Harvesting dirt on tech via Techdirt, I saw a story entitled “The Internet Wins: PIPA and SOPA delayed.” Author Mike Masnick delivers a precisely calibrated mixture of triumph and bleak prophecy in his write-up, which seems like the proper tone. If you go deeper, say, to Harry Reid’s official statement, you won’t see anything to celebrate. It’s delayed, to be sure, although remission might be a better term. The will hasn’t gone anywhere.
News on the gaming side of the equation moved almost too fast to absorb - Ars took Wednesday to run a kind of masterclass on the legislation. There were articles about how Electronic Arts had dropped its support for SOPA, but they never officially supported it, so they didn’t drop it exactly.
What’s their position? This gets right to the core of it: They didn’t drop their not support. Are you not pleased?!?!
My grandmother would have said that this is them “talking out of both sides of their mouth.” That’s the euphemism, and it’s useful, but the truth is even better in this case. The fact of the matter is that Electronic Arts and other ESA members have two mouths.
The Reality is that knowing who the ESA even is constitutes some pretty Inside Goddamn Baseball. The most functional way of putting it is that the ESA were the ones expecting you to have their backs when California tried to roll out its violent videogame law, and you did. That’s really as instructive as I can be; the support they’re looking for is unidirectional. It goes from you to them.
(CW)TB out.
