony both publically dropped their support for SOPA and Major League Gaming dropped all of their domains from GoDaddy (who are public SOPA supporters). Trust EA to support SOPA, ofcourse. After all, since when did EA actually give a damn about gamers? NVIDIA also announced they don't support SOPA.
There have been calls for more public sites such as Facebook, YouTube or Google to show their opposition to SOPA, particularly as these are some of the sites with the most to lose and have the SOPA-ignorant userbase. Unfortunately it seems that these calls have landed on deaf ears. Media-mogul Rupert Murdoch (CEO of News Corporation, the second largest media conglomerate in the world) launched a public attack on Google for not taking action against SOPA, and branded them a "piracy leader" for their lack of participation.
Today, January 16th it was announced that SOPA is set to be shelved after American President Barack Obama publicly stated that he would not support it. The trick here is that SOPA has a sister bill, known as PIPA, which is slightly less radical and has flown under the radar thanks to the public awareness of SOPA. As someone smarter than I said:
You may think that there is nothing you can do, and perhaps in the grand scheme of things, nobody on Crossfire can stop SOPA or PIPA passing. But raising awareness is key and it's because of this that so many large gaming-orientated companies have come out in public opposition of these bills, further raising public awareness - it's a cycle.
American Congress will basically decide the future of the internet. It really is as simple and as sad as that.
Do not take this concession as a victory. This is an old trick. Please spread the word and call them out repeatedly.
1: Make crazy offer (SOPA)
2: Client rejects crazy offer (us)
3: Make a "reasonable" offer (PIPA)
4: Client accepts offer because it seems reasonable compared to crazy offer
should also be stopped.
You see how it can impact?
People will always find a way.
Do you believe this world would allow for Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition or any of that garb? Shit happens.
Guantanamo is something different. It doesnt affect us all. Just those who are there. Its like.. guantanamo would be if you trippled price of a caviar. This act is trippling price of a coffee. See the difference?
+ as far as I know it doesnt matter where the web is hosted, but if you have there illegal content with american authors rights they can also shut it down.
and no, you arent right. they cant just shut down any server on the world, just because they want to. they can only ask you to shut it down. or block acces from their side.
we, euros are fucked anyway, as EU got their own version of this
euros should concentrate on european version[ACTA], and americans on american version... this way we can save our internetzzz!
Just goes to show that near all politicians don't represent you nor me.
oh silly me, forgetting this is a majorly European community. Glad to know people are following this though
if youre up for it of course..
ESPN are pro-SOPA.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/esa-members-and-sopa-where-they-stand/
e: I like how random people just add a sarcastic/troll comment and everybody is taking it seriously and trying to explain how SOPA is evil :D
As for people thinking it's just an American problem.. Paying extra fees on empty CD/DVD's to "compensate for piracy" used to be an American-only thing, now it's a global standard. (That's right: if you buy empty CD's, you're paying for music other people are pirating. I could think of worse reasons to download music..)
As for the people who are saying "lol, don't care! America's problem, not mine" are so clueless it's unreal. Wonder how they'd like it when Facebook or YouTube or another site they use on a daily basis is gone. Wonder who'll be lol'ing then :)
Also, hope all's well with you, sir!
basic manipulation example that works in most of the casses
explained here: http://vimeo.com/31100268
http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html
Putin wont be able to watch pornhub, he will fire all russians nuclear bombs into Washington and the earth will be destroyed.
END
anyway i really expect some new serious conflict because ppl are slowly getting very maaaaaaad.
Also cool vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p-TV4jaCMk
God damn wikipedia blackout while studying for an exam D:
Americans have monopol over industries and not only so that's why they can fuck us however they want to....