First Amendment Rights... but *who's*?

As discussed over on GamePolitics, the ESA has recently been stepping up it's lobbying efforts, under the leadership of it's new head, Mike Gallagher.

 

Among the issues on which they are lobbying:

 

anti-piracy, Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), P2P file sharing, First sale, Technology Mandates, anti-circumvention (i.e., mod chips), media violence, First Amendment protection, entertainment industry ratings systems, parental control technology, content/video game sale regulation, retailer enforcement of ratings systems, Internet privacy, Internet gambling , a variety of trade issues, Virtual property taxation

 

The ESA like any other lobby group is representing the interests of those that supply their funding. In some cases this is in the interest of the customer (e.g. virtual property taxation), in other cases arguably not (DMCA, anti-piracy, etc).

 

I worry more about those that sound noble but are in fact self serving. Case in point being "First Amendment Protection". I'm guessing this translates far more to "don't ban our AO game from being sold", and not so much to "first amendment rights of users in virtual worlds", for example.

 

So if the ESA's looking out for the game industry, who's looking out for the game consumer? Hmm...