Facebook is trying to stop you from voting on its future policy changes. And it’s the smartest thing it’s ever done.

Since April 2009, Facebook has notified its users whenever it planned to make any changes to its site governance. Meant to get users involved in the policies that shape the social network, the voting process has been held twice so far. And both times have been massive failures.

In the inaugural vote, only 665,654 of Facebook users participated  – a tiny number in comparison to the social network’s then-membership of 200 million people. The second vote, held earlier this year, was even worse. In this case, only 342,632 people voted –  just 0.038 percent of users.

As a result of this awful turnout, Facebook is now letting users decide whether it should get rid of the system entirely. That’s right — Facebook is using its broken voting system to decide whether to get rid of its broken voting system.

You have until December 10 to cast your vote, but unless 30 percent of the company’s users vote “no,” then the vote is merely advisory, and Facebook will go ahead with its new policy document, which eliminates user voting.

The game is rigged

As the world’s largest social network, Facebook is under constant scrutiny from just about every government body and privacy group out there. This, coupled with the overwhelming attentiveness of the modern press, prevents Facebook from doing much of anything without everyone instantly knowing about it. So what does the social network do? It creates a (rigged) system that gives its members a say in the changes it aims to make. If enough people dislike a proposed change, Facebook won’t follow through with it. This makes Facebook look good in the eyes of regulators because even if the turnout’s low, at least it can say that it tried.

But here’s where Facebook’s scheming comes in. One of the big limitations with its voting system is that it requires that 30 percent of its members vote in order to make the vote binding. Think about that. Facebook now has north of a billion users, which means that 300 million people — roughly the population of the United States — would need to vote in order to prevent its proposed policy changes from going into effect. If there was ever a system set up for failure, it’s this one.

Also, consider that for a social network built on ads, Facebook is really bad at letting its members know when its opening up new voting opportunities. Clearly, the social network isn’t going out of its way to get the word out.

Facebook’s real sin, though, is that it gave members the sense that their votes mattered in the first place. Were that the case, it would simply lower the 30 percent threshold to something smaller — or get rid of it altogether. But the problem is doing so would risk giving its community actual power, and that’s the last thing Facebook wants.

A Chinese democracy

It would be easy to call Facebook’s voting process a failed attempt at a democracy, or even a house of mirrors made to give members the false impression that their say actually counts.

But the truth is that Facebook isn’t a democracy all, nor is it just a social network anymore. It’s a company, and like any company it wants to make money. Asking members what they think about every new policy change isn’t going to help it do that.

Of course, it also doesn’t help that the Facebook community is as clueless and misinformed as a first time dad in the diaper aisle. Remember the so-called copyright disclaimers that made the rounds on everyone’s Facebook walls last month? While various news outlets pointed out that the messages meant essentially nothing, that hasn’t prevented Facebook members from continuing to think otherwise.

The incident, like every other Facebook privacy scare, underscores the basic reality about our relationship with the social network: We’re not paying a single cent to use it,  which means we’re not Facebook’s customers. 

Were Facebook any other company, expressing distaste with its business practices would be easy: We’d just stop buying whatever it sold. But we can’t do that with social networks. And Facebook knows it.

Facebook’s entire modus operandi right now is to make tiny incremental policy changes that few people know about and even fewer people care about. But even if the changes upset members, would they care enough to just stop using Facebook? Probably not.

The infinite Facebook flywheel

I don’t fault Facebook for being a company with financial concerns and a stable of money-hungry stockholders. Nor do I fault it for treating its users less like customers and more like organic packets of data. But what I do fault Facebook for is pretending as if anything else was the case.

The truth is that Facebook is no longer a nascent social network with a membership of 200 million people. It’s a sprawling flywheel of a company that serves roughly a seventh of the world’s population. The voting process may have made sense back when Facebook was still rapidly growing, but that’s no longer the case now the whole operation’s so massive.

Facebook knows that its voting mechanism is dead, and when it does die, the social network will be a whole lot better off. Why? Because it will show, finally and without question, that Facebook isn’t beholden to its community. And that’s a wakeup call that Facebook members desperately need.

