The Internet has changed the way consumers access media by allowing us to share everything digital across the entire world. This fact makes lawmakers’ heads spin, leaving them scrambling to punish those who break copyright laws.

Most high-end entertainment is made in North America, but many of the uploaders are elsewhere in the world, largely untouchable under current laws.

SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a piece of legislation working through the U.S. Congress designed to change this. It will allow the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to financially starve websites that they deem are in violation by forcing, by law, entities like Paypal, Visa and Google to abandon support of the sites in question. And although it is an American law, all dot-com, dot-net and dot-org websites are run through U.S. registrars, which further extends the reach of the law.

All this without stepping into court.

Guilty, shut down and bankrupt, until proven innocent.

While the intention is to stop online piracy (which is a legitimate problem), the discretion given to the American law enforcement and companies is the most troubling part of the current bill. With SOPA, companies won’t have to pick their battles; in fact, there won’t be a battle to be fought. If you are in violation by their loosely defined parameters of infringement, you will cease to exist on the Internet.

While SOPA will affect every facet of entertainment, SOPA most jeopardizes the robust community sustaining the gaming industry. By the very nature of the medium, much of the discussion on the Internet regarding gaming requires a level of “infringement” like posting pictures, videos and other user-generated content. It is how fans stay informed and involved in the medium they feel connected with. This, of course, leads to the sale of video games to a well-informed, actively participating consumer base.

Gaming is as lucrative as it is precisely because of a free Internet.

SOPA also threatens to stifle investment into gaming innovation. Novel games and technology gain traction because people are interested in new ideas, some of which don’t come from behemoths like Microsoft and Nintendo. It’s also no secret that a good idea (and a lot of luck) can explode virally thanks to the free Internet we already have.

And what will happen to the gaming press? While there are always allegations of sites being paid off to provide favourable reviews for certain games, these concerns are largely unfounded. With SOPA, this fear might come to fruition. What will stop a disgruntled company from utilizing their discretion against a site for an unfavourable review by using “copyright violation” as their red herring?

The tinfoil-hat-wearing types will finally be right.

And it’s not just the Gamespots or IGNs of the world. Gaming coverage is now part of hugely influential entities like USA Today, Forbes, CNN and the Sheaf.

Despite many gaming companies claiming to have rescinded their support, the Entertainment Software Association, the trade organization representing the biggest companies in the industry, is behind SOPA. This is the same group that was a champion of the recent push to protect video games under the first amendment, which makes their stance on SOPA rather tragic to gamers.

With the ESA onboard, SOPA has at least enough political capital to worry gamers, hopefully leading to some old-fashioned Internet backlash. In fact, many web companies like Google, Yahoo and eBay are considering a full blackout of their services in protest of SOPA. And in December, 83 engineers, including some of the creators of the Internet itself, addressed a letter to Congress imploring them to drop the legislation.

So please fight back against SOPA. If you are a person who cares about gaming, remember the following: SOPA will hold the entire industry back and hurt it much more than piracy ever will. And it will do so by filtering what information you can access.

[box type=”info”]Editor’s note (01/17/2012): SOPA has been “shelved” by Congress, for now. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor claims that SOPA will not proceed to a vote until “consensus” has developed.

This is a step in the right direction, but does not signal the end of SOPA. The PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), a similar and equally dangerous bill, is scheduled to be voted on in the US Senate on Jan. 24.

Click here to see how some websites, including Wikipedia, are taking action to spread the word against the risks posed by SOPA and PIPA.[/box]

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Photo: Nintendo