Back From The Dead

By trying to control distribution you are now fundamentally shutting down the internet, because you're saying you can't share any more. Let's take the case of MegaUpload: first of all, if we can reach out and shut down sites that are grossly violating copyright - let's say that's true of MegaUpload, I don't know if it is - it looks like we've got plenty of tools to do that. So it's got to be more about these companies wanting to control distribution without having to make a legal case of that magnitude.

If MegaUpload is guilty, what is it guilty of? The fact that a certain percentage of its users are uploading pirated content? What percentage is the crossover point between 'it's okay' and 'criminal'? And what does that say about Dropbox?

Imagine an internet where you can't send an e-mail with an attachment to someone else without your ISP scanning it to find out if it's a pirated photo or movie... Forget free speech, technologically and cost-wise it would never work.

Yeah. For instance, this issue of distribution versus content never came up in my call with them. It just dawned on us later, and it all happened so fast that everybody is re-evaluating how they're thinking about this stuff.

No, I thought it would pass. I thought it was a certainty. I thought we were just getting started on something [the League For Gamers] that in the future could be used. I had no idea so much would happen in two weeks - that was amazing.

Well I'm just learning how all this - legislation, lobbying - works, so I'm a newbie here. What often happens is, first, you change the title, and you make it something that nobody could possibly be opposed to. What ACTA is doing is saying that it's "anti-counterfeiting". They'll find some phrase, and usually it's the opposite of what it does - it'll be 'The Bill to Support the Free Speech and Defamation of Intellectual Property on the Web' and it'll be completely against that.

The other thing is that they might split it apart, taking little bits of it and inserting it into other bills that have nothing to do with the actual legislation at all. So it's going to be a lot more subtle next time, and we're going to have to be that much more attentive. It might involve looking at multiple pieces of legislation and figuring out if they're coalescing into something that would be detrimental to the internet and to gaming.

It's going to be a lot tougher, so we're trying to build our feelers in Washington and start to get a team together that can scan legislation so we can be aware of these things. Now, in what form would this be acceptable to gamers? Well, let's ask if it's even necessary in the first place.

Content based approached are still valid. 'Hey, you need to take that down. It's infringing on a copyright.' The problem is getting other countries to enforce that, so before you go on to 'let's just shut down the internet' you first have to look at... I mean, the DCMA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] is not a great piece of legislation, it does tend to get abused, but it does work and it has helped the piracy cause in countries that respond to it. Infringing content is clearly unlawful, it's clearly stealing, and not enough has been done just to get countries on board.

So what they're trying to do now is, if a country doesn't co-operate, we're going to pretend that those countries don't exist and tell people not to go to those countries. And that's where it gets fundamentally flawed. Any legislation that tries to control distribution has, one, a huge impact on free speech; corporations shouldn't, in our view, dictate what people can know about on the web.

On the other side there's huge technical issues. If I'm liable for this stuff, as a company if I fail to have mechanisms in place to make sure that no copyrighted content ever gets uploaded or created for my game, that's a huge burden. It just doesn't work. I think we're in a universe now where we have to assume that distribution is free, so we have to adapt to that otherwise we're going to break this great thing that we have.

I am disappointed that they only came out with their withdrawal after the bills were shelved, and that it was kind of a wishy-washy withdrawal. It wasn't about, 'Oh, we were wrong,' it was really like, 'This version didn't work, we need to try again and this time we'll involve the stakeholders.' As Gabe from Penny Arcade says - on an unrelated issue - "There's a big difference between being sorry and being sorry you were caught."

He was talking about, I think, a peripheral manufacturer scandal from a month ago, but it's the perfect way to sum up how I feel about the ESA's statement. So, unfortunately, The League For Gamers still feels like it has to be a watchdog. We need balance. We need checks and balances in our society.