"Gamers have got to just quiet down," Yee, D-San Francisco, said in an interview Tuesday. "Gamers have no credibility in this argument. This is all about their lust for violence and the industry's lust for money. This is a billion-dollar industry. This is about their self-interest."

Yee, a former child psychologist, believes the court set the standard too high for any study to firmly link the cause and effect of violence.

"It's not all about shooting people in the head and guts everywhere, but that's what the public perception is, and probably rightfully so," said Kris Graft, editor-in-chief of the San Francisco-based site Gamasutra, which along with its print magazine sibling, Game Developer, covers the video game industry. "There is plenty of diversity in video games, but I don't think it's being highlighted enough."

"It's important to point out that some of the most popular video games in history are all titles such as 'Wii Sports,' 'The Sims,' 'Super Mario Brothers,' the Pokemon series and 'Tetris,' " said Kate Edwards, executive director of the trade group International Game Developers Association. "So while the games containing more violence get the attention, they're not a reflection of the game industry as a whole, just as a single genre of film, TV or literature doesn't represent that medium as a whole."

Reid wanted S. 3276 to be considered with a limited number of amendments, but Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) objected and said he didn’t understand why the Senate couldn’t just pass the House FISA bill. He referred to a letter stating that the Obama administration supports the House-version.

We write to share our concern about the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act and the dwindling time remaining to have a meaningful debate and amendment process before your target adjournment at the end of next week. We ask that you contact your party leadership and let them know that you expect ample time for floor debate, privacy and transparency amendments, and possible conference with the House on ultimate legislation.

The FISA Amendments Act is a sweeping authority that allows the government to collect international communications without a warrant, even if an American in the US is on one end. After four and a half years, there is no information publicly available describing how many Americans are caught up in this surveillance program or what is done with the information once collected. There also hasn’t been a single minute of Senate floor time scheduled for debating the merits of this program or to considering amendments that would increase transparency of this program and insert basic privacy protections for our sensitive information in preparation for this reauthorization.

Wyden said he would lift his hold in exchange for a Senate floor vote on an amendment requiring the government to account for how many times Americans’ communications have been accepted, and another amendment prohibiting U.S. spy agencies from reviewing the communications of Americans ensnared in the program.

If that doesn’t go over, he’d lift the hold so the Senate could vote on brief extension of the act so his amendments and others could be fully debated next year.

“I’m willing to go along with a short-term extension as long as we have a chance in the early future, in 2013, to have a debate,” Wyden said.

While having access to geolocation data is clearly useful for law enforcement agencies, without the resource limitations that used to discourage the government from tracking you without good reason, the limits on when and how geolocation data can be accessed are unclear. A police department, for example, might not have the resources to follow everyone who lives within a city block for a month, but without clear rules for electronic tracking there is nothing to stop it from requesting every resident's cellphone location history.

Obviously, we expect people to see us when we step out onto the street each morning, but we don't expect those people to track all of our movements over the course of days, weeks, months, or even years.

A recent example of this was in a gang shooting in my jurisdiction wherein an anonymous caller who feared gang retaliation if his identity was known gave the police the identity of two gang members who committed the murder. The police received cell phone information regarding these individuals from prior arrest reports. The cell-site historical information for the time of the killing shows that those two cell phones were hitting off the same tower at the same time in the area of the murder.

Gingrich: "You are asking a conservative about the economic interests of Hollywood? I am weighing it and thinking fondly of the many left wing people that I am so eager to protect. On the other hand, you have so many people that are technologically advanced such as Google and You Tube and Facebook that say this is totally going to mess up the Internet. The bill in its current form is written really badly and leads to a range of censorship that is totally unacceptable. I believe in freedom and think that we have a patent office, copyright law and if a company believes it has generally been infringed upon it has the right to sue. But the idea that we have the government start preemptively start censoring the Internet and corporations' economic interest is exactly the wrong thing to do."

Romney: "The law as written is far too expansive, far too intrusive and far too threatening of freedom of speech and information carried across the Internet. It would have a depressing impact on one of the fastest growing industries in America. I care deeply about intellectual content going across the Internet and if we can find a way to very narrowly go after those people who are pirating especially those offshore. But a very broad law that gives the government the power to start saying who can pass what to whom, I say no and I am standing for freedom."

Paul: "I am one of the first Republicans to oppose this law and so glad that sentiment has mellowed up here as Republicans have been on the wrong side of this issue and this is a good example on why its good to have someone who can look at civil liberties ... freedom and the constitution bring people together."

