Steam Gaming Service Removes A Number Of Adult Games Following Pressure By Credit Card Companies, Paypal Blocks Steam In Much Of The World

 

If you're a fan of game with mature themes, there's been a development on Steam that will likely leave you worried and/or upset. It seems following pressure from credit card companies, Steam has taken a number of adult-rated games off it's list for sale. 

 

In a PC Gamer article, Value, which owns Steam, was reported as saying, "We were recently notified that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks. As a result, we are retiring those games from being sold on the Steam Store."

 

Earlier, Steam had enacted a new, and vague, rule about banning "Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers."

 

An article in The Guardian stated the pressure by the credit card companies was due to pressure on them by "Collective Shout," a group seeking to ban adult content from Australian Internet access, saying the corporations were "facilitating and profiting from rape, incest and child sexual abuse game sales."

 

The result has been a backlash. On change.org, a petition was started protesting the censorship of the games, "not because they're illegal, but because they offend the personal values of executives or activist groups," going on to say, "These same payment processors allowed platforms like OnlyFans to operate with minimal oversight, despite multiple credible reports and lawsuits alleging the presence of real sexual abuse content involving real-life minors. That is a criminal failure of responsibility. Yet, when it comes to entirely fictional depictions, these same companies act swiftly — shutting down creators, restricting access, and acting as global censors." 

 

So far, the petition has gotten over a quarter million signatures. One who left a comment identified himself as a member of the LGBTQ community, "Banning sexual content never stops there, it always include non-sexual things. As such the fight to protect people’s right to sexual expression is vital for protecting my right to exist." 

 

Mastercard eventually responded, but denied making any pressure on Steam, "Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations."

 

To add to Steam's troubles, Paypal became unusable in most of the world as an option to pay for Steam purchases. It was reported in The Gamer only users in the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, and countries which use the Euro can still do so. At first, Valve offered no reason as to why, but later would explain, "In this case, one of PayPal’s acquiring banks decided to stop processing any Steam transactions, which cut off PayPal on Steam for a number of currencies"

 

As of now, it is unclear when the delisted games will be restored, or when Paypal will be fully useable again. 

 

Sources: PC Gamer, The Guardian, The Gamer, Rock Paper Shotgun 

 

Bixyl Shutan 

 

Commentary: Game Company GREED

 

If you're a gamer, you've probably seen a promising game in development, a "beta" version, gotten it because of what's promised in the future, and in the weeks and months ahead while there's some development it doesn't come close to the hype when you forked over your money. Nydia Tungsten has seen this happen time after time, as well as other occasions of "bait and switch" in the gaming industry, and decided it was time to write something about it. So what did she have to say?

Read Nydia's commentary in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

More on Net Neutrality: Over 200 Businesses Sign Letter of Support, Philip Rosedale Predicts "Especially Negative" Consequences

By Bixyl Shuftan

Earlier, the Newser wrote about the plans of the FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to dismantle regulations protecting Net Neutrality. To the ordinary Internet user, it may seem like a David and Goliath style struggle of thousands of little guys like him versus huge corporations. As it turns out, the little guys have some big guys on their side. On November 27, also known as "Cyber Monday," one of the biggest days of shopping online in the year, over 200 online businesses and trade groups signed their names to a letter to the FCC asking them to scrap Pai's call to end Net Neutrality protections. Among those on the list were Pinterest, Reddit, Tumbir, Twitter, and Vimeo.

Because of the open internet, a web developer can launch a business out of their own apartment, an aspiring fashion designer in Wyoming can sell clothes in Los Angeles, or a caterer can find new customers in their town. Because of net neutrality, consumers and businesses have unfettered access to one another, increasing competition and consumer choice.

Without these rules, internet service providers will be able to favor certain websites and e-businesses, or the platforms they use to garner new customers, over others by putting the ones that can pay in fast lanes and slowing down or even blocking others. Businesses may have to pay a toll just to reach customers. This would put small and medium-sized businesses at a disadvantage and prevent innovative new ones from even getting off the ground. An internet without net neutrality protections would be the opposite of the open market, with a few powerful cable and phone companies picking winners and losers instead of consumers.

And what would the repeal of Net Neutrality mean for Second Life? According to Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab, it would be very bad. In a post on Twitter, Rosedale reminded everyone that for many users of the Internet, where they live there's only one Internet provider, especially for high-speed Internet.

