Topic: Nintendo Removes Name from List of SOPA Supporters

[NWR_pap64]

UPDATE: The ESA, of which Nintendo is a member, still supports the controversial online anti-piracy bill.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/28832

UPDATE: Although Nintendo's name no longer appears on the list of the bill's supporters, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is still listed. Nintendo, along with both Sony's game divisions and EA, is a member of the industry-wide lobbying group, and the ESA still appears to visibly support the SOPA legislation on behalf of its members.

An update to the list of supporters for SOPA (which stands for Stop Online Piracy Act) has revealed that Nintendo dropped their support of the controversial bill that censors and blocks websites involved in pirating copyrighted content.

Last November a list of organizations supporting the SOPA legislation confirmed that Nintendo, alongside the game division of competitor Sony and third-party developer EA, were fully supporting the bill, but since then each of the companies have quietly disappeared from an updated version of the same list. The companies involved did not reveal the reasons behind their sudden decision, but a public outcry against the bill, which included a massive boycott of internet web hosting company GoDaddy.com, could be a factor.

Another possibility is that SOPA would also harm the companies it would supposedly protect, possibly censoring their own official content and websites due to broadly-defined conditions and consequences that the bill describes.

[8bitsdeep]

Very happy to see this. It was honestly tearing me up that Nintendo was supporting such a horrible piece of legislation.

[TJ Spyke]

The bill would not hurt Nintendo itself, I think they want to avoid the wrath of criminal groups like Anonymous since they oppose it and attack anybody who disagrees with them. SOPA is not as bad as some people online are making it out to be. I am not saying it's flawless though, and Nintendo supporting or not supporting it won't really impact the chances of it being passed. It's a good bill, and not one that any company has to worry about unless they are hosting illegal content.

[NWR_pap64]

When I heard that Nintendo was supporting SOPA, I wasn't surprised. Nintendo has spent millions upon millions of dollars trying to prevent piracy of their products, going as far as using a less ideal media format just to make sure their games are not illegally distributed. Dropping out is far more surprising since Nintendo is usually a stubborn company that goes through with their plans.

[NWR_insanolord]

It's been pointed out elsewhere that while Nintendo may not be officially supporting the bill anymore, the Electronic Software Association, which Nintendo is a member of, still supports it.

[BeautifulShy]

I really haven't seen much coverage of SOPA on gaming sites which is a bit surprising considering how it would affect the gaming sites. Pretty much every single gaming site has something on the site that has some copyright material it is just that the holders of said material doesn't go after them right now. There is ways to go about combating piracy  but SOPA is a blanket bill which affects a ton of things that aren't really exactly about piracy. Point being that movements that use the internet as a meeting point for other things could be shut down and that could make organising things could take a while to get off the ground. I heard that SOPA has been stopped again but this is the 3rd time it has gone through congress.I doubt it will stop any time soon.

[xcwarrior]

Nintendo has made a good decision today. Hopefully the other game companies will follow suit.

[oohhboy]

The bill would not hurt Nintendo itself, I think they want to avoid the wrath of criminal groups like Anonymous since they oppose it and attack anybody who disagrees with them. SOPA is not as bad as some people online are making it out to be. I am not saying it's flawless though, and Nintendo supporting or not supporting it won't really impact the chances of it being passed. It's a good bill, and not one that any company has to worry about unless they are hosting illegal content.
 

 *Facepalm* Please stop embarrassing yourself TJ you pot plant.
 
 Go watch this video. The conflict of interests and hyprocsy is astounding.
 
 SOPA would allow the companies with the largest arsenals of copyrighted content and legal departments to declare open war on the internet using the government as a weapon. It is anti-competitive, anti-innovation, designed to oppresse free speech and businesses smaller than the biggest conglomerates. No due process, almost no bar to cross when it comes to the quantity or quality of evidence means sites can be shut down based on the word of the accuser before a rebuttal can even be formed. Even the discussion of the implications of piracy can be construed to be promoting it under SOPA, something the NWR forums has discussed before. NWR "owns" all the posts here and should a company dislike NWR from a bad review, they can use those posts or any number of other "justifications" to close NWR.
 
 Video reviews? gone. Lets Plays? gone. Home videos? Not on this net if it contains a recognisable product. Reviews? Don't give a low one displeasing the company. Modding your console to play games from other regions? Gone. Home brew and jail breaking? HA! Whistle blowing websites? "Copyrighted". Want to set up a competing web company? Hell NO. The act of linking would become a crime.
 
 SOPA would make the current and ongoing patent war a side show. SOPA is a barefaced power play to control the internet which only the most authoritative governments have tried. The USA would join the likes of North Korea, China, Iran, Syria. It's not even under the guises of a law there to protect you under public security, but on the behest of corporations to protect their profits currently running at record highs.

SOPA is not about piracy, not about justice, law, or common sense. It's about power and control. One of Humanity's greatest invention faces destruction from psychopathic level of greed and a government that contains the worse of humanity basking in willful ignorance.

