The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) and AllPlayers.com have inked a deal to bring AllPlayers' group and member engagement software system to ECA members. The company will work with the ECA to implement the technology into its various websites. A press release detailing the deal can be found below. You can learn more about what AllPlayers does by visiting www.allplayers.com.

The Entertainment Consumer Association (ECA) and the AbleGamers Foundation have teamed up to open a special chapter of the organization dedicated to consumers called the AbleGamers Game Accessibility Chapter. The AbleGamers Foundation runs AbleGamers.com, which provides news and reviews on the accessibility of mainstream video game titles, and covers assistive technology. The ECA is the non-profit membership-driven organization that represents consumers of various forms of entertainment in the US and Canada.

Just a friendly reminder: this week the House of Representatives will hold a mark-up meeting for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) behind closed doors and hidden from the public.

On March 20 a coalition of advocacy groups, concerned citizens, academics, and web sites sent a letter to the White House urging the President of the United States to veto CISPA in its current state if it is passed by the House and Senate.

If you weren't able to attend the Curry College event a few weeks ago (it took place a day before PAX East in Cambridge Mass.) called "Video Gaming Panel Discusses Violence, Sexism and the Future of Gaming" then you can check out the video to your left or by visiting this link.

If you are at PAX East in Boston today or for the whole weekend then you will want to stop by the Entertainment's Consumer Association's (ECA) 30 x 30 booth (#256) for some fun activities and cool giveaways. Professional gamer Dave "Walshy" Walsh will be there taking on challengers in Halo 4 1-on-1 competitions (three times daily) and a jousting competition for fun and prizes (protective gear and jousting equipment to be provided at the booth).

Last week you told you about a one-sided hearing being put on by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) today to discuss the recent report created by National Science Foundation's director Subra Suresh and Dr. Brad J. Bushman about violent video games and real world violence like the horrific tragedy that occurred in Newtown late last year.

The Entertainment Consumer Association (ECA) has issued an alert urging members of the community to let the U.S. Senate know that you think Senator Rockefeller's bill to study violent video games is a misguided mistake. Why?

Because the Senator has publicly stated that this bill and the result of it are simply a step towards government regulation of video games. The bill, S. 134, calls for the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study on the connection between the "exposure to violent video games and video programming and harmful effects on children."

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) went to Washington D.C last week to talk to members of Congress and their staff about the connection between video games and violence, and their conclusion was that Congress does not have the best interests of the millions of gamers in America in mind. The ECA says that when they tried to talk to lawmakers about the connection between video games and real-world violence they came away from those meetings feeling like lawmakers were not interested in the facts and instead were relying on their own biases and preferences about the video games.

Today members of the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) are heading to Washington, D.C. to talk to lawmakers about a recent spate of bills that call for new research, add government mandated labels to video games, and add fines for selling mature games. If you feel a sense of déjà vu, it is because these kinds of bills have been proposed before and they have always managed to fail to be passed or enforced because they are unconstitutional or trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) issued an action alert asking the Internet community and ECA members to let Rep. Jim Metheson's colleagues in the House of Representatives know that his proposed bill, the "Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act" (H.R. 287), is a big mistake for a number of reasons.

Over the weekend MIT newspaper The Tech reported that Internet activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide in his New York City apartment. Aaron was 26 years old. He helped build internet institutions like Reddit and Creative Commons, co-authored the very first RSS specification and was an internet activist through his work as the founder of Demand Progress. Aaron's suicide was related to his concerns about federal charges he faced for stealing 4.8 million documents from the online digital library JSTOR.

In addition to asking the gaming community to voice its collective opinion on discussions on video games taking place in Washington this week, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has written a letter to Vice-President Joe Biden, who is heading up a task force to look at ways to deal with gun violence in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut shooting that happened in mid-December.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued a call to action this morning calling on the gaming community and its members to email their representatives in Congress and the President of the United States to let them know that blaming video games for the recent tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut is wrong-headed, and that there is no research to suggest that there is a correlation between gun violence in America and playing video games.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) issued a brief reaction statement this morning in response to the National Rifle Association's press conference which spent a fair amount of time bashing violent media and movies. The NRA's list of strawmen included Grand Theft Auto, Splatterhouse, Mortal Kombat, and a very old web-only game called Kindergarten Killers...

