Giant Bomb and SOPA [Penny Arcade and friends to boycott E3]

I won't waste your time by writing an ugly wall of text about SOPA and how terrible the internet could be underneath it.

This video pretty well sums it up. http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/stand-together-the-gaming-community-vs-sopa-and-pipa

Do you believe this this will be an effective tactic? If our beloved Giant Bombers were to follow suit and stand behind this movement, would you stand behind them in support?

But if they boycotted E3, they'd have to remove it from the "Coming Up" section - that's gotta be the hardest decision they'll ever make.

there have been tons of threads about this already ...

Great video, but its a bit hard to take them seriously about standing up for my rights when in order to see the video I had to watch a 30 second ad for some ski vacation. Seems like poor taste, how about you let that vid run ad free?

Although I'm against SOPA/PIPA and think it's lame (but slightly understandable) that the big companies are behind it, I think its a lot to ask of GB to skip E3. It's the biggest news week of the year for gaming and it probably drives a lot of new people to the site. It's sort unfair to the GB crew to ask them to suffer by giving up new members and driving their normal members to other sites that will cover the show anyway. Why should this relatively small sight suffer for other peoples support for bad legislation...

Far more important: if a company has shown support for SOPA/PIPA and you hate that, stop buying their games and write them an email.

I won't pressure Giant Bomb into not covering E3, but if they do decide to not cover it I'll support them.

Hopefully SOPA and PIPA will be gone by E3 and thus this is pointless.

@JeanLuc said:

I won't pressure Giant Bomb into not covering E3, but if they do decide to not cover it I'll support them.

This.

@astonish said:

Far more important: if a company has shown support for SOPA/PIPA and you hate that, stop buying their games and write them an email.

I don't think there is a game company out there actually in support. Pardon my ignorance. :/

Sony and Warner Brothers both support it. It's mostly their musical and film sides, but we are very familiar with their games.

But it general, I image large game companies would support it, it seems right up their alley.

@TimesHero said:

I won't waste your time by writing an ugly wall of text about SOPA and how terrible the internet could be underneath it.

This video pretty well sums it up. http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/stand-together-the-gaming-community-vs-sopa-and-pipa

Do you believe this this will be an effective tactic? If our beloved Giant Bombers were to follow suit and stand behind this movement, would you stand behind them in support?

I don't need GB to stand behind the movement, i can do it just fine even if they dont follow suit.

They run a video game site site, they pretty much have to cover events like E3 and stop being hypocrites.

You know how many companies are out there supporting it? as much as the devs don't support it the publishers are with the ESA and the ESA supports sopa so you better stop buying every video game that's coming out, if you own ISPS from people like comcast you better call up and cancel it because they support sopa.

You can't just pick and choose that's being hypocritical, you either boycott it all or none.

The reason i am not boycotting these companies is because i need them and i know SOPA won't pass, it's been shelved twice. It's not going to happen.

It wont pass, stop worrying.

If GB didn't cover E3 I'd be pretty disappointed. It's a video game site, not a political platform. I support opposition to PIPA and SOPA but starving people of content is no way to get awareness or support. All it tells me is that I can't trust those sites to consistently deliver information if every little bill that annoys them will cause them to just stop doing their work.

Also they'd have to take down that E3 Bombcast from the upcoming features section, and then what will we have sitting there for months?

In the end, it's pretty simple. If GB chooses not to cover E3, then fine. I'll get that information from somewhere, and they get my traffic. Don't see the need to make a fuss about it either.

"i beleave in a free and open internet so you shouldent get infomation from the biggest event in the gaming calender" sound logic there guys.

also i pay for giant bomb go dark for a day , paint "stop sopa" on keslers face, not do the bombcast for a week would be fine with but for them to not cover somthing like e3 kinda makes paying for a site pointless

@CptChiken said:

It wont pass, stop worrying.

I am new to GB and would consider becoming a paying member if they boycott E3 unless the ESA stops supporting SOPA/PIPA. I think this is an important issue and having GB give up potential revenue by not covering E3 would make me feel much more inclined to give them money.

@nick_verissimo said:

@CptChiken said:

It wont pass, stop worrying.