Many Americans have only one internet provider. Removing the requirement for net neutrality would allow their opinions to be biased by the provider. Unbiased information will become a privilege of the rich. This is against everything we stand for as a country.

Talking to Hamlet Au of New World Notes, Rosedale explained more, "The end of net neutrality would be especially negative for high bandwidth services like SL and High Fidelity that are delivered by less powerful companies. I would not be surprised to see providers with no competition simply re-introduce by-the-megabyte billing for 'non-premium' services, taking us all the way back to the stone age of AOL and other early online services."

Second Life can be quite a "bandwith hog," to quote the starter of a 2007 thread from the SL Universe forums in which one person stated his Internet plan's bandwidth allowance for a month only covered slightly more than three days of use. With this in mind, it's fair to say the end of Net Neutrality would strongly affect a number of core residents. For users who spend a lot of time here whose Internet provider ends up putting a strict bandwidth limit with high charges for going over,  this would mean paying more, perhaps significantly more, for a higher level of use, or severely cutting their time here.

On another note, an article by the Washington Post reported that "hundreds of thousands" of emails to the FCC about Net Neutrality were likely fake. An article in Hackernoon stated that there were more than a million fake messages to them calling for the repeal of Net Neutrality, concluding that only three to four percent of the total of comments they had received were probably real.

Sources: The Verge, New World Notes, Twitter, Ars Technica, SL Universe, Washington Post, Hackernoon

Bixyl Shuftan

Leading Youtube to Music File Conversion Website Shut Down By Music Industry

In a development that's clearly of interest to music lovers, youtube-mp3.org, once the top website for converting Youtube videos into MP3 files, was shut down earlier this month following an out of court settlement between the site's owner and the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA. The website www.youtube-mp3.org had been one of the most visited websites on the Internet according to an article in Torrent Freak magazine. But checking the location only shows a dead link, the site having been taken down.

About a year ago, Philip Matesanz of Germany and PMD Technologies UG, the owners of the website had been sued by a number of record companies, charging that the "Defendants are depriving Plaintiffs and their recording artists of the fruits of their labor," while raking in money from advertising. In the agreement between Matesanz and the companies, the domain had been handed over to RIAA and it's owner making a payment of an undisclosed cash settlement,  the recording labels agreed to halt further prosecution, and the defendant accepts the blame of the charges against him.

While this is the end of www.youtube-mp3.org, these music companies feel the problem of "stream ripping" shouldn't have gotten so far to begin with, complaining that Youtube needs to take more responsibility in trying to stop them.  As it turns out, Youtube did threaten legal action against the website, as well as the video downloader TubeNinja.

For those whom had been depending on youtube-mp3.org for their music, such as possibly some Second Life DJs, they will now have to find another way to get new music.

Sources: The Next Web, Torrent Freak

Bixyl Shuftan

Net Neutrality Under Threat: Court Ruling Opens Possibility of Paying More or Slower Internet

By Bixyl Shuftan

For years, the prinicple of "Net Neutrality," that Internet Service Providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equaly has governed how people go about online. People can download all information at an equal rate of speed instead of being offered different tiers of speed for different fees. But recently, there was a court decision that means trouble for supporters of this policy.

In 2010, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enacted a set of rules based on the Net Neutrality idea. But on Tuesday January 14, a US Federal appeals court ruled that the FCC had no legal authority to enforce them (link). The court stated while the government can oversee crucial services like telephones and electric power, the Internet isn't a crucial service. The FCC is expected to appeal the ruling.

The ruling opens the way for Internet Service providers to start charging customers more of they want to continue to download and surf at the speed they've been using. For those who don't pay more, the company could slow down their service. Consumers could also pay more as media sites like Netflix are charged more for using lots of bandwith, and they react by passing their costs down to their customers. Gamers could find themselves tacked with a "bandwith charge."

So why not switch to an Internet Service provider that isn't charging more? For many consumers in the US, that isn't an option. Unlike say Britian where people have a choice between a dozen or so Internet service providers, many places in the United States operate under a monopoly by a single ISP.

Financial talk show host Clark Howard compared the situation to the toll roads in early 19th Century America. People complained loudly over the fees charged, and eventually the tolls were lifted. He felt it would be much the same if Internet fees were to go up as a result of the ruling. Chatting with Valkyre McGill in Second Life, whom in the past wrote for Acceler8or magazine, felt any "nickel and diming to death" from excessive charges by Internet Service Providers would be met with new encryption, and other technologies that would allow users to get around "the current centralized web model" and make the ISPs less relevant than they used to be.

