If you are a fan of propaganda and that classic art form of stretching the truth, then you might want to check out this New York Times editorial penned by RIAA CEO Cary Sherman. In it he claims that technology companies like Google and Wikipedia were the only driving force behind the letter writing campaigns to lawmakers and website blackouts that happened in protest of SOPA last month.

A protest against Valve for its lack of information on Valve's "lack of information" regarding Half-Life 2: Episode 3 seems to have missed its mark slightly. The protest - which had the support of 30,00 players who pledged that they would play Half-Life 2 on Steam over the weekend - saw only half of those players playing over the weekend. They increased the usual amount of players playing Half-Life 2 by about 10,000.

Stephen Toulouse (better known by his nickname "StepTo"), Xbox Live's director of policy and enforcement, has resigned from his position at Microsoft after 18 years with the company. He announced his departure from the company on his personal blog. His last day at Microsoft will be February 15. Although he says that his reasons for leaving are personal he also emphasizes that the exit from Microsoft is amicable.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked all parties involved in the MegaUpload criminal case to halt any plans to delete or otherwise dispose of data hosted on severs once leased by file-hosting services. With its assets frozen and its operators in jail, MegaUpload is unable to pay for storage of the data.

While a petition asking the White House to dump ACTA is well intentioned, as TechDirt points out, it misses the mark for a number of reasons. The real question Americans should be asking is did the President follow the Constitution when he unilaterally had his administration negotiate this international treaty and did he have the authority to do it without involving lawmakers?

Another petition launched at the White House's official site asks the Obama Administration to end its support for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. From the text of the petition created on January 21:

On January 18 at 8:00 am ET GamePolitics and other ECA-owned websites will go dark in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Acts. We are proud to stand with an estimated 7,000 web sites and organizations to show our opposition to the government’s efforts to curtail free speech and innovation in the name of protecting the interests of corporations and lobbyists. We feel that there are better ways to fight online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods without comprising innovation, free speech, and the integrity of the Internet.

I don't know if SOPA or PIPA will have an impact on the presidential election, but it is disconcerting to note that the person serving as the spokesperson of the Democratic party is listed as a supporter of the Stop Online Piracy Act. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D- representing Florida's 20th District) is the current chair of the Democratic National Committee and is listed as a supporter of SOPA at ProPublica.org.

PHP.net will reportedly go dark tomorrow to protest SOPA and PIPA. PHP.net is the official home of PHP, the widely-used general-purpose and open source scripting language. According to this Reddit thread, the site will redirect to www.php.net/index-sopa.php, which offers the following message to visitors:

A petition on Change.org that we mentioned on January 10 has caught on fire and now enjoys more than 120,000 virtual signatures. The petition was aimed at Electronic Arts and its top executives and it urged them to publically oppose SOPA and PIPA. EA does not have an official position on either bill, but it was one of several signatories on a Chamber of Commerce letter back in September of 2011 urging lawmakers to pass tough anti-piracy legislation.

Torchlight developer Runic Games has officially come out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). In a forum thread asking the company for its position on the anti-piracy bills currently before U.S. lawmakers, a Runic Games representative said the following:

The official Reddit Blog announces a "blackout" of the popular site on January 18th from 8am–8pm EST (1300–0100 UTC) to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. While it would be better if Facebook, Twitter, and Google joined them in this very strong public protest, Reddit understands that it must do what it has to do in order to make a point about these bills. From the site:

A petition on Change.org asks Sony's Chairman to change the number of devices that can be activated from the current two to the original five on PlayStation Network. According to the creator of the petition, the November 2011 update to the PS3 stopped any activated PS3's beyond the first two from being able to download content from the PlayStation Network.

"This has effectively turned many PS3 consoles into very expensive paper weights!," says the main message on the petition page.

Earlier this week Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian took a few minutes to talk to Bloomberg TV about the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. It's an interesting but short interview that brings to bear the main point that tech innovators opposing this bill have been saying: companies like Reddit who rely on user-generated content - would not have been possible had these laws been in effect.

The choice quote of the interview, as pointed out by BetaBeat, is this one:

Professional game players organization Major League Gaming clearly is against the Stop Online Piracy Act and has made a move to show its disdain for the bill by removing one hundred domains from GoDaddy's care. The company announced yesterday that it will not align itself with companies that support the House anti-piracy bill.

Bloggers of all stripes and political persuasions are joining together to oppose SOPA and Protect IP, with some telling political publications like Politico that the passage of these bills will be the end of the blogosphere as we know it.

