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General discussion (archive)GOG.com Joins Opposition to SOPA & PIPA(243 posts)(243 posts)
(243 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 13, 2012
You may recall that last year TheEnigmaticT was interviewed by Destructoid about SOPA and PIPA. We played things a bit close to the chest in that interview (TheEnigmaticT comes by his nickname honestly) because we are a Polish company and politics, legislation, and government actions of other countries aren’t generally something we feel we should comment on.

But the more we see that it looks like the US Congress may pass or [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act]PIPA, the more we feel that we need to speak out. It’s impossible to say what impact that legislation could have on a global company like GOG.com, but we have a platform that can reach out to many gamers who will be effected by this, so we need to let you know about what SOPA and PIPA are and why, if you’re American, you should be worried about them.

What are SOPA and PIPA? These are two different bills that have a stated goal of providing the US government and various IP rightsholders with tools to curb piracy and copyright infringement online. Many web giants, including Amazon, Google, Twitter, Reddit, and eBay have stressed how worried they feel about SOPA and PIPA, because while it is a method to reduce piracy and infringement, it is probably not a good one.

Will SOPA/PIPA work? It might, depending on your definition of “work.” It will put the power over what content is available on the Internet very firmly into the hands of people who are rights-holders--or who claim to be. It will restrict the scope of legitimate content allowed on websites in ways we probably don’t even know yet. A few examples of what might change if SOPA is passed: it could kill streaming of game footage or even game-chat, radically alter how your favorite user-generated content websites--including the GOG.com forums--function, and finally, it may well undermine the basic structure of the Internet.

Will SOPA/PIPA stop piracy? No. SOPA works in a fashion similar to DRM, if you ask us: it only will have an effect on people who are, by and large, honest consumers. Pirates who torrent via P2P methods will not be inconvenienced in the least by SOPA and PIPA; people who post “let’s play” walkthroughs of video games on YouTube, though, may be.

GOG.com is opposed to piracy and copyright infringement, but we know that there are good way to try and reduce piracy and bad ones. GOG.com will always oppose anti-piracy methods that threaten user privacy and freedom. We will always stay DRM-free and apply ‘same game-same price’ policy. We will always put trust in our users as the best method of fighting piracy.

SOPA is not the way to fix the problem of piracy. If you agree with us, don’t just send a tweet or shake your head in anger. Do something. Contact your congressperson or representative and tell them in no uncertain terms that you oppose this bill. There’s a chance that SOPA won’t be as bad as organizations like the EFF and Wikimedia foundations say it is, but you only have one chance to stop this before it happens.
Posted January 15, 2012
My thanks to GOG and everyone else who speaks out against these unreasonable, made-for-moneygrabbing schemes.
Posted January 15, 2012
All types of DRM are just waste of developers time and make obstacles for people who pay. I wish GOG starts selling more and more newer games.

Any internet censorship is bad. They have no rights for that. Why shouldn't you put, for example, a song into your youtube video? Why? It's like advertisement for a band.

We pay for every empty cd and dvd we buy in a shop in my country. It's ridiculous because when someone wants to pirate Beatles or Metallica, the money end up in and organisation which "protect" music groups and the money end up in wrong pockets - chosen bands from my country. They literaly use Mafia manners. And what is worst, when a garage band wants to play Metallica's songs in a pub, the pub owner must pay them! He even must pay for every cd and dvd he wants to play if he wants to be "legal". I absolutely "love" this kind of organisations.
Posted January 15, 2012
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maxwell97: @crazy_dave: That's a fair point, but really the responsibility of Congress is to protect the rights of individual citizens. Nobody has a RIGHT to have something go into the public domain.
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crazy_dave: Actually quite the opposite. The purpose of copyright law was indeed two-fold: one, protect the rights of the people who created IP; two: to limit the time those rights can be held for in order to protect the right of individuals in the public access to those works (i.e. the public domain). Both are necessary to foster innovation and growth in IP. Effectively growing the duration of copyright beyond all reasonable bounds (70 years after someone dies) with no guarantees of no further extensions essentially eliminates the rights of the public domain. Historically in legal interpretation the rights of the public outweighed the rights of the copyright holder.

I understand your position. I don't like piracy either, but SOPA/PIPA isn't the answer and the copyright holders have been abusing the system.
crazy_dave already summed it up nicely, but I'd like to add some food for thought:

Creative works cannot be compared to tangible objects such as appliances and automobiles. The entire worth of these products is placed in how they are received by the public. For example, a song is just noise if people recognize it as nothing else. For proof of this, just look at the countless number of painters and poets who die poor and with little fame or public favor. Yet years after their death, their original works can sell for millions.

In this sense, people do not make creative works which are valuable outright. Rather, it is the onlooker that gives value to these works by recognizing them as 'pieces of art' simply because he is able to decipher the complex meanings behind an otherwise veiled channel of expression.