Facebook opened its polls up today for users to vote on proposed privacy changes, perhaps for the last time. Facebook users have seven days to vote on a number of updates to the social network’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Data Use Policy, including whether Facebook should get rid of the option to vote on changes.

You can vote within the next seven days here. Thirty percent of Facebook’s population would have to vote against the changes to keep them from passing. On the voting app, you can review the proposed changes, vote, and view results. The polls will close December 10, 2012 at 12:00 p.m. Pacific time.

In the past, Facebook has allowed all of its users to vote on whether or not they agree with changes the social network makes to its privacy policies. In this last round of changes, however, Facebook suggested that it strike the voting from its approval process in favor of what it says will be a more constructive form of feedback.

Users have seemingly been in a huff about that particular change. Two privacy groups, The Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy, even sent a letter to Facebook, asking it to remove the voting changes from its proposal.

But it seems not many Facebook users actually exercise their “right” to vote. According to Facebook public policy and marketing vice president Elliot Schrage, only around 10 percent of users actually turn out for the vote, and, as already mentioned, it would take 30 percent of the user population to keep privacy changes from passing.

Schrage also added in a blog post today that the company isn’t trying to take away your ability to give feedback, but is instead trying to get more constructive feedback instead of just, “I don’t like this. Take it away.”

Also included in the privacy changes are Facebook’s ability to share information with “affiliates,” which includes Instagram, and will also get rid of the option to dictate who can and cannot message you.

Check out the proposed changes here.

Voting image via Shutterstock

Startups often say their technology will change the world — a claim that seems wildly optimistic at best.

But step into the San Francisco offices of Change.org, the online petitioning site that is arming ordinary people with the tools to start revolutions, and you’ll be swept up by the mission. You won’t be alone. The movement is about 25 million people strong and is growing at a rate of 2 million memberships per month.

Can an individual spark a revolution?

Governments and corporations, they say, will be forced to listen if hit by thousands of signatures on Change.org, an army of Twitter and Facebook fans, and a few well-placed newspaper articles.

I meet Ben Rattray, the company’s charismatic CEO (pictured above), in his corner office. He’s weary from frequent travel: we joke about the “networking opportunities” during the red-eye flight from New York to San Francisco on Sundays. It’s typically jam-packed with tech execs returning from East Coast trips.

Directly behind his chair, a single photograph is framed in an otherwise sparsely decorated room. It’s the face of Molly Katchpole, the 22-year-old nanny who took on Bank of America. In November 2011, Katchpole’s victory was affirmed when 300,000 people signed her petition and the bank dropped its new $5 monthly debit card fee.

This is one of many recent campaigns that caught the attention of the global media. On Change.org, a trio of high school girls secured CNN’s Cindy Crowley as the first female presidential debate moderator in 20 years. One of the site’s members rallied hundreds of thousands of people to put pressure on the South African government to crack down on “corrective rape,” a term used to describe the horrific practice of a man raping a lesbian with the aim of ‘turning’ her heterosexual.

Something has shifted in recent years. Political activism is no longer the realm of the youthful and naive. Obama’s election and re-election were fueled by social media, and protests against SOPA and PIPA were staged on Twitter. Social media has created a culture of transparency that is making a site like Change.org truly effective.

“The strong thesis we hold is that people aren’t born apathetic, they are trained to be,” said Rattray.

“If you show them that their voice matters, you can radically change behavior.”

The company is hiring at a rate of two people per week and forecasts revenues of $15 million this year.

The blurry line between profit-making and change-making

And this is where Change.org has faced some criticism. Some say the company has crossed the line between change-making and profit-making; Clay Johnson, author of “The Information Diet” told the Wall Street Journal he has “huge problems” with the site as it is a “lead-generation business disguised as a social-change organization for whoever is willing to pay them for the email addresses.” He continued, “It’s dangerous to monetize ‘change’ because there’s an economic incentive to sensationalize.”