You guys are kidding, right? Nobody thought the NDAA would pass, either, and I would suggest that treating citizens as non-citizens and terrorists at the whim of the president is far more significant and insidious as furthering our shitty copyright laws and undermining the freedom of the internet. (Not that both are fucking insipid, but the option that could theoretically get you shipped off to Gitmo and tortured is clearly worse). Hell, the president was even totally going to veto it. And then didn't.

So . . . yeah. In a world where we allow the DMCA, century-long copyright, the PATRIOT act, and the NDAA . . . fucking nothing is inconceivable. The idea that what you and I and a few million other people think truly influences them went out the window a couple decades ago.

As for boycotting the ESA. That's fantastic. The problem is, if you're going to also boycott E3 as part of that process, you then have to boycott every software developer who is a member of the ESA. When it comes down to it, it becomes one of those modern-world impossibilities, like boycotting everything made in China, when everything is either made in China or composed of parts made in China. I don't think people are willing enough to go that far, unfortunately.

I don't think they will, but I'd definitely support them if they did.

@quartox said:

I am new to GB and would consider becoming a paying member if they boycott E3 unless the ESA stops supporting SOPA/PIPA. I think this is an important issue and having GB give up potential revenue by not covering E3 would make me feel much more inclined to give them money.

This could work, we could ask people to cough up some money either by tips, subs, or whiskey merch in order to help rid of lost revenue during E3 buzz.

@JeanLuc said:

I won't pressure Giant Bomb into not covering E3, but if they do decide to not cover it I'll support them.

This is my stance as well.

@DeF said:

there have been tons of threads about this already ...

Not enough though.

@Branthog said:

@nick_verissimo said:

@CptChiken said:

It wont pass, stop worrying.

You guys are kidding, right? Nobody thought the NDAA would pass, either, and I would suggest that treating citizens as non-citizens and terrorists at the whim of the president is far more significant and insidious as furthering our shitty copyright laws and undermining the freedom of the internet. (Not that both are fucking insipid, but the option that could theoretically get you shipped off to Gitmo and tortured is clearly worse). Hell, the president was even totally going to veto it. And then didn't.

So . . . yeah. In a world where we allow the DMCA, century-long copyright, the PATRIOT act, and the NDAA . . . fucking nothing is inconceivable. The idea that what you and I and a few million other people think truly influences them went out the window a couple decades ago.

As for boycotting the ESA. That's fantastic. The problem is, if you're going to also boycott E3 as part of that process, you then have to boycott every software developer who is a member of the ESA. When it comes down to it, it becomes one of those modern-world impossibilities, like boycotting everything made in China, when everything is either made in China or composed of parts made in China. I don't think people are willing enough to go that far, unfortunately.

^ This guy knows what he's talking about.

Hell no E3 is the highlight of any games site, I'd just go to a site that wasnt so lazy and actually covered it.

Plus it's an election year, they would be stupid to pass it when everyone who logs into facebook today knows about it now.

I would cancel my sub. if they didn't cover E3.

@Branthog: You wouldn't necessarily have to boycott all members of the ESA. There are a few ESA members who have publicly stated their opposition to the ESA's stance on SOPA.

To name just one, Red 5, the studio making Firefall and ESA member, went as far as announcing that they would not be exhibiting at E3 because of that. If I recall correctly, the Bomb Cast had a lot of talk about their enormous booth last year, so that could indicate a substantial loss for the show, revenue-wise (though my memory is a bit hazy; that may have been at PAX and not E3). On the other hand, the cynical part of me says, that could have just been a way to get good press and save money by not attending the show. Who knows, maybe they never had plans to go to E3.

Giant Bomb is a video game website. Not some stupid political platform to feed our teen angst.
 
These guys are too old to be doing shit like this. Save it for IGN or Gamepro or whatever.

@Scrawnto said:

@Branthog: You wouldn't necessarily have to boycott all members of the ESA. There are a few ESA members who have publicly stated their opposition to the ESA's stance on SOPA.

To name just one, Red 5, the studio making Firefall and ESA member, went as far as announcing that they would not be exhibiting at E3 because of that. If I recall correctly, the Bomb Cast had a lot of talk about their enormous booth last year, so that could indicate a substantial loss for the show, revenue-wise (though my memory is a bit hazy; that may have been at PAX and not E3). On the other hand, the cynical part of me says, that could have just been a way to get good press and save money by not attending the show. Who knows, maybe they never had plans to go to E3.

