W..T..F?

They don't seem to be seeing the "SOPA will piss off everyone because they can't use Youtube anymore and said everyone will hold whoever supports the bill responsible and stop buying those responsible parties' products" angle.

If you care you should email them:

esa@theesa.com

If anyone wants a complete analysis of why SOPA and Protect-IP acts are terrible for this country, you should read this letter from legal academics from all over the US.



http://www.scribd.com/doc/72807693/Law-Profs-Letter-Against-SOPA-PROTECT-IP



Also, tell the ESA where to get off (thanks Kevin Gadd) at the email above, and call your Representative. anti-piracy legislation should not be allowed to harm the constitution or give the Government censorship powers that mimic those used by other countries.

This is terrible news (ESA support for SOPA). Also, the rumour that Sony Electronics, Nintendo, and Electronic Arts have stopped their direct support of SOPA is most likely wrong. They were never on that particular list in the first place, the "news" just traveled over tons of gaming sites without being fact-checked. See

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120103/00304017255/no-sony-electronics-ninten
do-ea-have-not-publicly-changed-their-position-sopa.shtml

Unless they quickly and completely honestly reverse their position, the ESA has officially outlived its usefulness and is now as spectacularly awesome as the MPAA and RIAA. #itneedstogo

Has the IGDA come out for or against SOPA?

Maybe they'll end up like GoDaddy, with their figurative kneecaps busted in the internet's figurative basement.

The ESA has been pro-SOPA for quite a while. http://mediamatters.org/blog/201112060011 for example. It's good that they're finally being more vocal about it rather than quietly throwing money at politicians.

I'm a little troubled by the one-sidedness of this news story. If this is a "highly contentious" bill, where are the comments supportive of the ESA's stance that balance the cited negative comments? (The ESA's own comments about its position don't qualify since that's what the story is about.) The critical tone of this piece makes me wonder if I'm getting the whole story and being trusted to make up my own mind on the subject.



I've read the relevant parts of the proposed legislation. As a (very minor) creator of digital property I agree with the idea that it is important to strongly protect property rights. And I understand the proposed law's approach to enforcing that protection by cutting off payment to and advertising for sites that torrent movies and music and games. (This understanding that protecting property rights is the fundamental requirement for a productive society is what is conspicuously missing from this news story.)



But even I am concerned by the practical consequences were this particular bill to become law. Beyond being skeptical on general principles about piling on yet more federal law, there are specific likely impacts that deserve close scrutiny. Forcing the likes of PayPal and Google's AdSense to set up people and processes for accepting and acting on federal notifications that some site is distributing lots of copyrighted property imposes additional federal regulatory costs on them and smaller businesses like them -- not a desirable thing at the best of economic times, which these aren't. This isn't trivial; imposing costs on businesses means there's less money available for putting people to work.



Maybe even more problematic is the creation of still more federal bureaucracy: people to monitor web sites for copyright violations, more people to assess value claims to determine if a site is in violation, even more people at State and Commerce to try to manage non-U.S. torrent sites. Is the cost of these further additions to an already bloated federal leviathan really outweighed by the the potential benefits of reducing property theft?



I think a reasonable case could be made either way. I hope future stories on this subject will offer that balanced presentation of the facts and positions, at least to the extent possible given reasonable efforts to "reach out" to knowledgeable people on both sides of the question.

We have a President who says things like, "I'm closing Guantanamo, no more wire taps, vetoing the National Defense Authorization Act." Then does the total opposite. A lot of people are aware that if President Obama has the choice to veto SOPA; he will instead sign it in.



Unfortunately a typical business response isn't to fight, it's to side with whomever they think will win. I don't know the outcome, but I do know how big business acts.

Epic has clearly stated their opposition to SOPA at http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/874524-Epic-s-stance-on-SOPA?p=29830190#post
29830190 though they have heavily spun what the ESA is doing and their relationship with it: "We are members of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), a trade organization that is working with legislators to refine the bill."