EA, Nintendo, Sony Quietly Withdraw SOPA Support 204
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."
Anonymous Threatened Sony (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Where is the list of objectors? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it me... (Score:5, Interesting)
This may be the way out (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [opensecrets.org]" 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 [arstechnica.com], Stratfor [nytimes.com], Ocean Marketing [kotaku.com], Sony [arstechnica.com]. (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...
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anonymous Threatened Sony (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I rather doubt that had anything to do with it at all.
Sony and its leaders are pretty arrogant. They know any attack is temporary. They might have to stop online sales or the collection of sales/personal data on internet connected servers or things like that, but it wouldn't otherwise faze them.
No, what I think got to them is the tremendous and mobile public response made against the likes of Go Daddy. I'm ever so proud of our internet. And by internet, I don't mean the network devices, ISPs and other business and government presence. I mean the people who use it. You reading this now are the internet... the 'series of tubes' that you are. :)
The internet is really coming into its own as a force for public expression and more importantly for change in the public's interest. It's the last chance the world really has for "peaceful revolution" as it were. For a lot of us, we imagine there will be jack-boots marching across the US and small groups of resistance everywhere. It's not that hard to imagine really. But lately, it seems the business interests which pay [read: buy] the government is having its money supply threatened. That's where the real fear comes into play.
Fact is, most of all this 'online piracy' is over things which aren't necessary for life. It's entertainment. There will always be entertainment even if we have to sing and play it for ourselves. (YouTube has proven that well enough I think) If people get pissed off enough to boycott any of them in large numbers for any amount of time, they will not just interrupt cash flow for the short term, people will begin to realize that a world without Sony or Nintendo would be... not so different... not so bad. And believe me -- a Linux based F/OSS console and gaming network would spring up so fast with Google's Android as the core, it would become a huge game changer.
They can't afford to piss off their customers any longer. THAT's the fear you are witnessing them act on.
Try, try again (Score:5, Interesting)