The internet certainly isn’t wanting for videos that focus on the particulars of why legislation like SOPA and PIPA are unmitigated piles of horse dung.  Heck, this week’s Extra Credits episode is just such a video.

But if you’d like to see something a little different, check out the latest Game OverThinker episode in which Bob Chipman, better known as MovieBob over at The Escapist, forecasts what our post-SOPA futures might look like.

Electric Playground recently caught up with Hal Halpin, President and founder of the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), to talk about the online battle to stop the passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Halpin talks about how the online protest last week slowed down the momentum of both SOPA and PIPA, and why these bills aren't quite dead yet.

Check out the video to your left.

[Full Disclosure: GamePolitics is an ECA publication.]

Joel Kelsey, a top political adviser for Free Press, has written an editorial urging U.S. lawmakers who have taken money from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to give it back. Writing over at SaveTheInternet.com, Kelsey makes this request in light of recent comments from MPAA president Chris Dodd made to Fox News. In case you don't remember:

This Politico story points out that anti-piracy legislation may be the hottest of hot potatoes in the 2012 election cycle, and while lawmakers promise progress in the not-too-distant future, the likelihood of anything getting through either legislative bodies is highly unlikely.

“Going into an election year, there’s going to be a lot of [reluctance] to do anything that can end up being an unnecessary battle,” a Republican House aide told POLITICO. “It became a political hot potato.”

Hackers under auspices of the AntiSec group claimed responsibility for hacking OnGuardOnline.gov, the U.S. federal government's online security website, in protest of various internet-related legislation including ACTA, SOPA and PIPA. OnGuardOnline.gov is managed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in cooperation with 14 other agencies.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales takes former Senator (D-Connecticut) and current MPAA president Chris Dodd to task over recent comments he made to Fox news and specifically about calling Wikipedia's SOPA-PIPA blackout protest an "abuse of power."

The comment Dodd made to Fox News:

A new petition asks the Obama Administration to investigate the MPAA and its president Christopher Dodd for comments he has made publicly about paying politicians to do what the trade group representing the entertainment industry want when it comes to legislation. Dodd is a former Senator from Connecticut. Here's the exact wording of the petition:

The Directors Guild of America issued a statement on Friday about SOPA and PIPA - in conjunction with the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada (IATSE), International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), and Screen Actors Guild (SAG).

First this collective of Hollywood interest groups attempted to put a happy face on a bad situation:

The Entertainment Software Association announced that it no longer supports the Stop Online Piracy Act or the Protect IP Act. In a statement released today the trade group representing the video game industry said that it had always intended to support a bill that was balanced and fair.

Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation wrote a rather lengthy thank-you note to those in the Internet community that got involved in the blackout of the popular online site. While we can't list every one, we did note her thanks to GamePolitics contributor Dan Rosenthal, and the 1,800 English Wikipedia users who convinced the site to go dark.

As we reported last week, a petition at Change.org is asking Electronic Arts to publicly come out against SOPA.  The number of signatures now sits north of 135,000.

At the Southern Republican Debate in South Carolina last night, all four remaining candidates said that they were against PIPA and SOPA. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum said that they were against the anti-piracy bills that sparked an Internet protest on Wednesday.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) lead Sponsor Lamar Smith (R-Texas) announced on Friday that he was postponing any further action on the bill.

Smith said he would stop work on the bill until there was wider agreement on a solution to combating piracy. Earlier this week, SOPA was stopped in its tracks by Virginia Republican Representative Eric Cantor, but on Wednesday Smith was defiant, saying that he planned to continue working on the bill in February in a markup committee hearing.

Wikipedia has posted a thank-you message on its Black Out Page thanking visitors for strongly participating in yesterday’s SOPA-PIPA protest. On Wikipedia’s SOPA Learn More Page, the site lists a number of interesting milestones from yesterday:

Some have said "it will be a cold day in hell when I agree with Glen Beck about any issue." Well, today is the day you put on three sets of thermal underwear because you are about to mostly agree with the man that everyone loves to hate. Yesterday the conservative firebrand spent a good portion of his Internet program deriding PIPA and SOPA and calling listeners to action against it..