True. That's essentially what I meant. You'd have to boycott every ESA member that didn't distance themselves from the ESA's stance (and, unfortunately, there are some that are letting the ESA flat out direct their stance on it, too). And while I think this would be a difficult boycott to have any teeth in it, you have a greater influence (in very large numbers) over a corporation than you do over any politician or legislative process.

Theoretically, that means that since the politicians are there to serve the corporate lobbyists, all you have to do is influence the corporations and they will in turn squash their lobbying in Washington, which in turn puts the fire out on things like SOPA. Unfortunately, there are a certain number of companies -- and especially industry organizations that act sort of as a dirty-work proxy - that just don't give a fuck. The RIAA, MPAA, and BSA, for example, don't give a good god damn about any of it and there is no chance of impacting them in any way whatsoever. Then there are the corporations which do one thing facing the customers and still do under the table lobbying of dirty shit on the other end, anyway.

Yeah fuck Sop... Wiat a minute that means no E3 podcasts...

ALL HAIL SOPA!!!

Honestly guys, outrage turned apathy isn't going to solve anything. Rhetorical questions in coming. How many of you have actually written to your congressmen? You senators? The President? How many of you wrote to the ESA or to some other major organization supporting this bill to say "No, we do not approve?" Personally, I know at least a dozen people who hate the bill but have done nothing to stop it.

Yes the bill is shelved right now. You know what that means? The vote got pushed back for a month or so. It's not gone and judging off what the US Congress actually knows about how the internet works (I'd really doubt it if more than half of them could say, upload a video to youtube without help if they chose to), it could easily pass. There are a lot more companies in support of this than against it and it doesn't help that any individual company in the games industry (see EA) that pulls support of the bill is still being represented through the ESA because it's the lobbying group on the behalf of the video games industry.

Yeah it's a politics thing. Yeah as a community, gamers are generally either apathetic to it all, or apolitical to the point of condemnation of the system without any attempt of solution. I get it, you want to play games, you want to hear about games, and E3 is a big deal to you. It is to me too, but when important stuff like this comes along you can either stand up and take the hit to try and stop it, or ignore it, pretend it's not important and complain about the consequences after it's too late to stop.

This boycott might not be the best direct solution but it is the single most effective idea for convincing the ESA to withdraw support that I've seen anywhere. As long as the ESA supports SOPA, the game industry supports SOPA. It's that simple - the ESA is for all intents and purposes, the game industry in the eyes of Washington.

Don't let the interruption of convenience be the defining factor in your decision to protect your medium and free speech on the internet.

@N7 said:

Giant Bomb is a video game website. Not some stupid political platform to feed our teen angst. These guys are too old to be doing shit like this. Save it for IGN or Gamepro or whatever.

This isn't abortion or immigration. This is legislation that directly fucking impacts the nature of everything that GiantBomb deals with. The internet. The web. Copyright. Journalism. Free speech. Video games. It is absolutely appropriate for a site like this. Further, what the fuck are you talking about "too old to be doing shit like this. Save it for IGN". Because having a stance on the egregious intellectual property laws and corporate and government opportunistic grabs at the internet are "for teens"?

That's the god-damndest attitude. That sounds a lot like those people who say things like "If you have nothing to hide, why do you care about the fourth amendment?" and "if you didn't do anything, why do you care about the fifth amendment?". The shitty and all-too-common attitude we have in America that nothing is worth preserving on principal and is only of value when it directly impacts you (and until it impacts you, it's a bunch of meaningless shit).

Seriously, your comment stuns me.

I kinda support SOPA, It will leave only people who know shit about networking/computers and make it unavailable to PnP foolz. It's kinda cool how that bill is ignorant to how the internet works. If I take a picture and it had a pepsi in it, it could potentially be considered copyright infringement. Then the domain who host the image would be the accountable ones, and be blocked. Ironically this bill only prevents people with out networking/computer knowledge specific [site/hosted] access. Yet the people who probably partake in the shit they are trying to stop, will know how to spoof/redirect ip addresses, and still get what they want. I'm a proponent! The idea of the www being like bbs's again is rad. ...I kid I kid....

