Jimquisition: Sony, Nintendo, EA and SOPA

Cracker3011

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May 7, 2009
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Huh, to plagiarize Jim, 'thank God... that Microsoft isn't in on this bill too.' At least ONE of the software giants realises this is a stupid idea.

And what worries me, is that the bill (correct me if I'm wrong) doesn't just limit companies to taking down US-hosted sites. If this goes through, it could possible allow companies FULL RIGHTS TO THE ENTIRE FUCKING INTERNET.

Again, correct me if I'm wrong, and I sure hope I am.
 

CrazyGirl17

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Sep 11, 2009
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Geez, and I thought Youtube was stupid about copyrights already... There's NO WAY IN HELL I'M GONNA STAND FOR THIS!
 

RJ Dalton

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CustomMagnum said:
Thankfully Obama already said he would veto it if it does pass
That was the net neutrality bill. Last I heard, Obama supports this bill, but everybody seems to be saying who does and doesn't support this without any sources to back it up. So, unless you have a direct source saying Obama intends to veto both SOPA and PIPA, I'm going to assume he supports it.
 

INeedAName

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Yeah, I heard about this a while ago. Totally sucks! Thankfully, it seems the chances of this thing passing seems slim. Still, I hadn't heard that so many of my favourite videogame companies support this (although I can't say I'm surprised, them being corporation and all...). For shame!

trollnystan said:
"Sopa" in Swedish means "piece of trash". Coincidentally that's also how I feel about this bill. Let's hope Obama sticks by his word and vetoes this if it passes.
Thank you for reminding me of this btw xD:

 

Ukomba

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I'm surprised he didn't mention the Protect IP Act when talking about this.
 

Right Hook

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I've been doing all I can to slow this Juggernaut but in the end I don't think it's really gonna matter, hopefully it doesn't pass. Just more rights being taken away, I swear these arrogant bastards either want an uprising or they think the public is too stupid to ever do anything truly worthwhile that could have a real lasting effect. I tend to think it's the latter and sadly I'm almost to the point of agreeing with that opinion.
 

AudienceOfOne1

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It won't pass, I mean the USA has the most democratic system in the world thats not at all biased towards the big companies that give it lots of money ...

... oh SHIT
 

Helmholtz Watson

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Versuvius said:
I'm just wondering. If this passes and everyone who hosts themselves in the US, hop country and host their servers elsewhere, how long it will take the US to flop its dick around and extend its big floppy juridstriction to other countries? And how long it will take them to be told to fuck right off.
well if you really wanted to go somewhere that doesn't give a f*ck about intellectual property rights, you could go to mainland China, lol. Seriously I don't think you would have any trouble over there as long as none of your videos say anything bad about the CCP.
 

CustomMagnum

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RJ Dalton said:
CustomMagnum said:
Thankfully Obama already said he would veto it if it does pass
That was the net neutrality bill. Last I heard, Obama supports this bill, but everybody seems to be saying who does and doesn't support this without any sources to back it up. So, unless you have a direct source saying Obama intends to veto both SOPA and PIPA, I'm going to assume he supports it.
... Wow, you're right. I could've sworn that I read that he was going to veto this, but now I can't find it for sure.

Still, I really can't see him supporting a bill that allows corporations to completely block and destroy websites without having to answer to everyone while at the same time being against a law that would allow corporations to pay money so that ISPs would block certain websites while making access to their sites faster.
 

KouThan

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Nice democracy you have there guys, where a law proposition that directly cancels free speech has chances of passing. Nice.
 

brazuca

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Are you guys serious?! I'm a law student and I might burn my tonge, but since when did the internet was really censored? Do you even know how to shutt an ISP works? I'll give 3 examples. First of Google and pedophiles on Orkut.

http://searchengineland.com/90-percent-of-pedophilia-complaints-in-brazil-come-from-googles-orkut-13742

Orkut still exists. It took several complaints and a law who was to block orkut in Brazil to force Google to put servers in Brazil to be monitored. Second one is Pirate Bay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay

Just read their story! Never they managed to stop pirate bay from exist. They tried to shut it down. Mininova became popular after their first attempt. After mininova was shut and started to show only open content a bunch of torrent sites grew on the trail of mininova (kickass torrents for example). My last example is China censorship. There is a vast content about China censorship problem over the net. Just read this one:

