Thread: The 57th Parallel Analyzes: Stop Online Piracy Act

Well if you are not an American viewer and don’t give two eggs and a strap-on about us then you shouldn’t read this but if you are indeed an American who goes on the internet then listen up. Congress is planning to pass a bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Ok yea that sounds fun. Stop Piracy, keep things going well and put money in the pockets of developers of games, movies, music, etc….and that would be fine and dandy were it for the fact that this party act isn’t actually what is says to be. See what this is meant to do is to no longer allow you, the user of the internet, to go to websites that are deemed to be “illegal.”

Such a feat trying to be passed would not stop at stuff like Wikileaks or Pirate Bay but more further if
Congress finds it fit. GamersBin itself could be taken off because of the various cheat and mods forums which would leave me out of my “career” that I love because I love you all through one-way, bulletproof viewing glass. The odd thing is that most developers are not actually supporting this. In fact, the ones who are really supporting it are publishers such as EA, Sony, and Nintendo. Right now, most companies can do that and have ties with Congressmen but they have to go to court and find it worthy enough to be shut down. Now they want to do otherwise where the publishers can go straight to a website that may interfere with their sales and profit and shut it down like that because we all know that we need to give publishers and big companies more rights than they already have.

You could easily look up the bill on Wikipedia and such and you can actually tell how vaguely they wrote the law. It’s Draconian and honestly must be stopped. I fear that I might lose my ability to just review games because the law isn’t to stop piracy but to stop copyright infringement overall. So, just like Bill s.978, I might not even be able to review games or do my Analyze series if in the case that I might even make a cent off of the content I create in the objective view of a game for your pleasure to read and my pleasure to create.

The ironic part about this whole thing is that most developers hate this idea. A few examples would be Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, AOL, LinkedIn, eBay, Mozilla Corporation, the Wikimedia Foundation, the Brookings Institution and human rights organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch. That is honestly to name a few. Some game developers have spoken out also such as BioWare, Bungie Studios, Valve Software, Ubisoft Montreal and more. I am sure that there are some that are too afraid to say anything but those who have spoken out, that must mean something.

Seriously, I care about the community of the internet because where would we be today without it? Answer that question to yourself and think. Where would be we without internet? Now when you think of that, think about this bill and I want each and every one of my 6 or so followers to sign any petition you can get your hands on to stop this bill. I am not saying stand outside of EA or Sony’s buildings and protest like an Occupy Wall Street protester (Keep up the good work on that guys). I just want you to taste some time out of your life and really reflect on this moment. What happens here could change the very definition of America and the world. I, as a cynical purple alien humanoid, know that for a fact.

lol this is why I accepted you to my author team.

I agree. I have been signing petition after petition to beat down every version of this bill that has come up and this one is the worst. These corporations don't even realize what stands to happen if this kind of censorship is adopted.

We might as well live in a communist nation.

Microsoft ad twitter and some big names are against this bill. I doubt it will happen.

We're getting something similar in Europe too, I'm talking about ACTA, I think the US is also involved with this...

Probably. We can't keep our hands out of other peoples politics.

I started reading and I was like yeah we do need to stop the piracy. But it does not sound like it is going to be a good thing.

Why does congress think they need to totally run our lives? I am not saying that I would go to a site that was illegal, but come on. It is a video game for crying out loud. Do you not have better things to do than worry about what I am playing? Really get a life.

Here is a thought. Congress should do something worthwhile instead of worrying about internet and games. Does that seem like something congress should be doing in the first place? I think so.

The only reason congress is doing this at all is because of the corporations lobbying for them to pass this bill. Congress are the just the ones who pass the bill but the source of the problem lies in the corporations who are trying to make an easy buck. They say this bill targets piracy when really it will not do anything to stop piracy and will allow the government to censor the internet so people can't organize things like Occupy Wall Street and put up videos of police brutality.

Originally Posted by OmarFW

The only reason congress is doing this at all is because of the corporations lobbying for them to pass this bill. Congress are the just the ones who pass the bill but the source of the problem lies in the corporations who are trying to make an easy buck. They say this bill targets piracy when really it will not do anything to stop piracy and will allow the government to censor the internet so people can't organize things like Occupy Wall Street and put up videos of police brutality.

Eventually we will be totalitarian and suffer not even able to have free thought. Games, movies and literature extinct or shown an ungodly amount of censoring. Yep we will end up as Ray Bradbury predicted in Fahrenheit 451. I honestly think we need to get something going. A movement under you and I to go against all things like this with our own special website for others to talk about gaming, politics, religion because a deep discussion shows more effect of a solution than a bullet can ever do.

Originally Posted by IyeNano

Eventually we will be totalitarian and suffer not even able to have free thought. Games, movies and literature extinct or shown an ungodly amount of censoring. Yep we will end up as Ray Bradbury predicted in Fahrenheit 451. I honestly think we need to get something going. A movement under you and I to go against all things like this with our own special website for others to talk about gaming, politics, religion because a deep discussion shows more effect of a solution than a bullet can ever do.

There are already groups that like that. It's just a matter of participating in them. Talking on forums and sites like Reddit is more influential than starting a website only to have people label it as paranoid liberal garbage that nobody reads. For now I only practice gaming activism with my current site. It's something that actually has a willing audience. Political issues are something that will only cause depression in an individual if they immerse themselves too thoroughly.

Originally Posted by OmarFW

There are already groups that like that. It's just a matter of participating in them. Talking on forums and sites like Reddit is more influential than starting a website only to have people label it as paranoid liberal garbage that nobody reads. For now I only practice gaming activism with my current site. It's something that actually has a willing audience. Political issues are something that will only cause depression in an individual if they immerse themselves too thoroughly.

Political issues, especially these days, are depressing not because of the issues themselves but the toxic tone in which most political discourse is presented. Whether it's liberals (or progressives, if you prefer) being angry at the previous Administration's lies about the Iraq War or conservatives going into paroxysms of lunacy by saying the present President is a socialist and that he may not even be a "real" American, anger and lack of empathy seem to be the underlying emotions when people "discuss" politics, especially when a new election cycle is about to start in the U.S.