Certified as a B Corporation, the company makes its money through their cause-based ad model. For instance, the World Wildlife Fund might place a sponsored ad on a campaign that supports the environment, or might pay for Change.org to promote an existing campaign. It’s not dissimilar to sponsored tweets or sponsored links on Google.

Rattray claims the company is less concerned with the profit motive than with maximizing impact. To deflect critics, he uses the example of an ongoing engineering project to build a mobile offering that can be deployed in developing countries. This is not intended to make money.

He says Change.org, as a revenue-generating and angel-funded business has been able to offer its employees a competitive salary and benefits. Meanwhile, nonprofits are struggling to hire and maintain talent.

Why work at Change.org?

This week, the company brought on a high-profile CTO, Tom Hughes-Croucher, to lead the engineering efforts. The new hire has a strong reputation in the open-source community, and has worked as a technical evangelist at Joyent and Yahoo.

On the engineering roadmap is a plan to incorporate machine learning so members will be matched instantly to a petition based on their pre-existing interests.

“I’m really excited to be starting at Change.org because I know we have such an amazing opportunity to have an impact on the world here as well as some really interesting engineering challenges that come at the scale we operate,” Hughes-Croucher said.

Still, the company has not been able to lure quality engineers that are interested in a sky-high salary and large chunk of equity. “Eighty percent really care about the equity upside and a massive exit,” Rattray told me. “For the 20 percent that care about the mission, we are the fastest growing company in this space.”

The company has openings in communications and marketing, business development, customer support, and engineering. Check out the full list here.

“Startup culture” is a new series that highlights what it’s really like to work at a Bay Area startup. We’ll be profiling a startup every two weeks. Please send your suggestions for the most rockin’ office spaces, startup happy hours, or company perks via email (christina@venturebeat.com) or Twitter (@chrissyfarr). 

Two privacy organizations sent Facebook a letter urging it to reconsider its new stance on passing privacy changes. The company recently announced that it was striking its previous practice of allowing the Facebook community to vote on privacy changes.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy co-authored a letter sent to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief executive, today. In the letter, the organizations tackle Facebook’s most recent privacy proposal, which will remove the option for users to vote on privacy changes in the future.

Users are upset about the change because it removes a big part of the community’s voice and control over their data. Facebook, however, promises that it will take into consideration the quality of comments made about its changes.

It should be noted that Facebook wasn’t actually attracting many comments or “votes” anyway. Only about 10 percent of its users actually opted to speak up after Facebook proposed changes to its privacy statements in June. It seems people mostly take to yelling about the changes on their statuses and posting messages such as:

“In response to the new Facebook guidelines, I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details contained in my personal and business profiles, including, but not limited to: all postings, status updates, comments, illustrations, paintings, drawings, art, photographs, music, videos, etc.”

Of course, as Mike Isaac over at All Things D points out, you’ve already given Facebook permission to use all those things just by signing up.

The privacy groups are further concerned with the removal of the ability to control who messages you through the “Who can send you Facebook messages” tool. They believe that Facebook users will start to experience more spam messages — a hot topic for Facebook’s security team which works to remove spam from the site.

Facebook declined to comment on the letter.

hat tip Bloomberg; Privacy image via Shutterstock

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

New Jersey’s decision to let citizens displaced by Hurricane Sandy vote by email and fax appears to have backfired, with the state now extending the deadline to return those ballots to 8 p.m. Eastern on Friday.

Some Voters in Jersey did not receive their email and fax ballots today after repeatedly requesting them. Those who attempted received bounce-backs from overloaded inboxes and many of those who called to complain got busy signals. Others voters were so desperate that they illegally asked to turn in ballots and election data to a personal Hotmail account.

“People are telling us that they’re not able to get through,” Kerry Margaret Butch, executive director of the League of Women Voters, told NorthJersey.com. “Their emails are getting bounced back.”

Hurricane Sandy caused devastating damage all along the east coast of U.S., with New Jersey seeing some of the worst damage. So Gov. Chris Christie (pictured) decided to allow email and fax voting for those displaced by the storm. Christie indicated that the number of people needing vote in this manner should be small relative to N.J.’s population, but the numbers now appear to be larger than anticipated.

