ESA Drops SOPA Support

The Entertainment Software Association no longer supports the Stop Online Piracy Act, the controversial anti-piracy bill that was shelved earlier in the US House of Representatives after a week of fierce online protests.

“From the beginning, ESA has been committed to the passage of balanced legislation to address the illegal theft of intellectual property found on foreign rogue sites,” the group said in a statement. “Although the need to address this pervasive threat to our industry’s creative investment remains, concerns have been expressed about unintended consequences stemming from the current legislative proposals. Accordingly, we call upon Congress, the Obama Administration, and stakeholders to refocus their energies on producing a solution that effectively balances both creative and technology interests. As an industry of innovators and creators, we understand the importance of both technological innovation and content protection and are committed to working with all parties to encourage a balanced solution.”

The video game lobbying group, which is funded by most of the world’s biggest video game publishers, had come under sharp criticism for its refusal to disavow the proposed bills, which critics said would stifle online speech and potentially ruin message boards, video-streaming and even some online games that are rich with user-generated content that might involve unlicensed copyrights.

Earlier this month, the ESA issued a statement that said that “we support the House and Senate proposals” to achieve the objective of battling “rogue websites… devoted to profiting from their blatant illegal piracy.” Those two proposals, SOPA in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate, are on indefinite hold this week and are essentially dead.

As Senators, Congresspeople and even some companies flipped their positions from yay to nay on SOPA and PIPA these past couple of weeks, the ESA remained mum. Their presumed continued support led to calls for a press and developer boycott of E3, the huge annual trade event in Los Angeles that is used to show off the biggest and best new video games and systems from Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, EA, Activision and most of the rest of the giants of video games.