Now, this works both ways. Have a read of this: http://iaaa.nl/cursusAA&AI/duchamp.html

Apply that whole 'cute girl singing copyrighted song on YouTube' case to the above. It's no different! Such a video doesn't get 1,000,000 hits because the original artist made a good song. No, it's because the girl presents the song in a way people find irresistibly cute and entertaining. The artist of the original song should under no circumstance be able to claim such a performance as their own! The same thing applies to using a 'copyrighted' song in sync to a video. By choosing that song, and through the act of synchronizing it to a video, it grants a new purpose to the work that the original artist has no claim to! When a law even potentially threatens to punish such works of originality in our society (and essentially silence the creative acts of rightful owners), it goes against everything copyright stands for. I think we tend to lose sight of what creativity actually means because everything has become an 'industry'. The laws being pushed through only serve to make the industry of creativity more profitable, not to allow society to better profit from creativity itself (the original intent of copyright law).

Copyright protection needs to respect the important relationship between author and audience, and again, it runs both ways. Content creators must be free to openly express their influences in whatever work they share with the public, and society needs freedom in deciding what to deem valuable and discernible as a creative work. It is a common tactic for companies to control or stem the flow of information and products for the sake of revenue (fittingly coined corporate censorship), however a society can only flourish when information is open and free. Modern forms of government are based on this very facet of truth. Why else is 'freedom of speech' held so highly? Clearly it is because people are easily manipulated when limited in their methods of expression.
Post edited January 15, 2012 by blueink
Posted January 15, 2012
This , Ladies and Gentlemen, is why I love being part of the gaming community. This is great discussion on an important issue. I am learning more here than on any other site about this. Keep it up!!
Posted January 15, 2012
Obama says he's against this just like he was against the NDAA, so he'll probably sign it.

Government always has to shove their cock up in everyones business. They need to stay away. If they start turning our internet into a China style internet, I'm done. I'll download all I need, put it on a few hard drives for backup, and give up the internet for good or at least until government gets out of it.
Posted January 15, 2012
While I still think that McCain would have been worse, I have downgraded my opinion of Obama, whom I voted for, to "mildly lesser evil." Just another politician with his head up his arse.

It's actually getting to the point where if, by some miracle, Ron Paul becomes the Republican nominee, I'd vote for him just for some genuine change. Now there's a guy who doesn't seem like he'd be a lapdog for lobbyists or fearmongers, even if his foreign policy would become a disaster.
Post edited January 15, 2012 by kalirion
Posted January 15, 2012
For those supporting SOPA.

Something to consider. When the people who designed the foundation of the internet say that it's not a good thing, maybe you should listen. Just a tad. Their credibility in such endeavors is just slightly higher than that of a stuffed suit.
Post edited January 15, 2012 by Fomalhaut30
Posted January 15, 2012
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kalirion: While I still think that McCain would have been worse, I have downgraded my opinion of Obama, whom I voted for, to "mildly lesser evil." Just another politician with his head up his arse.

It's actually getting to the point where if, by some miracle, Ron Paul becomes the Republican nominee, I'd vote for him just for some genuine change. Now there's a guy who doesn't seem like he'd be a lapdog for lobbyists or fearmongers, even if his foreign policy would become a disaster.
I'm not convinced his foreign policy would be "a disaster". The media like to paint him like some kind of insane pacifist, but if you look at the Constitution the president isn't supposed to be running around making war on everybody. According to the Constitution declaring war is the responsibility of Congress, not the President. While it has been shamelessly misused over the years to justify every military deployment since Korea, the Emergency Powers Act that gives the president the authority to wage war was never meant to be used to give the President the power to wage conventional wars. It was passed as a direct response to the threat of nuclear war and was meant to provide the president a legal avenue to retaliate if we were attacked by a nuclear power in such a way that Congress could not convene in time to respond. It states clearly in the Constitution that only congress shall have the power to declare war, not the president. All Ron Paul wants to do is return that power to Congress, where the founding fathers intended it to be.
Post edited January 15, 2012 by urknighterrant
Posted January 15, 2012
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urknighterrant: I'm not convinced his foreign policy would be "a disaster". The media like to paint him like some kind of insane pacifist, but if you look at the Constitution the president isn't supposed to be running around making war on everybody.
I wasn't talking about wars or police actions or whatever they're called these days. I was talking about his plan to stop all foreign aid (the non-military kind.)
Posted January 15, 2012
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urknighterrant: I'm not convinced his foreign policy would be "a disaster". The media like to paint him like some kind of insane pacifist, but if you look at the Constitution the president isn't supposed to be running around making war on everybody.
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kalirion: I wasn't talking about wars or police actions or whatever they're called these days. I was talking about his plan to stop all foreign aid (the non-military kind.)
Why not? I support such a plan. Why should we be supporting everyone else on the planet? If private organizations want to give to whatever cause, that's fine. I don't want my tax dollars going to places like Pakistan.