Santorum: "I do not support this law and believe it goes too far. But I will not agree with everyone that there isn't something that should be done to protect the intellectual content of people. The internet is not a free zone where anyone can do anything they want to do and trample the rights of other people. Particularly when we are talking about entities off shore. The idea that the government has no role to protect the intellectual property of this company, that's not right. The idea that anything goes on the Internet? Who has that idea. Property rights should be respected."

You have to do something.

It's just, simply, PC piracy is at the most incredible rates. This game cost a huge amount of money to develop, and it has to be, quite rightly - quite morally correctly - protected.

If there was very little trouble with piracy then we wouldn't need it.

We're a broken record on this. This belief that you increase your monetization by making your game worth less through aggressive digital rights management is totally backwards . It's a service issue, not a technology issue. Piracy is just not an issue for us.

DRM is not a decision taken by us as a developer at all. It's a purely a publisher decision. The publisher has every right to protect their investment.

It's difficult to get away from the fact that as a developer, as somebody who puts their blood, sweat and tears into this thing... And from the publisher's point of view, which invests tens and tens and tens of millions into a product - by the time you've got marketing, a hundred million - that piracy on the PC is utterly unbelievable.

When we entered Russia everyone said, 'You can't make money in there. Everyone pirates.'

When people decide where to buy their games they look and they say, 'Jesus, the pirates provide a better service for us.'

The best way to fight piracy is to create a service that people need. I think (publishers with strict DRM) will sell less of their products and create more problems.

[The Patriot Act] was written and passed six weeks after the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history. Congress wisely included sunset dates for the Patriot Act's most controversial provisions, so that they could be thoughtfully considered at a later time. After ten years, it is clearly time for that debate."

So here's my challenge, ASCAP President Paul Williams: Let's address our differences the way decent souls do. In a debate. I'm a big fan of yours, and If you'll grant me the permission, I'd even be willing to sing one of your songs (or not) if you'll accept my challenge of a debate. We could ask the New York Public Library to host the event. I am willing to do whatever I can to accommodate your schedule.

Let's meet and address these perceived differences with honesty and good faith. No doubt we have disagreements (for instance, I love rainy days, and Mondays rarely get me down). But on the issues that your organization and mine care about, there should be no difference worthy of an attack.

"Most of the things we're talking about today are about the record industry, not about the music industry. Everyone is talking about percentages... nobody is talking about music. It sounds like most people here could be selling diapers instead!"

It's not a right for the record industry to make a profit.... Technology has come that has made most of the record industry less valuable. We need to just move on, it's sort of an evolution... It might not be good for people working in the record industry, but the music industry is better than ever."

"The joy of ownership is a very different thing from the joy of a digital download or stream..."

He says A&R is becoming easier for labels, because sites like Hype Machine and We Are Hunted are where A&R guys are looking to see "who's listening to what music". It's less about "taking a punt" than in the old days. "Artists are building up fanbases themselves… and that can be monitored."

"They're doing a fantastic job, they use Topspin to sell their music, and that seems to be very successful for them. We're gonna see more of that..."

"The problem is, nobody really asked the consumer," he says, about attempts to put DRM on CDs. "They absolutely hated it. You put the CD into the computer and it wouldn't play... In the future, we've got to bring the consumers into the business model. In fact, they already are part of the business model."

Can you frame this conversation as free vs. paid? No. Not if you are trying to get someone to pay you cash directly for something that is ubiquitously available for free. Free vs. Paid is not the great debate, it's a no-brainer -- free wins! Valueless vs Valuable, Scarce vs Ubiquitous, Demanding of attention vs Commanding of attention are the debates and the winners will be the individuals and organizations that can most effectively translate the value of content into wealth.

Those of us who think copyright law is a good idea--that it does more good than harm--believe that free market economic incentives are needed for the production (and often distribution) of all kinds of valuable expression and information, whether we are discussing educational value, civic value, or entertainment value. There is no question that much expression would be produced without copyright: the landed gentry was writing poetry before copyright. But to get both the desired amount and mix of expression, properly calibrated copyright is the best tool. The words "properly calibrated" are important, because once the new expression or information is created, social welfare is usually increased by its widespread distribution.

In truth, what we have now is a mixed economy for expression in which some expression is produced under a patronage model (foundation grants, universities), some expression is produced under the open source model (Linux, blogs), and some expression is produced under a profit/incentive model of copyright.