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/chinese-internet-censorship-see-it-yourself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship (this one cos wikipedia rocks, even when it fails)

Now in the legal aspect, not ever company in the world is transnational. Let's say a certain ISP which only exist in Germany stream game content going against US law. Well to bad for US law all they can do is a formal complaint. What this law creates now is the power to some publishers to censor some sites (mainly in english and from US) which give them bad reviews about their products. There is also the question of first ammendment. Not easy to write about it now, but rest assure that this law will never see the day of light.
PS: not with this text, not with this president
 

DanHibiki

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Aug 5, 2009
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Volf99 said:
Versuvius said:
I'm just wondering. If this passes and everyone who hosts themselves in the US, hop country and host their servers elsewhere, how long it will take the US to flop its dick around and extend its big floppy juridstriction to other countries? And how long it will take them to be told to fuck right off.
well if you really wanted to go somewhere that doesn't give a f*ck about intellectual property rights, you could go to mainland China, lol. Seriously I don't think you would have any trouble over there as long as none of your videos say anything bad about the CCP.
massive firewall is a bit of an issue. Russia is much better, so is Switzerland and Germany.
 

Torrasque

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Been following this bill for a while now, and signing every petition I can come across.
This bill is one of those things that your government does that you think "lol no, my government cannot be that bad. You got that from some comic or movie where the government is a complete ass right?", but actually exists...
 

mjc0961

YOU'RE a pie chart.
Nov 30, 2009
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See, this would be cool if they could only use it to block people file sharing games. But no, they have to be douchebags about it and make it so vague that they can come after someone doing a stream to raise money for charity, or someone doing a video review to help spread the word about a great game, or even me doing video guides to help people unlock achievements and trophies in their games. If you want to try and stop piracy in ways that don't involve paying customers like me having to put up with bullshit forms of DRM, cool. But only go after pirates! Stop trying to leave the door open to go after everyone else too.

Therumancer said:
also the whole "Streaming God Of War for Charity" thing was kind of "WTF" because honestly giving away someone elses game for a charity (which might not even be genuine despite what was claimed) would be pushing it.
Uhm, no. Streaming is not giving away someone else's game. Streaming is playing a game live and recording it live so people can watch you play it live. Take for example: http://desertbus.org/ That's streaming for charity.
 

boyvirgo666

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Sir Shockwave said:
Oh Jim, just do what I do for the Blog - use the written and recorded one for next week X3

Quick EDIT - Wow. Seems America's having it bad right now. First there's the Protect IP act, now this...unless the two are one and the same.
They arent, numerous companies just keep trying to pass different bills for the same purpose, every one has been shot down because if they actually use these laws to do these idiotic acts alot of CEO's, congressmen, and other people who are involved will lose there jobs.
 

Ukomba

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KouThan said:
Nice democracy you have there guys, where a law proposition that directly cancels free speech has chances of passing. Nice.
Actually, that's a reason why, if it passes, this would certainly be challenged in the courts for it's legality. It would be likely to loose that fight if it's wording does remain as broad as it is.
 

HyenaThePirate

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Therumancer said:
First thing is first.

Jim, I don't know how much your acting for effect but I think you overdid it a bit this time as you seemed a little bit off your rocker and a little incoherant at times. You might want to sit back and try and re-record this message a bit calmer and elaborate a bit more.... also the whole "Streaming God Of War for Charity" thing was kind of "WTF" because honestly giving away someone elses game for a charity (which might not even be genuine despite what was claimed) would be pushing it.

That said, this bill *IS* really bad, and represents a lot of things that game and media companies have wanted to push for a long time, and it is really an Orwellian nightmare of a bill.

The issue with this is that by definition things like game reviews, let's plays, or even people doing FAQS for sites like Gamefaqs could also be considered violations. High traffic sites like Youtube which couldn't be effectively policed if they wanted to are pretty much doomed, and this is to say nothing of P2P services which do have legitimate uses other than piracy.

Strictly speaking a game company SHOULD have to go through the proper channels and specifically identify and chase down specific offenders as opposed to being able to decide "well Youtube has something we don't like, so let's lock it down". The issue of
course being that it's too time consuming and expensive to pursue things that way. Even verifying and pursueing a single case could take a lot of time and money, so it's easier to just shut down anything they find suspicious.

