Last week, following my article on GotGame.com regarding Scribblenauts’ EULA, I assembled another article here exploring the Entertainment Consumer Association. In that article, I noted my suspicions that the ECA might be in cahoots with retailers; looking out for their best interests over those of the consumer.

Shortly after it’s posting, I received an email from Jason Anderson, the public relations director for the ECA.

Jason was very helpful in offering to answer any questions I might have about the organization. My largest concern regarded to the suspicious overlap that I’d seen in some of the ECA’s staff (including president Hal Halpin) with retailers like GameStop and other organizations dedicated to sustaining the revenues of retail merchants. Jason assured me that the ECA has no connection with GameStop and is a strictly non-profit organization. He also provided me with documents on the ECA’s policies, which can also be found on the ECA website.

In addition, ECA President Hal Halpin sent me this statement:

Hi Sean,

Hal Halpin, President of the ECA

I read with interest your blog posts – both on your site and on GotGame – regarding the digital rights issues we are, and shall be, facing going forward. We share your concerns about EULAs and even took a fairly public stance on the matter earlier this year. We also believe that informing consumers, broadly, about these issues to be extremely important. To that end, we have several ways for people to learn more and get engaged, be they ECA members or not, which I’ll paste in below:

Gamers for Digital Rights – here people can learn generally about the issues, sign up to get more information, join a related FaceBook Group to discuss the related matters and get more news and updates, and write the FTC about DRM and EULAs.

Grassroots Advocacy – here, folks can learn more about why it’s important that they learn about the issues impacting gamer’s rights and how being an ECA member will help effect change.

Position Statements – here, visitors can find out where ECA stands on a variety of public policy and issue areas including Digital Rights Management, End User License Agreements, Environmental Responsibility, Fair Use, Net Neutrality, Parental Empowerment, Regulation of Video Games, Taxes on Video Games, and Universal Broadband.

As for your questions about my background in retail, yes, prior to the founding of ECA, about three and a half years ago, our management team formerly ran and started the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association (IEMA) for almost a decade. The IEMA was a non-profit trade association which represented game retailers (i.e. Wal-mart, Target, GameStop, Best Buy, etc.).

One of the reasons that ECA has been able to secure relationships with merchant partners and the related discounts to our members, is because of those personal connections over the years. That said, the ECA is owned and funded entirely by its members – individuals. As a 501(c)(4) non-profit membership organization, the easiest way to think of us is like a AAA or AARP, but for Gaming. A sample/partial listing of our member benefits can be found here. And our sponsors/partners list can be found here.

I hope that addresses your questions. Thanks again for your support and helping to get the word out about some of the issue areas in which we’re engaged.

Best,

-Hal.

Hal Halpin, pres.
Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA)

I do appreciate Jason and Hal for their participation. I find relief knowing that organizations like the ECA exist and I do support them. It’s important that if we are going to be effective in maintaining our rights, we must congregate and organize ourselves to harness our strength.

That said, I’m also hypervigilant against corporate deception and public manipulation. I’ll stand behind the ECA’s flag, but I won’t follow blindly. It’s my personal modus operandi to question those who lead the pack to make sure that the true spirit of the organization is upheld, uncorrupted. I love what the ECA does, but I want to make sure it’s being done for the right reasons. I encourage my readers to check out the links above and take action for themselves.

As part of my follow-up, I’ve also asked Jason if the ECA can encourage Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to publicly comment on Scribblenauts’ EULA. Prior to publishing my article on GotGame.com, I attempted to contact their tech support with questions as a concerned customer, but have gotten no response.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.