Appeal to Turbine to boycott E3

[Trillea]

Turbine,

I know that E3 is one of the biggest media outlets of the year, and that it is put on by the ESA. I know that you probably had some kind of plans to send representatives this year. I would ask that you join several other gaming sites in a boycott of E3 because its sponsor, the ESA, supports the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). While these are good things to protect, the bills in front of the houses of Congress severely overstep the boundaries that should be given to any single entity over the Internet as a whole. I would ask that until the ESA removes their support of the SOPA and PIPA acts that Turbine and any other gaming- or internet-centric companies that you associate with *ahem* WB *ahem* would remove all presence and support for E3.

SOPA and PIPA are extremely damaging to the Internet as a whole, and must be defeated. Please make a stand and tell the ESA that these bills are NOT acceptable and that the powers of censorship that these bills would give the government and certain individual corporations should not ever be granted to anybody in order to keep the Internet free.

Thank you for your time.

Trillea/Josh

[Jay203]

agreed

what's the stance of WarnerBro on the SOPA issue? O_o

[Fomori]

agreed

what's the stance of WarnerBro on the SOPA issue? O_o

I would assume 110% for it, since its backed by the Movie/Music industry.

[Captain_Wizbang]

For people not familiar with this.

http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/

It's going to be a BIG legal issue, and most likely will wind up in the Supreme Court.

[herzkos]

what annoys me and quite frankly ****es me off is that you can read hundreds of interpretations
of said bills (sopa and pipa) but every single one of them has an axe to grind (or point of view).
what i would like to see is a copy of the freaking bill(s) so i can decide for myself. BUT OH NO!.
the message must be massaged to conform to someone's views before lowly old me can see it.
because I am obviously too stupid to read for myself(psst! lies, i can't read) and decide whether
i should support or oppose them.

anyone have an actual link to either of the bills?

[Trillea]

anyone have an actual link to either of the bills?

I'll see what I can find

SOPA - H.R.3261
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.3261:

PIPA - S. 968
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/.../~c112rfFtG6::

[Captain_Wizbang]

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

[MsEricka]

1) Go to google
2) type "sopa text"
3) read bill in it's entirety from the FIRST link
4) realize you could have this yourself
5) ??
6) profit

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=sopa+text

[SardaofChaos]

People generally don't use the actual text of the bill to explain it because to the average person the actual text of the bill might as well be chinese. As it's extremely easy for anyone with legal understanding to find the actual text, most sites providing a description for those who don't generally don't bother even linking to it.

[LordMond63]

I watched the video (and thank you for the link ferd) and, while there is precedent to base some of the fears expressed in it, I'm not convinced that all would be lost if SOPA/PIP were enacted.

My first reaction is to fully and appropriately enforce existing laws on this issue. That piracy still exists does not necessarily justify new laws but may well beg for better enforcement of existing laws.

I actually have an acquaintence with the concept of "fair use". Years ago, I was a rack jobber in the music/video industry. One of our Large National Reatailers would open a new release video and play it in the store to promote sales of it. Their home office as well as our home office received a "cease and desist" letter from the collective heads of the movie studios, stating that we were violating the preclusion of public exhibition of an IP for profit. They had no problem with the video being excerpted or a video of clips from various films being made and shown but they did not want the full film being shown. Although it was not as big an issue for music lables, they quickly followed suit and required that we (the music distribution company for which I worked) not play an entire tape or CD but we could play a collection of songs from various performers.

On that basis, I would think that someone would be able to post a video on You Tube which had a song playing in the background without running afoul of "fair use" UNLESS they were attempting to profit from exhibition of the video.

I post on quite a few political discussion forums and often quote from media editorials or pundits. Most of the sites allow you to post only a portion of the original material and to provide a link to the source and credit the person who said/wrote the material. I'm not sure if either of these proposed laws address this particular issue but, as editorials and reportage are IP, I would think it would be concerned with them.

I do somewhat agree that the problem will be the inevitable patchwork of laws that will result from similar laws being passed by various other countries and their variying degrees of enforcement. While it is likely that most western European countries and some others can be counted on to pass and enforce rational laws, other countries can be expected to oppose any new laws designed to prevent piracy because they thumb their noses at existing ones. If China is the main problem now- and I think it is- what makes anyone think that they will suddenly decide to be good world citizens when it comes to this underground method to grow their economy at the expense of entrepreneurs the rest of the world over?

