Red 5 Studios, makers of the upcoming MMO shooter Firefall, have come out strongly against SOPA and PIPA, and plan to go dark for one day on January 18 to protest. The company also announced that, because of the Entertainment Software Association’s support for the bills, it has canceled its E3 booth and plans to skip the show. The shutdown will include all of its websites, its community sites for the game, and the Firefall beta.

Markus "Notch" Persson, Minecraft creator and co-founder of Mojang, added his two cents to the Stop Online Piracy argument today. When asked by PC Gamer about the bill before the House of Representatives, Notch said that a person would have to be crazy to support it.

League of Legends developer Riot Games let us know that they, have officially announced their opposition to controversial legislation under consideration in Congress: the U.S. House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The company's CEO, Brandon Beck, took to the official forums for the game (which has 11-million-players, for the record) to say that these two bills in their present form are unacceptable:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is taking up arms against the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and they want your help to do it. The advocacy that supports internet rights and freedom of speech online says that these new bills are "a threatening sequel to last year's COICA Internet censorship bill" and that this legislation "invites Internet security risks, threatens online speech, and hampers Internet innovation."

A new article over at TechDirt penned by the Entertainment Consumer Association's Vice President and General Counsel, Jennifer Mercurio, explains why the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP are bad for everyone - especially gamers. Mercurio lays out what this means to everyday internet users when it comes to video performance and fair use in the first paragraph:

Jenner & Block Partner Paul M. Smith will be honored by the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) at the “Annual Celebration of Free Speech & Its Defenders,” in New York City on November 29, 2011 at Tribeca Three Sixty°. NCAC is a coalition of more than 50 national nonprofit organizations, including civil rights, labor, education, artistic and religious groups dedicated to defending free speech through education and advocacy efforts.

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.

The U.S Justice Department has backed off proposed changes to the Freedom of Information Act after strong public criticism to the changes, and a collective verbal lashing from lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum. Lawmakers felt that proposed changes gave the DOJ a license to lie to citizens who were looking for information from the government.

At issue was a proposal that gave the agency the ability to say that information "did not exist" if an agency determined that said information was classified in nature.

On Wednesday Lawmakers in the United States introduced "The Stop Online Piracy Act," a bill that would give the government the ability to block web sites in the United States and abroad who traffic in counterfeit goods, illegal software, and other copyrighted goods.

A proposed rule change to the Freedom of Information Act would give federal agencies a special exemption when it comes to certain types of information requests. The change would allow agencies to tell citizens requesting certain law-enforcement or national security documents that records don’t exist – even when they do.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has an interesting article on Battlefield 3 that explains why you can't shoot civilians in the game. Apparently EA decided to make it so that players couldn't just gun down innocents in the game. It's an interesting policy considering that some might consider taking away that option as removing some of the realism that games such as Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 are promising.

If you think that the cease and desist letter Bethesda sent Minecraft developer Mojang over plans to use the word "Scrolls" in its next game is ridiculous, then Andrew Eisen's latest video will make a lot of sense. After all, if one company can go after another for "Scrolls" then they can go after anyone for any other seemingly innocuous or common word. Take the word "the," for example...

Free Press's Save The Internet is looking for your help to place an ad that more than a quarter of a million visitors selected. The video "New Best Friends" received thousands more votes than the nearest runner up, but now that users have chosen it, Free Press needs your help to turn it into a real ad that can air on TV and across the Internet.

Metro weekly profiles Paul Smith, one of the leading Supreme Court litigators in the country, and particularly his noteworthy work on Brown v. EMA. But before tackling that landmark case, Smith has (and still does) fought to advance gay equality in the courts. Smith was a key factor in successfully arguing Lawrence v. Texas before the Supreme Court in 2003, which resulted in ending sodomy laws.

GamePolitics Contributing Editor and Maryland intellectual property attorney Daniel Rosenthal offers and in-depth analysis of Bill S. 978 (also known as the "anti-streaming bill") in this guest editorial.

S.978, the "anti-streaming bill" has been introduced in Congress, apparently in response to the White House's Intellectual Property Enforcement Legislation Recommendations white paper (PDF), which recommended to Congress that they should amend the Copyright Act to "clarify that [copyright] infringement by streaming . . . is a felony in appropriate circumstances." While that seems innocuous enough on its face, the bill presented by the bipartisan trio led by Sen. Klobuchar is deeply flawed for a number of reasons.

While professional video game players don't have the equivalent of performance enhancing drugs such as steroids, pro medical marijuana publication Culture Magazine thinks that many use Marijuana to enhance their abilities prior to tournament play. The publication cites a comment made by Alex Walker, the Australian World Cyber Games tournament director, to game publication GamePlayer.

"I’ve seen a number of players at national tournaments who came in ‘baked’ purely so they could play better," said Alex Walker, the Australian World Cyber Games tournament director, in a recent interview with Gameplayer.

Taking a cue from North American lawmakers, politicians in the United Kingdom are planning on creating laws to deal with supposed illegal streaming of copyrighted content. The warning came from UK Communications Minister Ed Vaizey in a speech at the Intellect Consumer Electronics in London. In that speech Vaizey said that a "voluntary code of practice" being drawn up by US ISPs and content owners might be a "game-changer" in other countries. And by other countries, he means his country.

"If people are streaming live football without permission we should look at ways we can stop them," he said. "People have the right to earn money from content they create."

While he remained silent on what was decided or discussed at last week's meeting between ISPs and content providers to discuss website blocking, he did say that what is going on in the United States is "leading the way."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has opened the first e-G8 forum in Paris, with leaders in technology such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales, News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch, BBC director general Mark Thompson, and Google's Eric Schmidt set to give talks about Internet technology.