[BeautifulShy]

TJ SOPA doesn't affect Nintendo in a direct way but in an indirect way. As it stands now as long as a company doesn't go after a site for copyright material directly then the content on that site would stay up. Now with that in mind if you think about gaming sites most of the content on the sites are video and screenshots of a companies games. All that stuff is up there now because game companies don't go after it.If SOPA happens to pass the companies won't even have a say in the matter and the sites will be effectively shut down with all that content and pretty much any hype for any Nintendo games will be gone thus affecting their bottom line because of lack of awareness. That's just one example I can come up with that this bill will affect.

I also saw a video a few weeks back about the bill which is very informative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM&feature=channel_video_title

Also the video that oohhboy linked to is a great watch and I think the second video I watched on the SOPA bill and how it affects all of us.

[Chozo Ghost]

This is why I like Nintendo and why I hate Sony. Nintendo has enough sense to back out of something which is morally reprehensible; Sony on the other hand...

[KDR_11k]

The article reads like Sony did back out as well. That probably means SCEA though, no way Sony Music would not support that bill. They're a key figure in the RIAA and MPAA, the driving forces behind all of these stupid laws.

For a speech on how politicians can allow terrible laws like this to pass try Cory Doctorow's latest from the 27C3: http://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html. Computers simply don't work like the other things politicians are used to.

[Ymeegod]

Pretty sure nintendo's still supporting of the bill, just they asked their names to be removed because of the threat made by Anonymous. 

 

[motang]

Good! SOPA brakes the DNS which essentially breaks the Internet.

[oohhboy]

Thank you for that video KDR 11K.

It offers stunning insight and lays bare the fight beyond SOPA and PIPA. It now makes sense to a certain degree as to why law makers are so ignorant to the issues at hand. Why they continually try to pass increasingly oppressive and embarrassing laws that have no function in reality.

I would be happy to see Nintendo attacked over their association with SOPA via the ESA. Hell, I would do it myself if I had the technical know how. I would gladly suffer the inconvenice of the service outage if it meant Nintendo would never consider such absurdity ever again. But then attacking the ESA would be a much better first target.

Now there is other law called NDAA, but that is outside the purview of this site.

[BlkPaladin]

The only problem and something some people are stilling saying Nintendo and Sony are still supporting the bill is the ESA is still a supporter which Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo among thirty some odd US developers are a member of. (The ESA organizes E3 and help legally defend the game industry in the US.)

But there is a sign that the ESA may also back out: EA, Nintendo and Sony have all removed their active support of the bill and they are some of the bigger companies in the ESA. (Microsoft never really supported it, but they are also memebers of the ESA.)

[ejamer]

...
I would be happy to see Nintendo attacked over their association with SOPA via the ESA. Hell, I would do it myself if I had the technical know how. I would gladly suffer the inconvenice of the service outage if it meant Nintendo would never consider such absurdity ever again. But then attacking the ESA would be a much better first target.
...

Right. Because internet vigilantes are really todays superheroes and breaking the law by attacking massive corporations makes everything better.
 
I'm not a SOPA supporter, but surely there are better ways to go about sinking the bill than resorting to cyber-terrorism.

[rlse9]

I didn't know Nintendo was supporting that horrible piece of legislation.  It's embarrassing that bills that are written entirely by the major corporations that they're aimed to help, even if they're bad for the majority of people, are even considered by congress.

At least Nintendo isn't as slimey of a company as GoDaddy, who conveniently had a bug that stopped people from transferring domains away from them. 

[oohhboy]

Would you rather people buy or improvise weapons and start opening up on people to get a point across? So called Cyber-terrorism doesn't injure or kill people, it is direct, surgical in nature. There will be blowback with bills like this, I rather have that blowback be of the virtual kind that hits where it matters, to their bottom line than at a barrel of a gun in the hands of desperate people.

It's asinine that they even supported this in the first place. It required a very real threat against Sony for them to even reconsider. We, the people are suppose to be the ones writing laws for the betterment of all, not soulless corporations to blacken a ledger. It has come to Cyber-terrorism because so far nothing else has worked. It should have been thrown out the moment it hit the desk let alone go through multiple committees, countless man hours spent on both sides, with millions of dollars squandered to do something that has no basis in reality and would destroy the way of life as we know it for the worse.

Illogical trains of thought allowed absurdities like people to be held without due process, representation or charge till the very concept of terrorism is defeated to be enshrined in law(NDAA). Crap like this is part of a much greater conflict and is well beyond the scope of this site. KDR's video is just a taste of it.

[Chocobo_Rider]

thank goodness.  way to go, Nintendo!! I will continue to buy your products!!

... now, about those paid DLC plans? >=(

[NWR_pap64]

The bill would not hurt Nintendo itself, I think they want to avoid the wrath of criminal groups like Anonymous since they oppose it and attack anybody who disagrees with them. SOPA is not as bad as some people online are making it out to be. I am not saying it's flawless though, and Nintendo supporting or not supporting it won't really impact the chances of it being passed. It's a good bill, and not one that any company has to worry about unless they are hosting illegal content.
 