@Branthog:Quite so. Man, politics are a huge bummer.

@JeanLuc said:

I won't pressure Giant Bomb into not covering E3, but if they do decide to not cover it I'll support them.

@DarkDude said:

Hopefully SOPA and PIPA will be gone by E3 and thus this is pointless.

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

Hell no E3 is the highlight of any games site, I'd just go to a site that wasnt so lazy and actually covered it.

Plus it's an election year, they would be stupid to pass it when everyone who logs into facebook today knows about it now.

I would cancel my sub. if they didn't cover E3.

I'm looking forward to E3, but it would be great if developers and publishers saw the light and sided with their customers and said "fuck it, we're pulling out of E3 and saving all our cool shit for PAX". Now, I've never liked PAX and I don't give a fuck about Penny Arcade, but they've taken a great stand against SOPA, so they'd be the right venue to move to and reward.

It won't happen, but it would be great.

As for passing it - what makes you think that it being an election year has any impact on that? The National Defense Authorization Act was also just passed in an election year. Unless it impacts NFL coverage or availability of mini-vans and Starbuck's lattes, we largely don't give a shit. I mean, look at all the people who are only now like "SOPA wha...?". Where have these people been over the last fifteen years? Where have they been over the last thirty years while copyright has been massively abused and things like barbed-wire-fenced-in-free-speech-corrals were invented? We're frogs in a pot on the stove.

Also Giant Bomb has gotting very popular over the past year, im sure they wouldnt want to throw that away and not cover E3

@astonish said:

Although I'm against SOPA/PIPA and think it's lame (but slightly understandable) that the big companies are behind it, I think its a lot to ask of GB to skip E3. It's the biggest news week of the year for gaming and it probably drives a lot of new people to the site. It's sort unfair to the GB crew to ask them to suffer by giving up new members and driving their normal members to other sites that will cover the show anyway. Why should this relatively small sight suffer for other peoples support for bad legislation...

Far more important: if a company has shown support for SOPA/PIPA and you hate that, stop buying their games and write them an email.

FYI is sopa / pipa passes,,, GB can be shut down at anytime due to copyright if the government feels like it.. So I dont think its asking to much to skip one E3.. I dont feel they dont need to go but hell, dont post anything about it till something changes then put it on the site for people to view.

@McShank said:

@astonish said:

Although I'm against SOPA/PIPA and think it's lame (but slightly understandable) that the big companies are behind it, I think its a lot to ask of GB to skip E3. It's the biggest news week of the year for gaming and it probably drives a lot of new people to the site. It's sort unfair to the GB crew to ask them to suffer by giving up new members and driving their normal members to other sites that will cover the show anyway. Why should this relatively small sight suffer for other peoples support for bad legislation...

Far more important: if a company has shown support for SOPA/PIPA and you hate that, stop buying their games and write them an email.

FYI is sopa / pipa passes,,, GB can be shut down at anytime due to copyright if the government feels like it.. So I dont think its asking to much to skip one E3.. I dont feel they dont need to go but hell, dont post anything about it till something changes then put it on the site for people to view.

This is exactly it, and the fact that people don't get that simple, obvious fact is what's so distressing about this entire thing.

And the sad thing is, there's precedent for all this. Remember that video someone made showcasing Kurt Cobain in Guitar Hero 5 singing all sorts of non-Kurt Cobain songs? It was pretty hilarious and awesome. Now the only remnant of its existence on the internet is a comment video 1UP did. Know why? Because Activision had it taken down, claiming that they own the rights to the game and all footage of it and objected to said footage being used to make their game look bad. Now granted, YouTube being pussies is to blame for that in letting Activision enforce copyright on something that was obviously fair use, but that's also irrelevant. Under SOPA and PIPA, Activision could've made this claim against YouTube and have the entire site shut down based on a specious copyright infringement claim. No due process. No court hearing. Nothing. Just shut down. Because of a video that the company didn't like because it showed their important game in a negative light.

Still not connecting the dots, guys? Under SOPA and PIPA, any site could accuse Giant Bomb of infringing on their copyrights based on the Quick Looks or any of the other video features and have Whiskey Media stripped of advertising revenue and potentially shut down. Yeah, you're right @N7, fuck politics, it's not like any of this shit matters or something.