I know we've written quite a bit about GoDaddy and SOPA today, but this short TechDirt post shows that the hosting company is really reaching out to customers who have left the fold because of SOPA. According to former GoDaddy customer Chris Heald, some of those individuals who have transferred domains to other providers are now receiving phone calls from GoDaddy customer service asking them why they left and trying to win them back.

Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney will be inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame at the 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit (Las Vegas) in February. Sweeney is the 16th inductee, joining such industry darlings as Will Wright, Mark Cerny, Richard Garriott, Peter Molyneux and Sid Meier. Sweeney will receive his Hall of Fame Award on February 9 and will be inducted by Epic vice president Mark Rein as part of the 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.

Sweeney founded Epic Games, the makers of the Unreal, Unreal Tournament, and Gears of Wars series of games, and the Unreal game development engine.

We know that PETA has said that they were just kidding but that hasn't stopped a number web sites and internet video shows from taking a crack at the subject anyway. The Escapist's The Big Picture is one of those web shows offering a rebuttal to PETA's campaign against Mario for his Tanooki-suit wearing ways. We'll let show host MovieBob do all the talking.

Thanks to Andrew Eisen for the link.

Source: The Escapist

Riot Games announced that - over the last four months - its user base for League of Legends has more than doubled. The popular competitive online strategy RPG game now has 11.5 million active players and over 1.3 million of those people play League of Legends every day at peak concurrency. Riot Games claims that more than 4 million players enjoy League of Legends daily and that the game has more than 30 million registered players as well.

Sometimes when someone says something stupid, outlandish or inappropriate the only defense they can use is that it was "just a joke." That's the tune PETA is playing to backpedal away from attacking Mario for wearing a Tanooki-suit with a press release and a web game called Mario Kills Tanooki. Today PETA tells web site Kotaku that the whole campaign was meant to be "tongue-in-cheek." Gamers found it to be more like "foot in mouth" or "head up ass."

While he seems to be all alone in Washington, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says that he will fight to the bitter end against the PROTECT IP Act, a controversial online copyright bill backed by Hollywood movie studios, the Chamber of Commerce, pharmaceutical makers and a group of 40 senators. Wyden feels so strongly that the bill is bad news for Americans that he has promised to filibuster the PROTECT IP Act if it reaches the Senate floor without serious changes by the end of the year.

Sweden's Pirate Party had hoped to attend this year's Gamex game convention and had already laid the ground work to be there, but it looks like the political group was officially uninvited by organizers. Gamex is one of Sweden's biggest gaming events featuring exhibitions from all the big names in gaming including Activision, Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Nintendo. The event took place over the weekend.

A recent survey of Japanese consumers about two upcoming systems might be cause for concern to executives at Nintendo and Sony. According to Japanese research firm goo Research, consumers aren't all that excited about either the Wii U or the PlayStation Vita. The firm surveyed 1,083 of its members and unearthed some interesting sample opinions on the upcoming products from both companies.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has some strong language for critics of Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) online piracy bill, the PROTECT IP Act. The group, which represents business interests in the United States (and is considered to be a largely conservative organization), fired back at critics on Friday who painted the bill as an effort backed by Hollywood and not businesses.

Overclock.net has gathered an avalanche of stories related to how Battlefield 3 and Origin are being received in Germany (thanks to Solarian for tip). The short answer is that Germans seem to hate it because of the company's terms of service and what Origin is doing on people's PCs.

The closing performance at BlizzCon 2011 by Level 90 Epic Tauren Chieftain has drawn strong criticism from gay and lesbian advocacy group GLAAD. The performance featured an opening video from guest singer George 'Corpseater' Fisher of the metal band Cannibal Corpse. In the video he talks about how much he hates Alliance using strong anti-gay language that we can't repeat here. While most of the foul language was censored in the video, those who saw it knew exactly what he was saying.

According to a Re/Max listing for the Austin, Texas area, Richard Garriott (you know, the guy that created Ultima and Ultima Online) is selling his home, "Britannia Manor II," for the low, low price of $4.1 million. From the listing:

According to this VentureBeat report Taiwanese company Foxconn plans to eliminate some of its workforce with robotic workers. The company said that it will replace 1 million of its workers in China. In case you've forgotten Foxconn is the company that found itself under scrutiny when several of its employees committed suicide because of unacceptable working conditions.

PAX Prime organizers today revealed the various panels and discussions planned for PAX Dev on Wednesday, August 24 and Thursday, August 25 at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel. Some of the speakers and panelists taking part in PAX DEV include John Scott Tynes of Microsoft, Mike Selinker of Lone Shark Games, Daniel James of Three Rings, Chris Hecker of Spy Party, and many others.