Unfortunately, this means New Jersey will not be counted tonight on the Electoral College (although it is a solid blue state) and ballots cast after Election Day could face challenges.

“We simply want to ensure that New Jerseyans displaced by the storm and first responders are not disenfranchised and have access to a ballot,” Ernest Landante, spokesperson to Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, told NorthJersey.com

N.J. Governor Chris Christie photo via Bob Jagendorf/Flickr

Are you tired of Bronco Bama? Well, so is this voting machine. It wouldn’t let a Pennsylvania voter select Barack Obama for his presidential pick, and instead continually highlighted Mitt Romney.

According to MSNBC, the machine is no longer in operation and was quickly taken out of the voting facility after the voter, a Reddit user, posted to the community news sharing site. There, Redditor “centralpavote,” explained the situation inside the voting booth. It was an electronic voting machine with a touch screen. Each time he selected Barack Obama, the screen selected Mitt Romney. A software engineer, “centralpavote” attempted to click on the candidate below Barack Obama, Jill Stein, but it correctly highlighted Stein. He then tried to find “active areas,” or areas on Barack Obama’s button that would trigger the vote, but he still couldn’t get the machine to respond. He finally found a “small white sliver” on the screen that allowed him to vote for Obama.

“I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not,” he said on Reddit. “I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said, ‘It’s nothing to worry about, everything will be OK.’ and went back to what she was doing.”

That’s what let him to take a video using an Android phone of the glitch and upload it to YouTube under the same name. You can see the video below. He assured readers on Reddit that the video was real and promised to send raw footage as well.

The problems here are obvious. Technological glitches such as these can lead to lengthy vote re-counts, though it can help speed up the voting process as well. For now, it seems the booth has been removed, and thankfully the glitch is fairly hard to miss.

President Obama hopped on Reddit before polls closed today to remind people to vote, a brief follow-up to the hugely popular AMA he held in August.

The AMA in August was a massive success, with the thread receiving more than 6 million views in a matter of days. Obama’s AMA is ““only link in recorded history to have surpassed the front page,” Reddit said at the time.

Obama wrote (emphasis ours):

I want to thank you all again for the reception you gave me in August for my AMA. Good questions. Definitely not bad.

I’m checking in because polls will start closing in this election in just a few hours, and I need you to vote.

Millions of Americans have stepped up in support of this campaign over the last 19 months, and today we decide what the next four years look like — but only if we show up.

I ask that you go out there and cast your vote, whatever your political persuasion.

You can confirm your polling location here: https://www.barackobama.com/lookup

If you’ve voted already, don’t stop there — spread the word to your friends, roommates, and neighbors. Think of it as upvoting.

As Obama notes, the time before the election ends is winding down. Here are a few more helpful links to help you get through the election:

• Where to watch the 2012 election coverage online
• How to find your polling place online
• Watch VentureBeat’s take on the election tonight on KRON
• Track Obama/Romney sentiment live on Twitter’s political index

Today’s presidential, congressional, and local elections in the United States will likely lead to great consequences — no matter who is elected. But if you’re registered to vote and you have not participated in early voting, today is your last chance for a long while to participate directly in democracy.

But where to actually place your vote?

There are several options available online to help you find your correct polling station:

• Google Elections Tool — The single most effective tool I’ve come across to find the location of your polling station is Google’s Elections tool. Just put your address into the tool and Google will place your polling station on a Google Map. Next to the map will be a list of candidates that will appear on your specific ballot, including President, Senators, and Representatives.

• Facebook Polling Location Search Tool — If you’ve got Facebook open in a tab like I often do, this might be a good option. I wasn’t able to find my own polling station, but some other addresses I tried worked perfectly well.

• State election websites — If Google and Facebook don’t help you, it’s time to dig into your state’s election website. Type in “Vote” and your state into your search engine (“Vote Ohio” for example) and the first result will likely be your state’s election site. Once there, find a tab that says something to the degree of “Find My Polling Station.”

Let us know in the comments if you found your polling station today and if you had any issues voting.

Polling station photo: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Election Day is here, and the good news is that many voters – nearly 22 million according to George Mason University’s U.S. Election Project – have already cast their ballots via mail or at pop-up polling stations in shopping malls, colleges, and hospitals around the country.

The bad news is that these early voting places are only popping up in swing states like Florida, Ohio, and Colorado. The majority of us don’t live in swing states and will be stuck waiting in line at polling centers all day long. This got me thinking, given the burgeoning use of the cloud and consumerization of IT, why aren’t we using cloud technology to make voting more convenient and accessible?

Here are some reasons why it should be considered:

Efficiency – Inconsistency in voting procedures, inadequately trained staff and outdated voting equipment all serve to fuel negative headlines and undermine voter confidence. By utilizing cloud technology, voters could choose the option of voting online rather than standing in a line at a polling booth. The U.S. is already one of the most computer-savvy countries in the world, with over 78 percent of the population online, according to Internet World Stats. Compare that to the 56 percent voter turnout witnessed in the 2008 presidential election.

Of course that doesn’t mean that everyone with a computer will vote — and not all Internet users are of voting age — but it does mean there’s potential to increase the number of voters if voting was a little easier. By automating things like multilingual ballots and audio voting for the visually impaired, counties could better serve a broader segment of voters and with far less overhead.

Security – We’ve all seen the news stories about egg-faced officials admitting that huge numbers of ballots had been stolen or misplaced. Ballots, when tabulated electronically and in real-time, eliminate the risk of being lost while in transit or in physical storage.

As part of this, voters could be authenticated via a database of registered voters linked to Department of Motor Vehicle photos. Meanwhile, polling results could be tabulated, backed up, and retained in the cloud for indefinite periods of time. In addition, detailed reports could be quickly generated if reviews were needed or questions arise.

Cost effectiveness – Elections are expensive. This year’s primaries, for example, have cost Wisconsin taxpayers $7.6 million, including over $4 million combined for poll worker wages and staff salaries. Regardless of the type, for compliance reasons, officials must set aside budget resources and the man hours to execute the procedures involved. The cloud provides the IT elasticity that allows officials to “dial up or down” resources on-demand. Last minute corrections to voter materials, for example, could be done online at the click of a button versus reprinting thousands of voter handbooks.

Flexibility – Imagine if Hurricane Sandy or another significant natural disaster were to hit on Election Tuesday? It’s not an inconceivable thought after what the East Coast experienced this last week. Forget about red, blue or swing states  – a sizable chunk of the electorate would never make it to the polls. Cloud technology could go far to minimize the negative impact of such unexpected events.

The simple fact is that the electorate already knows and trusts the cloud. After all we work, shop, conduct personal banking, file our taxes, and, yes, vote (albeit for American Idol) in the cloud. So why should online voting be such a quantum leap? I think if the authors of the U.S. Constitution could have envisioned the cloud, they would have signed their virtual John Hancock to it.

Terry Cunningham is president and general manager of EVault, a Seagate Company. Terry is an experienced, hands-on senior leader with a track record of success in building organizations to realize their full potential. He founded Crystal Services, which was purchased by Seagate in 1994 and integrated into the company’s software division, which then became Seagate Software. Cunningham helped grow Seagate Software, including piloting the organization through $350 million worth of acquisitions. He can be reached at terry.cunningham@evault.com.

Facebook users may use the social network for chatting and sharing, but soon they’ll be using it to register to vote as well.

The state of Washington will be the first to offer residents the ability to register t0 vote via Facebook, a move the state hopes will attract more young voters.

Washington tapped local business Microsoft to create the MyVote app, which could appear as early as next week, as ArsTechnica reports.

Facebook has become a popular target for political activity as of late. Earlier this month CNN announced a partnership with the social network to bring more political chatter to users’ news feeds. As with the Washington initiative, the move targeted younger, more tech-savvy voters who represent an increasing portion of the voting population.