But even as the French president is excited to be thoe host of the technology gathering, many critics have said that the gathering is more about control than internet innovation. Attempting to address some of those concerns, Sarkozy said that the Internet enables and fosters the ability to engage in revolution without all the blood and death:

"The global revolution that you incarnate is a peaceful one. It did not emerge on battlefields but on university campuses," he said.

Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt on Wednesday proclaimed the company's strong opposition to new legislation that calls for shutting down access to file-sharing websites that offer allegedly copyrighted material. The new law proposes that the government blacklist these sites, take them offline, and demand that search providers such as Google delist them from their search indexes.

Schmidt argued that laws such as these set a very “disastrous precedent” for destroying free speech all over the world.

"If there is a law that requires DNSs [domain name systems] to do X, and it's passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it, then we would still fight it," Schmidt told reporters at a London conference. "If it's a request, the answer is we wouldn't do it. If it's a discussion, we wouldn't do it."

Silicon Valley Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA.) says that seizing web sites and web domains tramples on due process. Speaking at length with Ars Technica, Lofgren takes aim at the administration's efforts to take down web sites that allegedly engage in illegal activity like file-sharing, copyright infringement and counterfeit goods.

Lofgren starts by saying that ICE doesn't have the authority to do what they are doing, that they are trampling on due process because the seizures are almost instant, and that - in some cases - they have violated the first amendment rights of some domain owners. Here is more on that from Lofgren:

Long-time Free Press CEO and president Josh Silver has left the organization dedicated to free speech to become CEO of the Democracy Fund, a new operating foundation that will "challenge the influence of corporate lobbyists over government policymaking." Silver is expected to part ways with Free Press in mid-April. He will be replaced by the organization’s current Managing Director Craig Aaron. Aaron had plenty of nice things to say about the soon-to-be-departing Silver:

The Atlantic Wire asks the question "What Does the Constitution Say About Video Games?" by pointing to a New York Times article about the Supreme Court's "originalists." These justices, led by Justice Scalia, believe the law "should adhere as closely as possible to the Constitution's text and to the founders' original intentions," according to the Atlantic Wire.

So what does this mean as it relates to new technology the founding fathers could have never imagined like video games?

Here is some of what the New York Times article said about it:

Not every teenage boy backs the video game industry when it comes to banning the sale of violent video games to children in California. Take 16-year-old Daniel Willens, a junior at Sonoma Academy -- a preparatory school in Santa Rosa, California, for example.

The teenager penned an editorial in the Press Democrat called "PRO: Minors shouldn't be allowed to buy violent games." Daniel sounds like many of the other supporters of the 2005 law written by California State Senator (D-San Francisco). Daniel opens with the following statement:

Sonderkommando Revolt, the Wolfenstein mod that reimagined an 1944 Jewish uprising against the camp guards at Auschwitz, has been shelved. One of the key developers on the homebrew project, Maxim Genis, said that online criticism about the subject matter, and an abusive response from the internet community have made working on the project too difficult.

"I did a lot of research for the game," said Genis. "I wanted to show the Jews really did fight back against the Nazis. I wanted to honour them. My intentions were pure and pro-Jewish in every way."

In a response to a Kotaku inquiry about the game last week, the Anti-Defamation League had urged Genis to cancel the launch in January, calling it "a crude effort to depict Jewish resistance during this painful period." As we pointed out last week the ADL praised the film Inglorious Basterds for doing basically the same thing.

It is one thing to read a transcript of oral arguments in a court case, but to get the full effect, audio or video is the best way to figure out just how convincing each side’s arguments are. C-Span has audio of the oral arguments Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants available on its web site. The audio features the comments of lawyers for both sides, along with all of the chief justices hearing the case.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association on November 2, in which the state of California challenged a lower court ruling that the law was unconstitutional. Lawyers for the EMA argued that the lower courts made the right decision and explained why the law was flawed.

You can listen to the audio here.

Is acting protected speech, and if so, is acting in a video game - especially in the age of motion sensing console devices - protected speech as well? This is the theory thrown out in a thought provoking post called "Is Playing a Video Game Conduct or Speech? Lessons from Microsoft Kinect" over at Law Law Land Blog.

Steven Smith kicks that idea around a bit, comparing the acting kids do in video games to the actions in a school play. The idea begins at GameStop, where Smith is buying a game for his daughter:

The Star Press (which describes itself as the "news source for East Central Indiana") writer Jeffrey M.. McCall pens a two-page editorial called "Violent video games not an issue worthy of First Amendment protection," in which he attempts to lay out a case for Schwarzenegger v. EMA.

First, an explanation as to what the author thinks the entertainment industry really wants.. apparently it isn't freedom of expression:

..And in other news, the sky is blue. What makes some comment threads longer than others? Bad attitudes and surly comments, apparently. That is the conclusion of a study about online interaction conducted by a team of Slovenian and British researchers .

A group of Slovenian and British researchers used a technique called "sentiment analysis" to identify emotional content in BBC's online discussion forums and digg.com.

The team's special algorithms searched for keywords, emoticons, and "subtle linguistic markers" like misspellings, which were then used to calculate a "happiness score" for each post. The researchers found that longer discussion threads tended to be overwhelmingly emotional and negative than shorter discussions threads. The longer threads tended to begin with negative comments, researchers found.

An article penned by the Editorial Board of the Oregonian calls violent games “poison to the teen mind,” and cites “a fragmented but growing body of research,” to back its hopes that the California legislation will at least “find footing” in order to “set a promising example.”

The opinion piece states that Schwarzenegger vs EMA is not exclusively about free speech, since the law does not seek an outright ban on violent games.

The California law, according to the Oregonian, would “simply prevent the neighborhood video store clerk from deciding to sell ‘Postal 2’ to a 14-year-old.”

The editorial continued, stating: