Industry lobby says Minecraft community servers are illegal
The ESA just said, live in committee on the POG Act, that Minecraft community servers are illegal.
AB 1921, the Protect Our Games Act, has now officially failed in committee.
The vote was 4 yes, 3 no, with the rest abstaining.
Video is in the comments.
Timestamp: 56:24 in the original stream Minecraft private servers are illegal, according to the ESA.
The lobbyist who made the claim: Jennifer Gibbons, Entertainment Software Association
https://www.theesa.com/staff/jennifer-gibbons/
Here is exactly what happened, and why we are not going anywhere.
AB 1921 did not make it out of the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee. The bill needed a majority of the committee to vote yes. It did not get there. Four Democrats voted yes, three Republicans voted no, and the remaining Democrats abstained.
Those abstentions matter. In a committee vote, an abstention is not neutral. It has the same practical effect as a no, because a bill only advances if it gets a majority of yes votes. Not enough yeses means the bill stops here for this session.
That is the loss.
Now here is the part the headlines and clickbait YouTube “SKG FAILED??!” thumbnails will not give you.
We never expected to get this far.
This was our first attempt, in our first year, in the United States, with a U.S. budget of zero dollars. No paid staff in California. No war chest. No in-person lobbying operation. The timeline was so compressed that we could not get funding in place fast enough to put people in the building.
We ran this on volunteers, emails, phone calls, and the truth.
And we still pushed a consumer-rights bill through the entire State Assembly, 43 to 16, and into a Senate committee vote. We were only three votes away from this becoming law.
A volunteer movement with nothing took on one of the most powerful trade groups in entertainment and forced them to spend real money and real effort to stop us.
They had to work for this.
They are going to have to work a lot harder next time, because next time we will be ready.
The opposition was led by the Entertainment Software Association, the lobbying arm of the biggest publishers on earth. They did not fight this with facts. They fought it with fear.
They brought in a high-paid, D.C.-based lobbyist, Jennifer Gibbons, who worked the offices with claims that ranged from misleading to flatly false. We are putting those claims on the record, because sunlight is the entire point:
They claimed that running a private server, like the ones people run for Minecraft, would be “illegal.”
They claimed the bill demands “forever” support.
They claimed it is “impossible” to keep online games playable after support ends.
They claimed games with licensed content, like music, car brands, or sports, could never stay playable after sales stop.
They claimed that requiring an end-of-life plan would force studios to build “a completely new product.”
Every one of these claims was designed to scare a busy legislator who does not have time to fact-check a well-dressed lobbyist in real time.
It worked just well enough this round.
It will not work when we are standing in the same room, with developers and players beside us, ready to answer every single claim as it happens.
Here is what happens next.
We are not stopping. Not even close.
Next session, we come back with an in-person lobbying presence, the funding to do this properly, and a long list of organizations and developers signed on in support.
We are not limiting this to California. We intend to introduce versions of this in other state legislatures, and we are seriously looking at the federal level.
The ESA is about to learn what it is like to fight on many fronts at once.
They have to win every single time to keep things the way they are.
We only have to win once to change them.
That math does not favor them.
- SKG and SKI are recruiting!
As we, at Stop Killing Games, grow and expand our structure and efforts, we are at the stage of making mass recruitment. Likewise, we are helping establish the SKI movement (Stop Killing the Internet), our sister project launching tomorrow, which will have their own teams. For those reasons, we now created a form where those of you that think that have the skills and availability can apply to either SKG, SKI or both! Before we make that announcement public in other platforms, we are giving the community here in discord the head start courtesy, as this is our center of operation and we love the community here present. If you wished to be more involved with these movements, this is your chance. Even if you are uncertain what exact team/role you would end up in, don't be shy or judge too much the titles. We have created a section in our discord server where you can talk/write and we will have people talking to you and help you figure out which role would be suitable. Also, if you have any questions related with the recruitment topic, feel free to ask in this new section. We have also a voice channel where potentially, interviews will be conducted or questions can be directly made. Here are the respective text and voice channels recruitment-textrecruitment-voice
You can read more about the teams at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kAvWKeurT9FH10iTs7dWKUxS5coxhIJQsqeZDiESoJg/
And you can apply at: https://forms.gle/pU71JR4xVRpJi8cv7