Washington is one of only 13 states that offer online voter registration, which it introduced in 2008. According to data given to the National Journal, 475,000 registrations have been processed via the online system, and from 2010 to 2011, 62 percent of those newly registered voters were under the age of 34.

Facebook voter registration is likely to improve these numbers. This means more young voters, who, if  trends hold, are likely to vote for a Democratic candidate.

If Washington’s efforts are successful, you can expect to see many more states offering similar initiatives over the next few years.

Photo:Shutterstock

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich may be duking it out tonight in Florida’s high-stakes Republican primary, but when it comes to attracting online traffic from Floridians, Romney is the clear winner, according to Experian Hitwise.

Strong Internet buzz doesn’t translate to a proportionately high number of votes, as demonstrated by Ron Paul in the recent Iowa caucuses. Social media predictors had Ron Paul highly favored to take the Iowa caucus, but he trailed behind Rick Santorum and Romney at the end of voting. But perhaps online traffic trends could be a better indicator, if we look closer at data and trending patterns.

Unlike social media channels, which are often hard to analyze, online traffic might actually be a better indicator overall because it shows a level of interest in a candidate and voters’ willingness to learn more about them. Experian Hitwise spokesperson Matt Tatham took the time to give us traffic numbers related to the last few primary contests, and some data points make a fairly compelling argument for traffic translating to votes.

For four weeks leading up to Jan. 10′s New Hampshire primary, Romney was easily ahead of all competitors in attracting New-Hampshire-specific traffic. Romney easily won that contest with 97,532 votes, or 39.3 percent. Ron Paul grabbed 22.9 percent of the vote and Jon Hutsman got 16.9 percent.

South Carolina is another story. Romney attracted more traffic to his site from South Carolina voters than all of his competitors, but he still lost to Gingrich by a 13-point margin. Tatham said there is an interesting data point, though, that correlates with Gingrich’s surprise win. During the last week before South Carolina voting, Romney’s traffic fell considerably lower and Gingrich’s traffic surged.

Now we have tonight’s Florida primary. During the past four weeks, Romney’s campaign site has received the majority of visits from Florida, while Gingrich is leading in site traffic for the entire U.S. Gingrich was garnering more traffic from Florida citizens through Jan. 14, but since that time, Romney’s numbers have come up considerably and Gingrich’s have gone down.

“Getting the most online traffic can mean quite a few things,” Tatham said. “In the case of Florida, perhaps voters feel like they already know enough about Gingrich or maybe they heard a quote from Romney and wanted to find out more about him.”

With tonight’s highly contentious primary in Florida, we will be able to test these numbers once again. And if Romney does prevail, as he is predicted to, it will be another indicator that online traffic and interest can in fact help predict voting patterns.

“A lot was made of Obama’s deft use of the Internet and social media,” Tatham said. “This year, it will be amplified even more.”

Mitt Romney photo: nmfbihop/Flickr

Voices in the video game industry have spoken out about the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and its backing for the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

The proposed SOPA legislation gives the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating or counterfeiting intellectual property. Critics of the bill say that it creates the building blocks for a great American firewall that will curb creativity, cost jobs and curb free speech.

Major game companies Nintendo, Sony and EA reportedly removed their individual support for SOPA in the past week, but in an update, EA said that story was incorrect, because it had never expressed support for the Senate version of SOPA, but rather for something similar to it.

However, these companies are all still members of the ESA trade association, which is listed as a supporter of the bill. Indie game developer Nathan Fouts, behind the games Serious Sam Double D and Weapon of Choice, has urged gamers and developers to lobby the organization to drop support for SOPA. He states that “as long as the ESA is still listed [as a supporter], the game industry as a whole is supporting SOPA.”

In July 2011, the ESA won a landmark court case, which ruled that “video games are entitled to the same constitutional protections as books, movies, music and other forms of artistic expression”, under the First Amendment. The ESA also sponsors the Video Game Voters Network, an organization that unites gamers who support freedom of speech in games. Now it seems, at least to some industry figures, that the ESA is going against one of its guiding principles.