I'll also be blunt in saying that I think the current issues with Metacritic have a lot to do with this as well, albiet indirectly. Simply put, the game industry is realizing that while it can sway professional reviewers and ensure no product with a decent investment of cash gets lower than say an 8/10 rating in most cases, it can't do this reliably with specific users or independant reviewers who have no financial stake, not even so far as them being able to threaten to pull advertising revenues. Given that some popular reviewers on things like Youtube can pull truely massive numbers of hits, and actually do sway opinions, the gaming industry is doubtlessly also considering that they could shut these sources down. Someone like Whiteythereviewer, or Danae from Checkpoint Basement Level could get Youtube shut down as a whole just by showing footage from a game they are playing to illustrate a point.

I also know that there has been some talk fairly recently about the problem with online FAQS and walkthroughs, because game companies and cluebook publishers increasingly want to charge $20 or more for digital strategy guides, and really there is no point to buying a digital strategy guide when a month or two after the game comes out (tops) someone can just hop on Gamefaqs and find a guide there, or even find a dedicated wiki to the game in some cases. This bill could be used to basically shut down their competition here, and close every cheat/strategy site and fan page/database on the internet which I'm sure some bean counter is drooling about as I write this as they count digital cluebook sales figures in their heads.

This is a lot of stuff I'm talking about here, but the bottom line is that as I understand this, this is going to be a very bad thing. This law exists to basically circumvent the existing system because companies find it inconveinent to play by the rules.

Of course a lot of this also gets into intellectual property laws to begin with, and I think a lot of these problems started when they made them so tight knit for the owner of an IP. Technically according to the definition something like a FAQ should be illegal despite the long-term existance of such things... and that's part of the problem. When we're dealing with properties that are pure information (as opposed to say information used to make an actual product like a patent or copyright) I think there needs to be a lot of limitations put in place because there is more at stake than the information itself, but people's very freedom to communicate when you get down to it. In the case of IPs I think it's a problem when say China takes the formula for a drug like Viagra, makes an actual physical product using it, and then sells it. In this case though your pretty much saying that a picture of a game being used for review purposes, or even just text and descriptions talking about content in the game, could be considered theft. This is more akin to me telling someone that Viagra exists, or my experiences with the drug rather than stealing an actual, physical product. Games DO need to be protected from someone copying the entire thing and giving it away for free (or selling it) but this is far too inclusive to my understanding, and Jim is right that this law could shut down pretty much the entire internet gaming community, or at the very least turn it into a paranoid police state with everyone running a website being terrified to let anything be said for fear of being shut down. Just imagine a situation where a spoiler might not just ruin a bit of a game for someone, but actually be a felony because you've revealed protected information.
This!

You know what gets ME?! Every time I see a television advertisement for a game where it boldly proclaims that it's a "9 out of 10" or "Greatest game this console generation!" and then the "quote" is attributed to THE COMPANY producing the game!

I mean, saying "Uncharted 3 blows away any other game on the market - Playstation magazine" is just SONY's way of tooting their own horn. Or when I see "Amazing, Outstanding - Xbox magazine" for a Microsoft published game.. There's something incredibly misleading about that.
 

GonzoGamer

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Nurb said:
This proves once and for all that Sony, EA, and Nintendo aren't worth supporting, and as far as I am concerned, they deserve all the piracy they get. They screw us with DRM and DLC and they're screwing us again by supporting a vague oppressive law. They don't care about customers, only about how much they can shake out of your pockets while holding you upside down by the ankles.

What I don't understand is how something like that would benefit publishers. Looks like it's just an excuse for them to hire more lawyers.

It wouldn't be the first time they shoot themselves in both feet. I'm convinced that they're going to end up regretting this whole online pass BS too once they realize that renter, borrowers, and even used game purchasers occasionally buy new games; however we don't buy games if the best content is hidden from us.

Also, this is not the time. Companies like Sony & EA have a much smaller user base than they had at this point last generation and they should be trying to expand the market. Nintendo got a lot of new people to buy into gaming at the beginning of this generation but nobody has tried to bring them in deeper...all those new gamers are probably still playing wii sports.

Thank god for Jim or else I wouldn't have even known about this latest travesty.