If you read our ECA Today newsletter then you probably heard on Friday that the Entertainment Consumer Association (ECA)  has backed pro-gamer Dave "Walshy" Walsh's special ECA Chapter dedicated to pro gamers and advocacy. Today the ECA made the official announcement, which you can read below in its entirety. We offer it to you without commentary because GamePolitics is an ECA publication.

Yesterday we reported that Netflix had begun enforcing its terms of use concerning concurrent streams on a single account. It turns out that that report was erroneous. According to an Engadget report (pointed out by one of our fabulous Facebook followers) the message users received over the weekend when streaming movies was simply an error message. At least that's what Netflix tells them.

If you missed our mention of it on Friday, the Entertainment Consumer Association (ECA) has begun a letter writing campaign to challenge Bill S. 978, better known as the "anti-streaming bill" that is being pushed in the U.S. Senate. The new message from the ECA can be found below in its entirety, but I urge you to visit action.theeca.com or the ECA's Facebook group to get involved, because if you don't you may find yourself impacted by it after posting a YouTube video or while engaging in some other seemingly innocuous activity:

Happy Independence Day, everyone. We are taking a day off to enjoy the weather, good food, excellent company, and our freedom. We'll be back to our regular schedule tomorrow. This July 4 is made all the more important in light of the recent decision in Brown v. EMA. While a great victory was won on behalf of free speech. The door is still open and the wolf is lying in wait.

Our liberties and our freedoms mean everything. We should never forget the sacrifices made on behalf of those freedoms and we should always be vigilant, never be complacent, and always ready to stand up for what is right and just.

Happy Independence Day.

The Entertainment Consumer Association issued a statement this week thanking its legal team and other individuals that helped prepare the amicus brief and the consumer petition that was submitted to the Supreme Court in November in support of the EMA's side of Brown v. EMA. The group thanked gamers and ECA members that took the time to sign the petition, legal teams that wrote the amicus brief and its various legal advisors that put everything together. Full statement below:

"As many of you know, earlier this week, the United States Supreme Court held in favor of the Entertainment Merchants Association in Brown v EMA, the so-called “violent video games” case. This is a huge achievement for all involved, especially Paul Smith of Jenner & Block.

ECA would again like to thank all of its members and the general public who signed the Consumer Petition. We would also like to thank and congratulate our partners in the Consumers Amicus Brief:

It's time for a public service announcements from the Entertainment Consumer Association. This week they kicked off a program to give ECA members the opportunity to tell the world why the ECA is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Participants are charged with creating a 30 second video describing the organization, benefits of membership and why gamers should join.

The best videos will be promoted across the ECA network and the winning video will receive $1,000 in AMEX gift cards. Additionally, the ECA will support all current and prospective film school students that participate in the program and will write endorsement letters for all appropriate video submissions.

For some examples, check out theeca.com/videos. For rules, check out www.theeca.com/video_contest_rules_and_regulations.

[Full Disclosure: GamePolitics is an ECA publication.]

The Entertainment Consumer Association announced a major milestone today: it hit the 500,000 member mark.

I'd like to congratulate the ECA for hitting this important milestone and thank them for creating a group that supports the interest of gamers.

The full release can be found below.

The Entertainment Consumers Association's ECA Institute (ECAi) officially launches a new work group called Gamers for Health. The goal of the group is to help ECA members and gamers at large incorporate gaming activities into healthy lifestyles by providing resources and tools that are effective in those areas.

Launching today, this destination for healthy gaming offers a place for gamers everywhere to join the various programs that help get you fit by gaming.

Hi, Pete here. Not to get all bloggy, but I wanted to let GP readers know that I’ll be making my way down to Washington D.C. later today, in advance of tomorrow’s Schwarzenegger vs. EMA oral arguments at the Supreme Court.

I managed to secure press seating for the arguments and, as near as I can tell, will actually be in The Room. We’ll have a rundown of the events and reactions as soon as we can post them, so stay tuned tomorrow.

James will keep you updated from his seat in the GamePolitics penthouse suite as well.

Don’t forget to vote tomorrow either!

The editorial roster at ECA websites GameCulture and GamePolitics has expanded yet again with the addition of seasoned journalists, James Fudge and Julie Gray, who join Aaron Ruby, Pete Gallagher and John Keefer.

The former news editor for CrispyGamer, James is a respected news hound, with a reputation for fast, fair and efficient reporting. His editorial pedigree includes notable outlets such as Computer Games Online, IDG Games' Games.net, GameSpy, Voodoo Extreme and GameShark. He will be contributing to both GamePolitics and GameCulture.

In contrast, Julie brings a more personal flare flair to the content line up, with a casual and approachable charm. She hails from New Zealand – the land of Peter Jackson and WETA and draws from a largely print background, with experience as a former Editor of Game Console, Game Freaks and Netguide magazines and online with Gameplanet and Buttonmasher.

We’ll be turning Good Friday into Great Friday by taking the day off.

Have a great weekend everyone and hope your weather is as awesome as ours is in the Northeast!

See you on Monday.

GamePolitics would like to wish all our readers a wonderful holiday and, dare we say, a Merry Christmas!

We’ll be taking off the rest of this week, but Monsieur Keefer will return next week with updates.

Until then, we hope Santa brings you everything your little heart desires.

Thanks for all your support!

Food, friends, family and football… what a great holiday.

We’ll be taking some time off here at GP to celebrate Thanksgiving and participate in the annual rite of seeing who can achieve the most disjointed belly.

For those celebrating, have a happy and safe Thanksgiving! To everyone else, whether you like turkey or not, enjoy your weekend! To all, thanks for your continued readership and support.

MSNBC’s Citizen Gamer column offers some advice on how to best survive the holiday. Hint: it involves videogames.


|Image via ICanHasCheezburger|

GamePolitics is extremely pleased to announce the addition of another voice to the site—that of veteran game journalist John “Warrior” Keefer. Many of our readers should recognize John from his years of service at GameSpy and more recently at CrispyGamer. 

John will also be posting stories to GP’s sister web-site GameCulture.com.

“I'm excited to join the team at GamePolitics and GameCulture,” said Keefer. “The straight-forward, no-nonsense style of reporting on video games and the type of content they cover is a natural fit for me. I think it’s important that game reporting discuss relevant industry topics beyond just reviews and previews.”

Join us in welcoming him!

With the retirement of founding editor, Dennis McCauley, we’re excited to announce that he will be passing the torch to seasoned game editor, Pete Gallagher. Dennis has been and shall remain mentoring Pete during the transition. Readers of ECA Today, the email-based newsletter which is distributed week-nightly to members, are already familiar with Pete’s work, as he has been the Editor-in-Chief of the popular publication since its inception. Prior to ECA Today, Pete was the Editor-in-Chief of GameDaily and oversaw the transition from a small business-to-business trade newsletter to a major portal, now owned by AOL.
 
“Pete has been an important part of the editorial landscape in games journalism for over a decade, but has done so in a uniquely humble and low-key manner,” said Hal Halpin, president of the ECA. “We’re thrilled to have him come on board and take on responsibility for GamePolitics as well.”
 
Hal also hinted at some additional changes to look forward to, “Over the next few weeks, we’ll be unveiling a few new modules which should enhance user experience across our sites, GP included. And by adding a few more editorial voices to the chorus, we hope to diversify the overall offering, while maintaining the aspects of each property that readers enjoy.”
 
“I’m really excited to be a part of further developing GamePolitics in addition to my other responsibilities,” said Pete Gallagher, incoming EIC of GP. “I’ve been a fan for years and really enjoy working with Dennis. I think the key to the transition and incorporating the new enhancements to the infrastructure will be listening to reader feedback and modifying accordingly, as has been done previously. With the growth of the association and the sites, it’s taking things to the next level and I couldn’t be more thrilled.”

Hey, I've got something to share with you:

Today is my last day as editor of GamePolitics.

Although the public announcement may seem sudden, the decision to move on is one that I've been considering for some time. While I'm enormously proud of GamePolitics, after four-plus years of continuous coverage of a tightly-focused news genre, my heart tells me that I've said all that I can say about the intersection of video games and politics.

I let ECA president Hal Halpin know of my decision last month and I'm grateful that Hal - as always - has been supportive. My departure also means, of course, that GP will have a new editor. We'll have that announcement in a separate post today. As for me, I've made the decision to step away from journalism and will be moving into another opportunity.

While there will be days on which I miss the daily challenge of editing GamePolitics, I am quite certain that I will miss the community of GP readers even more. Some of you have been around since the earliest days of the site. It has always been your passion about video games and your interest in the politics surrounding the medium that energized GamePolitics and made it one of the most unique destinations on the web.

Play on.

Posting will be a bit light today as I am traveling from Philly to L.A. for E3...

If you're on Twitter, you can catch important GP news alerts (as well as occasional random musings) by following GamePolitics.

If you're not on Twitter, check it out!

Late last week GamePolitics switched over to a requirement that users be registered before commenting.

There were a number of reasons for this, but ultimately it seemed like the best decision. The flip side is that some users haven't received their registration validation e-mail. If that applies to you, please contact me and I can get that issue resolved...

Sorry for the lack of stories today... Had an early flight to PAX, including a mid-day change of planes in Detroit.

I'm in the cab at the Seattle Airport, and will get some GP goodness posted a little later...

Okay, we're wrapping up our first week under the new look. We've worked out some kinks, still have a few more to go:
 

• after a rocky first day, comments are obviously working. We're not screening as we did on LJ, but a very small number of comments get sucked into a black hole for moderation. Some are obviously spam, so that's good, but some are just normal comments. Working on that.
   
• since we're no longer screening comments, people, please read the comments policy and stick to it. It would be great if we could get a cross-section of readers from all sides reading and commenting. That's not going to happen if the comments aren't on-point and civil.
   
• the new forums have been installed. We will be tweaking the look over the weekend. I hope to unveil them by Monday morning.
   
• we will be adding content to the info pages listed at the upper right of the sidebar as Multimedia Library, Law Library, Recommended Reading and Research. If you have a file or a link that you think belongs in there, please send it along.
   
• we're listing game-related conferences now in the sidebar. If you know of one we're missing, please send it
   
• the login feature does not appear to be working properly although it apparently is not hampering posting.
   
• I like our new ability to embed videos in articles, although the one in today's game addiction story came up as "not embeddable." Not sure why, perhaps because of its 10-minute length.
   

Anyway, that's all the housekeeping news for now. There will be some big stuff happening here in October, so I really want to whip the new format into shape. Please contact me with any issues or concerns about the site.

 

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Okay, we are open for business at the new GamePolitics.

It has been a hectic day here, spent dealing with a number of glitches and we're far from done. But at least we seem to be up and running and still managed to scoop the rest of the game press on the New Mexico nonsense lawsuit.

Specifically, I can't figure out why people weren't able to comment, but I've opened the restrictions that required commenters to be logged in, since logging in seemed to be the issue. So please test out commenting...

Also need to add more of the GP content listed on the sidebar... that's on the way.

Please excuse the mess while GamePolitics moves to its new format...