House of Reps and Obama kill SOPA

woody60707 · Jan 17, 2012

Integral said:
SOPA's been shelved, not killed. The fight continues.

The fight on online piracy. Just because SOPA might not have been the best worded bill doesn't mean the general idea of a SOPA type bill is bad. PROTECT IP Act in general is the right ideal.

we should be honest, a sizable amount of these people are PRO online piracy. Online piracy kill PC gaming the last decade. And yet you can see people in this claiming online piracy doesn't hurt sales. Yea, ok.

aimeeandbeatles · Jan 17, 2012

Frankly, if they are going to do anything at the internet at all, the resources should go after stopping cyberstalkers who threaten to kill others. But of course big business speaks. The little guy (well, girl) who's changed their phone number because of anonymous long-distance calls and worries every day about the creep breaking into their site don't matter.

Archbob · Jan 17, 2012

Both these bills are too broad and overarching. And these bills aren't going to stop things like Bittorrent anyways. The price of restricting freedom and liberty is too high just so the RIAA can make more profits.

I personally think the DMCA is way too overreaching, anyone can file one without any real proof.

downtown · Jan 17, 2012

I think piracy hurts sales of some software companies, without a doubt....but not nearly as bad as they would be if the internet wasn't wide open and innovative.

They may be some more effective ways to combat piracy. SOPA was killing a spider with a hand grenade.

aimeeandbeatles · Jan 17, 2012

downtown said:
I think piracy hurts sales of some software companies, without a doubt....but not nearly as bad as they would be if the internet wasn't wide open and innovative.

They may be some more effective ways to combat piracy. SOPA was killing a spider with a hand grenade.

or a flea with a flamethrower. a very inaccurate flamethrower.

choxorn · Jan 17, 2012

SOPA was attempting to kill a spider with a hand grenade, but missing and blowing up the house behind it.

BasketCase · Jan 17, 2012

aimeeandbeatles said:
They dont have to say anything.

True. But it's better for the public relations if Blizzard tells everybody a lie they want to hear. Blizzard writes topnotch stuff, which I actually buy instead of pirating (mostly

), but even Blizzard isn't above basic political realities. The pertinent one here being "the truth hurts". SOPA would improve Blizzard's bottom line (and the bottom line of a lot of other software companies) but actually saying that would hurt Blizzard's bottom line. A lot.

kramerfan86 · Jan 17, 2012

One thing the gaming industry could do if it is so concerned is stop punishing non-pirates. All the DRM, especially the terrible "have to be online to play" garbage simply pushes legit people to pirate. Same thing with the movie industry which forces advertisements down your throat and forces you to double pay if you want a physical and digital copy.

Honestly creating legal penalties for a website that directly and blatantly supports piracy would be one thing (emphasis on blatant, not like this bill where a website like youtube could get hammered despite its efforts to prevent infringement), but these bills were ridiculous and clearly written by oldtimers with minimal understanding of the very thing they were attempting to legislate. Too draconian overall basically, using an axe when a scalpel is needed.

BasketCase · Jan 17, 2012

Amen to that. I have a big problem with Steam, for exactly that reason. Nothing has actually gone wrong for me (yet) but this scenario plagues my brain: if I buy a legit copy of Civ 5 on Steam, and then Steam goes out of business, how do I get a reinstall of Civ 5 to work???

Benefactor · Jan 17, 2012

BasketCase said:
Amen to that. I have a big problem with Steam, for exactly that reason. Nothing has actually gone wrong for me (yet) but this scenario plagues my brain: if I buy a legit copy of Civ 5 on Steam, and then Steam goes out of business, how do I get a reinstall of Civ 5 to work???

You can make physical copies of steam games, and I believe Valve have said that if they were to go out of business they would patch steam to stop it trying to authenticate games with there servers.

Edit: Although I suppose there is no particular reason to believe them, a company going bust doesn't really owe anyone anything.

Ziggy Stardust · Jan 17, 2012

I have less problems with Steam than I have with the Gawdawfull installer UbiSoft used to install Anno 2070. Christ what a load of bollocks is that.

Tee Kay · Jan 17, 2012

kramerfan86 said:
One thing the gaming industry could do if it is so concerned is stop punishing non-pirates.

Hear, hear!

vypernight · Jan 17, 2012

CivGeneral said:
HORRAY!!!!

Can congress NOW focus on something important...

...oh like...

...UNEMPLOYMENT!!!!!

THIS.

It seems the reason our economy is stagnant is that they keep voting on stupid #$%@ and ignoring what's really important, like jobs.

Benefactor · Jan 17, 2012

Can they not look at multiple things, I am not that familiar with the US Government. Do bills go through one at a time?

luiz · Jan 17, 2012

Excellent news indeed. That was one absurd piece of legislation.

Benefactor · Jan 17, 2012

woody60707 said:
we should be honest, a sizable amount of these people are PRO online piracy. Online piracy kill PC gaming the last decade. And yet you can see people in this claiming online piracy doesn't hurt sales. Yea, ok.

In what way is PC gaming dead? Most console titles come to PC after a few months and there are plenty of PC exclusives. Basically the whole RTS and TBS genres for one.

It's not the lead platform anymore, but thats more because gaming PC's priced themselves out of the market.

downtown · Jan 17, 2012

Is Craigslist still blacking out tomorrow? If I don't have Wiki or Craigslist, I may as well just take a half day tomorrow.

warpus · Jan 17, 2012

This is just shelved, we haven't won yet.

aimeeandbeatles · Jan 17, 2012

BasketCase said:
True. But it's better for the public relations if Blizzard tells everybody a lie they want to hear. Blizzard writes topnotch stuff, which I actually buy instead of pirating (mostly ), but even Blizzard isn't above basic political realities. The pertinent one here being "the truth hurts". SOPA would improve Blizzard's bottom line (and the bottom line of a lot of other software companies) but actually saying that would hurt Blizzard's bottom line. A lot.

Still if theyre found out to be a liar they will get more bad publicity than they would if not saying anything.

Im irritated by DRM. I once bought a game at a store. I was not able to play the game as it was online-activation and the company was out of business. But I could not get a refund from the store because it was already opened (to prevent piracy, of course :mad:

). I don't remember the game but it should not have been on the shelf.

warpus · Jan 17, 2012

BasketCase said:
Amen to that. I have a big problem with Steam, for exactly that reason. Nothing has actually gone wrong for me (yet) but this scenario plagues my brain: if I buy a legit copy of Civ 5 on Steam, and then Steam goes out of business, how do I get a reinstall of Civ 5 to work???

If you're against DRM you shouldn't have a problem with steam, as the company is against any sort of DRM. They don't have control over every single game they sell, but look to see what sort of DRM Valve games on there have.

Do you know what sort of stuff steam allows you to do? If you have a steam account, and have civ v.. I could come over to your house, log into your account, and play civ v. (I have it on steam). No hassles.

Gabe went on record to say that if steam ever goes out of business he would personally make sure that you would get all your games.. I am not sure about the logistics of that, but the company is doing so well financially that I don't see it ever folding.

I have 150 games on there and I spent maybe $400 on them, max. That's like $2 a game and I have some big titles. It's convenient, more convenient than piracy (its main appeal, really), more convenient than other game distributors, and they sell the games for SUPER CHEAP.. if you know when to buy

Hell yeah I'll give my money to a company that opposes DRM and does stuff like this. No other gaming company other than Nintendo is getting my money these days.

House of Reps and Obama kill SOPA

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