 *Facepalm* Please stop embarrassing yourself TJ you pot plant.
 
 Go watch this video. The conflict of interests and hyprocsy is astounding.
 
 SOPA would allow the companies with the largest arsenals of copyrighted content and legal departments to declare open war on the internet using the government as a weapon. It is anti-competitive, anti-innovation, designed to oppresse free speech and businesses smaller than the biggest conglomerates. No due process, almost no bar to cross when it comes to the quantity or quality of evidence means sites can be shut down based on the word of the accuser before a rebuttal can even be formed. Even the discussion of the implications of piracy can be construed to be promoting it under SOPA, something the NWR forums has discussed before. NWR "owns" all the posts here and should a company dislike NWR from a bad review, they can use those posts or any number of other "justifications" to close NWR.
 
 Video reviews? gone. Lets Plays? gone. Home videos? Not on this net if it contains a recognisable product. Reviews? Don't give a low one displeasing the company. Modding your console to play games from other regions? Gone. Home brew and jail breaking? HA! Whistle blowing websites? "Copyrighted". Want to set up a competing web company? Hell NO. The act of linking would become a crime.
 
 SOPA would make the current and ongoing patent war a side show. SOPA is a barefaced power play to control the internet which only the most authoritative governments have tried. The USA would join the likes of North Korea, China, Iran, Syria. It's not even under the guises of a law there to protect you under public security, but on the behest of corporations to protect their profits currently running at record highs.

SOPA is not about piracy, not about justice, law, or common sense. It's about power and control. One of Humanity's greatest invention faces destruction from psychopathic level of greed and a government that contains the worse of humanity basking in willful ignorance.

Not to mention that it will affect the companies the bill will apparently support and protect. Sites like Hulu.com, which officially distributes video content from third parties, would be gone. ALL of YouTube would be destroyed, because everyone from 13 year olds that upload Justin Bieber karaoke videos to companies that show off their content from TV shows and such would be sued and threatened. Even Gametrailers.com, a site DEVOTED to just video content would be affected. How would movie companies distribute their trailers?

What a lot of people in congress fail to realize is that yes, there is online piracy, and it HAS affected a good chunk of the industry. BUT that's very small. Online has helped companies grow. You can easily promote and distribute your content to a mass audience. Take the new My Little Pony TV show, for example. That's a show that was discovered online. The word of mouth quickly spread and the show became extremely popular, reaching mainstream appeal and generating revenue for Hasbro and Discovery communications. Had it not been for the online communities supporting the show, it would have flopped badly.

And as it has been mentioned before, the problem is how out of control this would get. They HAVE tried to sue people over a faint song being used in the background. A FAINT SONG USED IN THE BACKGROUND. As in, someone walked by with a radio and you heard the first few notes of a song. If SOPA passes that would give companies the RIGHT to sue families over stupid stuff.

So SOPA will affect online communities, the companies it will supposedly support and the average online user. There is NOTHING good about it, despite how pretty some may paint it.

And to clear some confusion, yes Sony dropped out of SOPA support.

[BlackNMild2k1]

SCEA dropped out of SOPA

Sony/BMG - Sony Music - Sony Pictures, etc etc
all the music and movie related stuff was still supporting it last I checked (sometime last night)

[ejamer]

...  Illogical trains of thought ...

Brilliant retort. I'm not going to bother quoting the whole thing.

[TJ Spyke]

Pedro, please explain how Hulu (for example) would be affected? All of the content on that site is uploaded by the companies that own the rights to it. Only sites hosting illegally uploaded content would be affected. Most sites that review games would be fine since they get that content from the publishers (unless they are one of those sites that just steal the media from other sites). Sites like IGN, Kotaku, etc. get their pictures and video from the publishers.

[AV]

I don't know if SOPA will be as bad as people think, bills are ALWAYS over blown. Heath Care Reform is not socialism. So things like this to see the truth is always fuzzy.


Now I do think piracy needs to be fought and fought hard. I respect the art-form that is video-games, movies and music and want people to get paid for the craft.


This is the worst congress ever, it will pass both houses of congress not because bloggers get angry but because simple things can't get passed how will this bill happen.

[Morari]

I don't know if SOPA will be as bad as people think, bills are ALWAYS over blown

Given the abuse we have already seen with the DMCA, it's not too far fetched to assume that more corporate power will lead to even more abuse.

Now I do think piracy needs to be fought and fought hard.

Why? It's not a war that can be won. It's just a waste of resources. Instead of demonizing true customers, why don't content creators make their products more valuable and easier to obtain? The idea that the doctrines of physical limitations and scarcity can be forced upon a wholly digital economy is absurd. We're not looking at buying physical things nowadays... we're looking at paying for the rights to use the content that was on that thing. Don't limit what I can do with that content, don't restrict where I can get it, and certainly don't charge more for it. Do those things and you will thrive in this emerging world.

SOPA (and PIP) don't do that. They do the exact opposite. They keep dinosaurs in power by not allowing the game to change. By freezing the playing field so that it cannot evolve or innovate... lest that be harmful to said dinosaurs bottom line.