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EA, Nintendo, Sony Quietly Withdraw SOPA Support
wbr1 writes "Electronista reports that Sony, Nintendo, and Electronic Arts have all pulled their support for SOPA, but have not issued any statements as to why. The house.gov list of SOPA supporters is here."
There's no way to know if this influenced it but Anonymous threatened Sony on Youtube (transcript here and a few more specifics here) the other day. Of course, even if that did influence Sony I'm sure the last thing you'd want is to send Anonymous the message that they can push you around so don't bother waiting for admission/explanation.
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Looking at this list, there's far better targets of groups of lawyers and lobbyists that don't do a goddamn thing or sell any tangible product. Not sure why those wouldn't be prioritized by Anonymous but, well, that's crowdsourcing for you. Maybe they identified Sony as the biggest fish that would disrupt the highest number of placated sheep who might actually contact their senator when their opiate flow is disturbed? Nahhhh
My work here is dung.
Because Nintendo, Sony, and EA are members of the ESA, and the ESA supports SOPA, means that Nintedo, Sony, and EA support SOPA!
Michael
http://s1.sfgame.us/index.php?rec=58163
"EA, Nintendo, Sony Quietly Withdraw SOPA Support"
If it was quiet, they still support it. They just don't want to lose as many customers.
They have only reduced their support, rather than fully withdrawn it.
According to Destructoid they are still members of The ESA which still supports SOPA.
I suspect that the list of objectors is much longer than that of supporters. It would be good to see that, too. It would be especially good for Congress to see that side-by-side with the list of supporters. Bill
Or are there only corporations on the list of supporters. Are there no individuals left? Or are they just not worth listing?
You have a good point about the IBEW, electrical codes and standards. The code and standards publishing bodies guard their products jealously. And they do chase down people who violate their copyrights aggressively. Sometimes too aggressively, if one assumes 'fair use' and quotes too extensively from their publications.
The NFPA, the publisher of various electrical, safety and fire codes also provides training and (at one time, maybe not anymore) offered a code interpretation service (which may have come dangerously close to providing engineering services without a license). As such, they are in direct competition with other training and engineering service providers. Armed with SOPA, they could pretty much shut down any competing services. Or at least drive them off the 'Net. The IEEE holds a similar position in that many ordinances simply cite their standards in statutes or regulations and expect anyone having to comply with said regulations to cough up $$$ to obtain a copy.
Obligatory bad car analogy: Think of a world where traffic laws just referred to some AAA driving handbook, available only to paying members.
I'm sure that there are many analogous examples in different professions where one quasi-official publisher could effectively control their industry given sufficient ammunition.
Have gnu, will travel.
I've been puzzling over the corruption caused by business influence on government for awhile.
Setting it up as a problem in game theory, the tenet "candidate who spends the most money wins the election" makes the outcome a foregone conclusion: elected government officials will be in the pocket of corporations, in all cases.
This may be a way out.
We've bemoaned our inability to influence the political system, but here we see a striking example of the population rising up and affecting specific government actions.
Public outcry stopped the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, or at least it helped. Similarly, public outcry attempted to hurt Bank of America and GoDaddy over their political beliefs.
If we can make this work it will give us the fine control over government that we have been missing. We've been able to affect small companies - HBGary, Stratfor, Ocean Marketing, Sony. (OK, Sony isn't that small, but it was a slice of Sony much smaller than BOA.)
Future companies may need to think twice before supporting oppressive or corrupt legislation - if only because of the chance that the people will rise up and hurt their bottom line.
We haven't had an effect on the really big companies yet (BOA), but I'm hoping that this grows to be a worldwide trend. We need to install a healthy dose of respect for public opinion. To put it succinctly, the companies have to fear the possibility of public retribution, both legal and extra-legal.
This will give us the power to affect legislation, to control the corruption. This will put government back in the hands of the people.
If we can make this work...
You know that "You wouldn't download a car" adage? Well, Jesus would and could.
He distributed illegal copies of bread and fish (see, no theft, just copying) depriving fishermen and bakers of their profits and circumvented DRM to upgrade water to wine bypassing the winery and proper grapes fermentation process.
That's a lot of bad press everyone is getting. Perhaps they should cancel the proposal, and try again in a few months.
SOPA is the "hydrogen bomb" of censorship, and MAD is its solution.
The publisher of MAD is still on the list of supporters. MAD is published by EC Comics, a unit of DC Comics, a unit of Time Warner.