@Bourbon_Warrior: Its not about the money, its about YOUR rights. Jeff's Rights. Brad's rights. Ryan's rights. Vinny's rights. Get off your spoiled ass and lose your "MAAAMM THEY'RE GONNA TAEK AWAY MY VIDYA GAEM COVERAGE" attitude and look at this from EVERYONE'S SHOES.

If SOPA passes, you will loose ALL E3 COVERAGE that you are bitching and complaining about this ONE time, for the REST OF TIME.

@McShank said:

@astonish said:

Although I'm against SOPA/PIPA and think it's lame (but slightly understandable) that the big companies are behind it, I think its a lot to ask of GB to skip E3. It's the biggest news week of the year for gaming and it probably drives a lot of new people to the site. It's sort unfair to the GB crew to ask them to suffer by giving up new members and driving their normal members to other sites that will cover the show anyway. Why should this relatively small sight suffer for other peoples support for bad legislation...

Far more important: if a company has shown support for SOPA/PIPA and you hate that, stop buying their games and write them an email.

FYI is sopa / pipa passes,,, GB can be shut down at anytime due to copyright if the government feels like it.. So I dont think its asking to much to skip one E3.. I dont feel they dont need to go but hell, dont post anything about it till something changes then put it on the site for people to view.

With all the quick looks, that could very well happen since I'm sure some companies would be glad to shut down GiantBomb if they found the quick looks to show their product in a bad light. They would just need to submit a complaint vs Giant Bomb and they'd shut it down without any due process.

I wouldn't lose any respect for GB if they covered E3, since it's a really important event for journalists to cover. However, I'm stating it here right now that I think them boycotting it is so unlikely (but very ballsy if they did) that if they did boycott it I'd sign up as a paid member without second thought.

Hopefully this mess will be sorted out by E3. If not i'll support Giant Bomb and their decision when the time comes.

@TimesHero said:

@Bourbon_Warrior: Its not about the money, its about YOUR rights. Jeff's Rights. Brad's rights. Ryan's rights. Vinny's rights. Get off your spoiled ass and lose your "MAAAMM THEY'RE GONNA TAEK AWAY MY VIDYA GAEM COVERAGE" attitude and look at this from EVERYONE'S SHOES.

If SOPA passes, you will loose ALL E3 COVERAGE that you are bitching and complaining about this ONE time, for the REST OF TIME.

Yeah cause video game sites going down will change the white houses mind...

I just wanna consume my vidja gamez during E3 and I do that here on GB...so sorry?

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@TimesHero said:

@Bourbon_Warrior: Its not about the money, its about YOUR rights. Jeff's Rights. Brad's rights. Ryan's rights. Vinny's rights. Get off your spoiled ass and lose your "MAAAMM THEY'RE GONNA TAEK AWAY MY VIDYA GAEM COVERAGE" attitude and look at this from EVERYONE'S SHOES.

If SOPA passes, you will loose ALL E3 COVERAGE that you are bitching and complaining about this ONE time, for the REST OF TIME.

Yeah cause video game sites going down will change the white houses mind...

I think you just missed the point. Like, completely.

I think the giantbomb guys should shoot themselves in the gut to protest gun laws. That would be real noble.

@iAmJohn said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@TimesHero said:

@Bourbon_Warrior: Its not about the money, its about YOUR rights. Jeff's Rights. Brad's rights. Ryan's rights. Vinny's rights. Get off your spoiled ass and lose your "MAAAMM THEY'RE GONNA TAEK AWAY MY VIDYA GAEM COVERAGE" attitude and look at this from EVERYONE'S SHOES.

If SOPA passes, you will loose ALL E3 COVERAGE that you are bitching and complaining about this ONE time, for the REST OF TIME.

Yeah cause video game sites going down will change the white houses mind...

I think you just missed the point. Like, completely.

That and the white house / Obama administration has openly stated that they are opposed to SOPA in its current form. Its not up to them.

http://thepiratebay.org

That link is all that is need for giantbomb to be shut down if sopa pass, No need to get up or do anything someone else will stop sopa for you spoiled brats.

A shitty webcomic is going to boycott E3? Not a big loss.

My take on all of this mess....MEH.