The Entertainment Consumers Association has issued a statement today on the tragic shooting on Friday, Dec. 14 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT that resulted in the death of 20 children, six adults at the school, the shooter and his mother.

You can read the entire statement below:

Disbarred Florida Attorney and anti-game crusader Jack Thompson seems to have come out of hiding to talk about the as-of-yet unestablished link between video media and the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday. In an attempt to connect with the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), Thompson decided to leave a voice mail message for ECA President Hal Halpin. The roughly 35 second-long message from Thompson is equivalent to an "I-told-you-so" to Halpin, gamers, and the non-profit.

The The Entertainment Consumers Association announced that its local chapters are working together to collect and share food in their local communities in the United States and Canada.

The ECA is also asking the gaming community to pitch in in whatever way they can by volunteering or by giving food to your local ECA chapter. You can find an ECA chapter near you by checking out this list.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) issued a brief statement expressing their sorrow for the loss of U.S. foreign service officer Sean Smith, who died when the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya was attacked by an angry mob protesting a film that negatively portrayed the Prophet Mohammad.

Yesterday NPD released a report that said that, in the last year, the number of gamers had declined by about five percent. The research firm's report ("Gamer Segmentation 2012: The New Faces of Gamers") found that 211.5 million people in the U.S. played games, about 12 million fewer than were counted in 2011.

While many accepted the numbers, not everyone agrees with them.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) recently sent a letter to the office of Congressman Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) supporting the concept of his AppRights initiative and offering some advice on using a bottom-up approach to future internet legislation.

A letter from various advocacy groups sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) urge the leaders of the Senate to add the amendment offered by Al Franken (D-Minnesota) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) to the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. The Franken-Paul amendment would remove Section 701 from the bill. Section 701 gives corporations the authority to monitor the activity of internet users and use counter-measures against traffic they decide is engaged in "cyber threat" activity.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued a call to arms asking netizens to join them in the fight for Internet freedom.

What is Internet freedom and how do we keep it? The ECA detailed five important points in its Declaration of Internet Freedom on July 2.

In the old days, Supreme Court Justices had very little information to turn to outside of legal briefs presented by combatants and case law when making a ruling, but a new study by William & Mary law professor Allison Orr Larsen finds that justice are increasingly turning to information on the Internet to shore up their opinions. According to research from Larsen, there were more than 100 instances where justices used information on the Internet in their opinions.

In an age where acronyms such as SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, CISPA, CSA, and more put fear into the hearts of Internet users all over the globe it's time that someone stand up and clearly define what rights we should have on the Internet. Like the Continental Congress did when America declared Independence way back in 1776, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) and other advocacy groups have come up with our own version of a "Declaration" for the Internet age.

Last week we presented the news that a "First Sale Doctrine" case (Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons) was headed to the Supreme Court. Some journalists were sounding alarm bells that an outcome in favor of the publisher in the case could have a serious impact on how people sell used products such as books, DVD's and even video games.

Advocacy groups Fight for the Future, Democrats.com, The Liberty Coalition, and the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), have banded together to create a new website called Privacy Is Awesome, to fight against CISPA and the Senate version of the bill, SECURE IT Act. The site is designed to teach netizens how to defeat the bills in five easy steps:

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has sent out an action alert calling on its members and the general public to take action against the House bill CISPA and its Senate counterpart the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. Both are bad news for anyone that uses the Internet because the laws would allow corporations like Facebook and Google to share your Internet habits with government agencies without fear of being sued by you for doing so.

Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) President Hal Halpin talks to Destructoid about SOPA, PIPA, the importance of advocacy, his thoughts on the VGVN and League for Gamers, Kickstarter, what the gamer advocacy group has planned going forward, and much more.