I also support bringing home every single American trooper overseas. If those countries want our presence and the protection of our military, then they should be paying for it. Shutter every base, strip out everything of value from said bases, demolish the remainder and bring our people home if they don't want to pay us. Let the world defend itself for a change.
Posted January 15, 2012
Someone here mentioned the meaning in other languages, I think he meant Greek. The funny thing its makes absolutely sense. It would go something like this:
" Shut up (SOPA) and give me a bl@wjob (PIPA)".
These guys are "clever" that I thought. :P
Posted January 15, 2012
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kalirion: I wasn't talking about wars or police actions or whatever they're called these days. I was talking about his plan to stop all foreign aid (the non-military kind.)
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Fomalhaut30: Why not? I support such a plan. Why should we be supporting everyone else on the planet? If private organizations want to give to whatever cause, that's fine. I don't want my tax dollars going to places like Pakistan.

I also support bringing home every single American trooper overseas. If those countries want our presence and the protection of our military, then they should be paying for it. Shutter every base, strip out everything of value from said bases, demolish the remainder and bring our people home if they don't want to pay us. Let the world defend itself for a change.
While I do believe the US makes some poor choices for foreign aid (and much of it ends up in the absolute wrong hands), in this day and age it's not smart to shell yourself in from the problems of the rest of the world. Also, the thing I hate about Obama is how he's half-assedly fighting these wars, 'trimming' defense and deployment like it's somehow a good thing. Talk to any serviceman and he'll tell you that for every extra soldier deployed, it makes every one of them that much safer!

I remember this news story a few months ago about a unit in Afghanistan. One of the soldiers said something like, "We take fire from the Taliban every day. We know exactly where they're hiding in this mountain range, but we simply can't move in because there aren't enough soldiers deployed to our area. All we can do is hole ourselves in and wait." To think if they had just another unit or two, they could very well wipe the enemy from the area. When you scale back military without withdrawing entirely, you just end up prolonging the end of the war and in turn risk far more casualties.
Posted January 15, 2012
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blueink: While I do believe the US makes some poor choices for foreign aid (and much of it ends up in the absolute wrong hands), in this day and age it's not smart to shell yourself in from the problems of the rest of the world. Also, the thing I hate about Obama is how he's half-assedly fighting these wars, 'trimming' defense and deployment like it's somehow a good thing. Talk to any serviceman and he'll tell you that for every extra soldier deployed, it makes every one of them that much safer!
For some of these people, we've been giving them aid for 50+ years. And not a damn thing has changed. Instead, we've created a society that has no drive to improve, because they know they'll just get aid from us. Charity begins at home after all. We should not see one single former soldier living on the street or a kid here going hungry. (One thing I would like to see done...any soldier that dies or is disabled because of combat or combat-related injuries, their children receive automatic full ride scholarships to any college that they can get into.)

And then you have places like North Korea where they continually do stupid shit because they think we haven't been giving them enough. We're never going to make friends by simply buying them.

I remember this news story a few months ago about a unit in Afghanistan. One of the soldiers said something like, "We take fire from the Taliban every day. We know exactly where they're hiding in this mountain range, but we simply can't move in because there aren't enough soldiers deployed to our area. All we can do is hole ourselves in and wait." To think if they had just another unit or two, they could very well wipe the enemy from the area. When you scale back military without withdrawing entirely, you just end up prolonging the end of the war and in turn risk far more casualties.
It's not that they don't have enough troopers, it's that we're hamstrung by the "rules". We know where they are at, we know who it is, but we can't do anything because some tribal chief might not like it. We could wipe out the insurgency in a month (hyperbole, I know), but instead we're trying to make friends with people that will never be our friends. They might smile and nod, but as soon as our troops are out of there, they'll be smiling and nodding with whoever comes into power.
Post edited January 15, 2012 by Fomalhaut30
Posted January 15, 2012
I only read the first 3 pages of this(My OCD makes it hard for me to read very long paragraphs for long periods of time, plus I would try reading the rest but from the first three pages it seems to be the same things being said over and over[I think?] so thankfully I can skip it and just add my two cents in.)...but from what I read it seems most here seem to thankfully be against it, and for what it's worth I must say I am as well.

Yes, I "pirate" from time to time(mostly music and abandonware games.), but even I can see(and be afraid of) how this can affect innocent people and websites if enacted(let's plays or clips of music videos sampled in user's videos on Youtube, among other things)......and as such I put my full vocal support against it along with the rest of you guys(and gals). I am also glad to see GOG is behind this as well....just one more reason to support the fine GOG.com crew, imho.
Posted January 16, 2012
Check out this link, as apparently the tide is turning. [url=]http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-57359306-261/momentum-shift-sopa-pipa-opponents-now-in-drivers-seat/?tag=epicStories[/url]
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General discussion (archive)GOG.com Joins Opposition to SOPA & PIPA(243 posts)(243 posts)
(243 posts)