Don’t have your gamer rights taken from you!
If you haven’t been staying up to date with SOPA, well, you should. Especially if you are a gamer. Or did you forget that all your gaming experiences now require an active internet connection?
If SOPA passes, it’ll be the end of gamer culture as we know it. Uploading a gameplay video to Youtube could be considered “light terrorism” and you could face indefinite detainment thanks to the already passed NDAA. Gaming journalists like myself would be out of a job. If someone at a game company doesn’t like the negative opinions journalists have about their latest release, they could easily have the site taken down. Not just the article, but the entire site. Oh, and lets not forget the ability to sue the bloggers who criticize their games.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. This would also mean no more mods, unofficial game guides, or screenshot sharing. The very act of telling your friend how to open a door in a video game could result in you going to prison. Contributing to the “arrow in the knee” meme on Reddit could result in the whole site getting blocked forever. That annoying kid singing a copy-righted Lady Gaga song over Xbox Live would be the very undoing of the service we’ve all grown to love.
The entire point of the internet is to make life easier for people to connect, share, and learn; not to make everyone a potential terrorist. Is this the world you want to live in? One where you can’t talk about a movie online without worrying about losing everything in your life? Of course not.
But what can we do? The answer is simple, really. We fight.
Contact every news station you can, both local and nationwide. Explain the turmoil SOPA would bring to the lives of people everywhere. Appropriately named Reddit user “washURmouthwithSOPA” has constructed a list of a few news stations to help you start.
Here’s a video to further help you understand what SOPA is.
