"While we can’t claim responsibility for postponing the votes on SOPA and PIPA, we’d like to think we did our part to let you know how bad it was. So, congratulations to you, Internet, for making the **AA wait! Stay classy! In any event, season 2 of the 20 Sides of Nerd Podcast is well underway."- Draeno
"Recently I posted about the findings of SOPA 2.0, and how the Obama Administration wants to pass part(s) of SOPA. Further inspection of the documents listed by the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force shows that they also want to widen the meaning of what “streaming” means, making it allot vaguer then once thought. " - Michael
In Europe a few years ago they were trying to pass a bill that would hand more voting power over to the larger countries of the EU and leave smaller countries powerless to voice their opinion against any changes in european law (among a lot of other, terrible, terrible ideas, such as the creation of an EU army and military enlistment).
Not sure on the exact reasons but no other country in europe was given a public referendum on the bill, it was ratified by governments in their respective countries.
Only one small tiny island stood in the way. My island :) Ireland.
And we voted against it! For once I was never happier with how my country decided to vote for something, my faith in humanity was restored, and all the corrupt officials in my coutnry that tried to push it for their own personal gain, we're stopped dead in their tracks.
But the rest of europe didnt know. RTé news stopped passers by in countries all over europe to ask them were they aware of what was happening today. Most were outraged their country didn't give them the option to vote, and everyone seemed proud of the Irish for voting no and stopping it dead in its tracks.
A year later waht happened?
They pushed us to vote again. And what happened this time? They wore most of the original yes voters down, they spun sentences, took things out of context and created stories and changed the voice of my country and of europe forever.
To me, that day, democracy died.
And ever since then things have just been getting progressively worse.
If they want something put through, if its essential in whatever amount of control they're hoping to gain to achieve whatever purpose they have in mind, they will keep pushing.
And they won't stop.
They'll dress it up as something else, change the wording, and pray we don't take notice this time or just give up trying to stop it if we do.
Governments need to stop pandering to large corporations and start being for the people like they're meant to be.
*edit* I should also add the Lisbon Treaty only came about because of the Nice Treaty, which Ireland also voted no on. Yuuuuuup. Fucked if you do, fucked if you don't.
As long as they can find a way to screw people over but still put money in their pockets they will never give up on this.
Im sure they timed this. They launch this when school starts, when everyone is busy dealing with getting adjusted to classes and a new school setting to care.
With the political world focusing on the upcoming presidential battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, politicians are still finding time to single out videogames. H.R. 4204, or “Violence in Video Games Labeling Act”, is a bill that would require a mandatory warning label linking videogames to aggressive behavior on nearly all titles. As legislation that will set a dangerous precedent based on questionable research, League For Gamers (LGF) is rallying the troops at PAX East in Boston this weekend to generate the type of support that caused SOPA and PIPA to die early deaths. But there is a lot of activity going on under the radar with the U.S. government trying to circumvent the type of rallying cry that defeated SOPA and PIPA.
It's important to keep tabs on the stuff gov'ts try to pull when it comes to Internet regulations.
It's important to keep tabs on governments whenever they try to regulate anything. They're sneaky bastards.
@ dredgewalker
That's all of 'em. :D I don't know if I should laugh cry. :/
It's important to keep tabs on government officials who are lackeys of big corporations.
One of the most heavily pirated games of 2011 was, rather predictably, the newest Call of Duty game. Based off of statistics from torrent sites Modern Warfare 3 was downloaded illegally over 3 million times, and this was just in the few months between its release and the end of the year. Using math borrowed from the RIAA and MPAA, that means Activision Blizzard directly lost over, and this is a rough estimate, 60 billion double dollars.
This is something that supporters of draconian copyright enforcement laws and the further encroachment of Big Daddy America on the international internet point to as a reason we need all these absolutely terrible initialisms that look to try and turn the world into even more of a corporate dystopia than it already is. “Every downloaded game is a lost sale” they say, “each of these pirates would be a paying customer otherwise” they say, “burn all the poor people for fuel so the temperature never drops below 70 in gated communities” they say.
Not the greatest fan of Activision, but as long as Blizzard is with them I will never hate them.
What?
You don't want to support this gazillion dollar companies? Quick, support online passes!
Activision don't need (Or in some people's minds deserve) the extra sales. I mean the pirates probably wouldn't have bought the game anyway.
Perhaps that number would go down if Activision made a revolutionary Call of Duty that was good enough to pay full price for.
So basically ACTA and SOPA are money making monsters for game devs?
Am i missing something or really stupid?
The title is sarcastic. It's saying that the games and movie industry is doing just fine. They're continuing to make more and more money each year. Not the other way around as they seem to want us to believe.