In a statement, the ESA said:

As an industry of innovators and creators, we understand the importance of both technological innovation and content protection, and do not believe the two are mutually exclusive. Rogue websites – those singularly devoted to profiting from their blatant illegal piracy – restrict demand for legitimate video game products and services, thereby costing jobs. Our industry needs effective remedies to address this specific problem, and we support the House and Senate proposals to achieve this objective. We are mindful of concerns raised about a negative impact on innovation. We look forward to working with the House and Senate, and all interested parties, to find the right balance and define useful remedies to combat willful wrongdoers that do not impede lawful product and business model innovation.

Jim Sterling, reviews editor at Destructoid.com has sent an open letter to the ESA,  in which he describes its continued support for SOPA as “hypocrisy on a most despicable level,” given its previous actions to protect freedom of speech. Sterling requests that “as other companies dissolve their allegiance with this poorly written, glaringly broken bill, I ask you to do the same.“

Fouts has also written to the trade association, saying that “The ESA represents the video game industry, including companies such as Sony Entertainment and Nintendo which have dropped support for SOPA. This bill is bad for the internet and bad for the video game industry. Please show the world that the game industry does not support SOPA, and please have the ESA withdraw support.”

The letter appears in full on Fouts’ blog, and he is encouraging gamers to send similar messages to the ESA, as a show of strength by the gaming community.  As he puts it, “I’ve put together a simple post pleading with developers and gamers to focus their internet super powers on getting the ESA to drop SOPA support. If they can get the Ocean Marketing guy fired forever, I’m sure they can blow this up as well.”

The ESA has 34 industry members listed on its website, including Sony Computer Entertainment, Microsoft, Nintendo, Ubisoft, Capcom, Namco Bandai and SEGA. Fouts has appealed to developers working at these companies to “talk to your higher ups about contacting the ESA, to have them withdraw SOPA support”. He says that “there are over 30 really great companies that have made amazing games that are effectively supporting the SOPA bill.”

Fouts is adamant that SOPA is not a viable solution in the fight against software piracy. He admits that “my company lost plenty of potential sales of our recent game Serious Sam Double D to online piracy.” But despite this, “SOPA is not the answer to fixing piracy problems.”

Voting on the SOPA bill has currently been delayed, but the issue is certainly not going to die down, and it will be interesting to see whether other organizations drop their support for the bill, amidst widespread protests by members of the tech community.

You can keep on top of the SOPA story by following VentureBeat’s ongoing SOPA coverage.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Some Oregon residents will have the option of voting via iPad in today’s election.

The state is giving disabled and visually impaired citizens in five counties the option of voting using Apple’s iconic touchscreen tablets.

For those who might experience difficulties in filling out a traditional ballot, county election workers are providing iPads and portable printers to elderly and disabled voters at a range of locations, including parks, nursing homes and community centers.

For voters using the iPad, picking a candidate is as simple as taping the screen. Font sizes and display colors can be adjusted for the visually impaired. The iPad can also read candidates names and information from the voter pamphlet. Voters who do not have enough use of their hands to touch the screen can attach SNP devices to make their selections using just their breathing.

“It’s a lot simpler for me,” said Lewis Crews, a 75-year-old Oregonian who suffers from arthritis, to the Associated Press.

“I think it’s a great setup they got… Now that I’ve seen how it works, I’m confident I can do it on my own.”

Election workers are able to assist in the process as well as to read back a voter’s selections once a paper ballot has been printed out. Once the paper ballot has been checked, it is sealed, signed and delivered via regular mail or an official ballot box.

Today, the state is having a special primary to replace a U.S. House of Representatives member who was forced to resign due to a sex scandal. Former Rep. David Wu is set to be replaced by one of eight Democratic candidates or five Republican hopefuls.

State officials will be using the same iPads-plus-printers system for the special election in January. If successful, the new system may be used across the entire state in future elections.

Image courtesy of Mushroom Princess.