Sources: CNN, CNN Money, BBC, Clark Howard, Forbes,  Acceler8tor,

Bixyl Shuftan

Opinion: Will SOPA Wash Away the Internet (and Second Life)?

A youtube of a chubby bearded character has been going around a number of friends of mine. Despite his similar looks to left of center figure Michael Moore, this man’s cause is more Libertarian: the SOPA Bill in Congress.

The SOPA Bill in Congress, he charges, threatens to shut down the Internet as well know it by making people liable to a multimillion dollar lawsuit just for *linking* to a song or other material. Ironically enough, some of the top SOPA supporters he charges were distributors of some of the software tools used by downloaders, CBS/VIACOM, ABC/Disney, Microsoft, and others. The purpose: entrapment. He charges the distributors of conspiring to put a chokehold on the Internet in order to control entertainment markets by “taking down Youtube, Twitter, and all other websites and networks you use.”

He certainly sounds over the top and easy to dismiss. That he was previously noted only for his “Epic Fail Toys Funny Videos” doesn’t exactly help his cause. But the more I looked into SOPA, the less I liked.

SOPA is short for “Stop Online Piracy Act.” Checking Wikipedia, the bill would allow copyright holders to sue websites they accuse of “enabling or facilitating copyright infringement.” Actions they could take include Payment sites like Paypal from doing business with targeted websites, baring search engines from linking to them, and requiring Internet Service Providers to take them down. It also would make “unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime” punishable by five years in prison. Debate in the House will continue when Congress returns from winter recess.

Fortunately the “Epic Fail Toys” man isn’t the only one talking about SOPA. There was another video sent to me, made by “The Cynical Brit.” There was also an article on the Forbes website, “How SOPA Could Ruin My Life” by Paul Tassi, a writer, and a small business owner operating from his website, “a movie/tv/video game site that I started with a partner about three years ago.” SOPA, he feels, will cause him and others to close down. The bill, he fears, “reeks of Chinese and Iranian Internet policies that allow the government to simply censor the Internet the way they see fit ... their definition of what piracy is ends up including most of the Internet, including my own site, and the punishments for even minor infringements could be catastrophic and run me out of business completely.”

Also opposing it is David Ulevitvh, the head of the Internet business Open DNS. "The legislation has the potential to create the great firewall of America," he told a CNET reporter. The bill “is written so broadly that it will invite abuses,” and would be bad for businesses like his, which would have to reincorporate as offshore companies.

So why is this bill making any headway in Congress at all? Tassi claimed many of the Representatives who went over it in committee “admitted to not knowing how to use the internet. The consensus among them was merely ‘ piracy sounds bad, therefore we should pass this anti-piracy bill ‘ without any further investigation into its deeper implications. Implications that would in effect, destroy the entire idea behind the Internet.”

Ulevith himself went to Washington to talk with Congressmen. What he saw was not good news, "Everything they were hearing from people who came to their door every day is fervent support (for SOPA) ... There was nobody sitting on the other side of the table opposing it ...The amount of perspective and influence we have in DC is essentially non-existent. it's not serving us well anymore."

Amendments to the bill have been rejected, and Congress is set to debate it sometime “early next year.” How it will affect Second Life is unclear, though as the Grid has been targeted before for copyright infringement, some are predicting a chilling effect as radio streams and roleplay regions shut down out of fear of lawsuits. Among those expressing worry, Nydia Tungsten, whom worried she would have to give a certain announcement:

Because the US goverment has been bought by the recording industry, KVXN will be off the air until further notice. I am sorry to have to do this, but I don't want solders kicking in my doors because i am playing music for others to hear, so until we know how and where this is going....this is KVXN Signing off.....

“KVXN Shutting down forever is a REAL possibility, we need to let those fools in Washington know that WE know this is them lining their pockets again.”

Big Business can be beaten. This week, less than a day after Verizon Wireless announced a fee for paying their bills, a public outcry brought it down. Will this also be the case for SOPA, or will the United States join China in censoring the Internet? Tassi went on to write about a "VETO SOPA" Petition that got over 26,000 signatures in two days (as of when this article was written, it's over 44,000). He wasn't sure what the White House would say, but, "Until then, keep signing. It can’t hurt."

I can’t tell others what to do, but I have sent emails to my Congressman and Senators asking them to oppose this dirty SOPA.

Sources: Youtube, Wikipedia, Forbes, CNET

Bixyl Shuftan