Now that we’ve got your attention, we want to draw your attention to a threat that threatens the very core of the gaming community.
The “Stop Online Piracy Act”, aka SOPA, and the Protect IP Act, aka PIPA, are proposed bills in the United States Congress that, if enacted, would effectively end the internet as we know it. In a ham-fisted attempt to combat piracy, Congress has opted for the “Nuke from Orbit” approach, hurting both the community from whom they benefit and developers they seek to protect. We cannot allow this to happen.
If this is the first you are hearing of SOPA and PIPA, take a moment to read the bills themselves by visiting the Electronic Frontier Foundation for more information.
Allow us to stress, Razer does not condone piracy in any way. We feel it damages the industry and we will stand against anything that hurts either the gaming community or the developers. However, we firmly believe that SOPA and PIPA are the absolute wrong way to combat this problem and we are not alone in thinking this. Other gaming companies like Red 5, Riot Games and Mojang stand with us in opposition. However, these bills do not only affect software and game developers and we hope our actions will lead other gaming hardware vendors to join our protest against SOPA and PIPA.
So please join us in a day of protest. We will be taking down our site for one day, January 18th, to give you a taste of what the future may hold if we fail to put an end to SOPA, PIPA, and similar ill-conceived legislation. In its place, we will upload the image above as a placeholder for our site. While this may have an impact on our business, we believe this is a small price to pay to show how the Internet could become if this bill was to be supported.
For Gamers. By Gamers. It is not just a motto, it is our way of life. We work hard to do right by our community. We’ll be damned if we’re going to let an attack like this go unanswer
Team Razer
*We apologize in advance to anyone offended by the image but it sums up our perspective to this draconian bill.
Our websites will be back on 19th January 2012 - 12AM PST
If you require technical support, you can still get help at www.razersupport.com