Finally I come to what seems to me to be the weakest point of opposition and that is their support of p2p file sharing sites. Frankly I find such sites to be indefensible, as they are clearly breaking existing law. But, again, if they are already illegal- and they are- why do we need new laws to make them...errr....MORE illegal? But redundant laws aside, I think those who oppose PIP and SOPA would do themselves better by clearly opposing illegal p2p file transfer sites that traffic in copyrighted materials.

[donblas]

And remember that it's likely that even the politicians who are sponsoring the acts have read them in their entirety, so even they may have different ideas about what the acts entail.

[herzkos]

to trillea.
thank you sir/ma'am. +1
i'll read them.

to the others meh.

[MeliCat]

Some of the scientific journals community have published the following statement on this:

http://www.digital-science.com/natur...ion-in-the-us/

Which a friend in that community interpreted for us to mean:
"
My impression is this is to cut through the rhetorical ******** bandied about by those trying to push these measures through. They claim that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear. Yeah, right!

That is, I think the ambiguity in t...hat clause is to say simply that we just don't believe there is nothing to fear from giving governments summary authority over the internet at the behest of the rich and powerful.

Or, to put it another way, "We don't trust you [government + big business] to wield such unbridled power with sweet munificence. But we don't want to inflame the situation or be so boarish as to say exactly why we don't trust you."
"

More succinctly someone else put it: "That if someone claims that you have hosted copyright material without permission, the US has the right to send in a SWAT team in to close down your site, and after that, render you via Syria to Gitmo, like, forever"

I can't imagine Turbine doing anything other than going on with whatever WB directs in this.

I am saddend by this. It means beautiful tools we enjoy like the wiki, cubicleninja and the planner are all way too dangerous to run if this regieme was put in place.

The digital community, in MMOs, forums, social media, is the new world. I see these bills as an attempt to create a power over this new world. It has nothing much to do with copyrite really. I find them truly evil and the US has earned the ire of a large part of the rest of the world in trying to do this.

[irivan]

/signed

I agree that the Entertainment industry should be able to protect their copy righted materials, I also agree that any one with intellectual properties should be protected from piracy, especially from China.

I however do not agree with giving anyone in any level of the Govt or in any level of the Private sector the right to do generic DNS blocking.

The way the Bills are written at present, there is no tie in between the two. In other words, while the intent of the bills are too stop piracy from places like China and Russia, as well as American Rogues, it does not state that Federal Govt or their Private Surrogates can only block the DNS's of those entities and or their allies that are engaged in such activities. Instead it just gives them the blanket right to do it to whom ever, when ever they want. That has massive freedom of speech issues, and beyond the reality of passing the law, it would lead to costly court battles and would ultimately be overturned in the US Supreme court. I don't think the bill is going anywhere fast because Obama has threatened to Veto the current bill, however should he lose re-election, then you can bet your bottom dollar whom ever the Republican president is will sign it into law.

Then if they don't like your website, be it Porn, non-christian religious sites, things that teach true science like evolution, and also likely Video games that they perceive to promote Satanic or Violent messages, like DDO. Will likely also be blocked.

Just saying anything is possible with blanket power like this, just like the War Powers Act, the Patriot Act, and the recent internet bandwidth bills, this is bad, bad news. Just think there was no such thing Bandwidth limitation or fragmentation until that joke ass legislation got passed while we all sat on our hands.

[Scraap]

agreed

what's the stance of WarnerBro on the SOPA issue? O_o

Considering TW/WB would be 100% indemnified from prosecution or civil suits for shutting down the ability to view content that is provided as an alternative to their broadcasting (say, hulu over thier network) so long as someone could find a piracy link buried in the comments? All for it, most likely.

[Havok.cry]

/signed to oppose sopa

[MeliCat]

Had to share my friend's current facebook status as it made me laugh:

"

Under SOPA, you could get 5 years for uploading a Michael Jackson song, one year more than the doctor who killed him.

"



Says it all really

[Maxallu]

Better idea, we apeal to turbine to hook me up with some credentials to get me into e3. That is a better idea.

[smatt]

SOPA/PIPA is already dead.... White Hosue had already prior to today said it wouldn't support it... The House bill was dead or clsoe to it yesterday, and today a good number of the bought and paid for Senators on the Republican side that had sponsored it there ran for the hills....

You can bet there's a whole lot of Congressional staffers hiding under their desks right now

It's dead..... For now... Keep your eyes open though...

[fuzzy1guy]

Redacted