14 DAY TRIAL // Records have revealed that the Entertainment Software Association has spent up to 190,000 dollars (149,000 Euro) during 2011 in order to lobby in favor of the Protect IP Act, with at least four transactions linked to lobby groups that have discussed a range of matters with members of the United States Congress.
It seems that PIPA and the more recent Stop Online Piracy Act have been major points of discussion and at the moment it’s not known how much the ESA has spent lobbying on the same issues during the first weeks of 2012.
The ESA is a trade organization that is set to represent the interests of its members and lobbies to push forward the video game industry and its goals.
The organization has been widely praised in 2011 for the way it has handled the video game related case that was decided by the United States Supreme Court, which affirmed that video games represent protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
As Congress is getting ready to decide the fate of PIPA and SOPA the ESA has come under attack because some see the organization as going against the interest of at least some of its members, who have publicly stated that they oppose the bills even if they have concerns about the impact of piracy.
Companies like Nintendo, Sony and Electronic Arts have withdrawn their support for SOPA earlier during the year, according to information coming from the Judicial committee of the Senate, while others, like Epic Games, Nvidia, CD Projekt RED and Capcom have made their opposition a matter of public record.
Recently the office of the President has jumped into the discussion and stated that it could not support SOPA in its current form and the representative who introduced the bill removed one of its most aggressive provisions.