Nintendo, Sony and EA Quietly Withdraw Support for SOPA

All three companies are absent from the most recent list of supporters, though the thirty-four-member Entertainment Software Association remains.
by GAMERANX STAFF on 30th Dec, 2011
Gameranx
Dec. 31, 2011

Nintendo, Sony, and EA, the three largest gaming companies who came out in favor of the Stop Online Piracy Act, have removed their names from a list of supporters. As you can see from the recently updated list, Nintendo and EA's names are nowhere to be found. Sony's electronics division is absent as well, though the company's music publishing divisions remain.

For those of you not up to date on your Internet outrage, the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, is an anti-piracy bill currently being debated by the U.S. Congress. If passed, SOPA would require websites known to host or link to copyright infringing materials to be taken down, with no due process and little hope of reversal. The far-reaching nature of the bill sparked widespread opposition among active Internet users, who feared that the broad censorship SOPA enables would threaten user-generated content on the Web, leading to the death of popular communities like YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, and countless others.

When the bill was first introduced in November, Nintendo, Sony, and EA were the biggest backers from the gaming industry. Now, it seems, they've withdrawn that support, albeit without any sort of explanation or public statement.

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