There has been plenty of talk on how bad bills like SOPA and PIPA are, but no discussion about what can be done about piracy. Piracy is a real problem - but the breadth and depth of that problem has never been accurately documented by the entertainment industry, which use estimates based on lost sales as the basis for their claims.

The trade group representing United Kingdom game developers expressed their concerns about SOPA in a press release issued yesterday. TIGA CEO Dr. Richard Wilson said that the bill worries the UK games industry because they could open them up to damaging legal actions and hurt online games businesses.

Andrew Eisen gives us a visual representation of how gamers felt when they heard the news that the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) was supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act. Is this the thanks gamers get from the trade group representing the video game industry after all of their hard work in Brown v. EMA?

We'll let you judge for yourselves. This is probably the best video Andrew has ever made, in my humble opinion. Watch it to you left and be sure to stop by Andrew's YouTube Channel to subscribe.

After just one day of Internet protests and a concerted effort by the Internet community, the mainstream media finally took notice of the war between the entertainment industry and the Internet over SOPA and PIPA. Every broadcast and cable television network - much to their chagrin - was forced to say something about sites like Wikipedia and Reddit going dark, and Google's redacted logo had a huge impact as well. With the increased media attention and a deluge of phone calls and emails from constituents, several lawmakers panicked and withdrew their support from the bill.

Walshy Addresses SOPA/PIPA

By Dave Walsh, ECA Pro Gaming Chapter Pres.

There are still many people out there that don’t know about, or are misinformed regarding two very concerning pieces of legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and Protect IP Act (PIPA). The names of these bills sound noble enough, but the effects that they will have if passed will be devastating.

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.

Zachary Cohn dropped us a note to let us know about a parody of the song "American Pie" called "The Day the Lolcats Died." The parody video was created by Cohn and his partners-in-crime over at Laugh Pong to protest SOPA and PIPA. Cohn calls it "entertaining and light, but with a clear call to action." We agree. Be sure to look for a special cameo from someone very familiar. You can check out the video to you left.

SOPA sponsor and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) thinks Wikipedia's decision to shut down the U.S. version of its popular site is a stunt to garner attention. Smith continues to say that SOPA will not harm sites like Wikipedia, and will only target foreign websites identified as trafficking in counterfeit goods or copyrighted material. Wikipedia's protest will apply only to the English version of the online encyclopedia and will last for about 24 hours. Wikipedia is the fifth or sixth most visited site in the U.S.

Public Knowledge let us know that, as many of us expected, markup hearings on the Stop Online Piracy Act will resume in February in the House of Representatives. The announcement was made by lead sponsor and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas).

Raw Story announced that it will go dark tomorrow in protest of SOPA and PIPA. The site, which describes itself as "a progressive news site that focuses on stories often ignored in the mainstream media," claims a reach of 1.6 million unique readers per month. In a post explaining why it was going dark, the site said that, while the "news doesn't stop," if Congress passes either SOPA or PIPA "your access to it could."

Craigslist has added a section to its About Page dedicated to fighting against the Stop Online Piracy Action and Protect IP Act worth taking a look at. The page offers an exhaustive list of resources and points out efforts from the ECA, EFF, OpenCongress, and more. It also features its opposition prominently on its front page. The page also includes a rant which calls out Monster Cable as just one example of why it opposes both SOPA and PIPA:

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:

When asked if his company would go dark like Wikipedia on January 18 to protest SOPA and PIPA, Twitter CEO Costolo said on a tweet the idea would be silly.

"That's just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish," Costolo said.

Some criticism of that short statement followed, but Costolo explained it a little better in a subsequent tweet.

"..point was relative to shutting down our real-time global platform to protest/inform US congressional debate on a topic."

What level of commitment does the Entertainment Software Association have in the anti-piracy bills before lawmakers? About $190,000's worth according to a Kotaku report.