Playstation 2 incites African War

[Khanetaru]

http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/...an-war/1231745

Has the video game industry dug up its very own blood diamond?

According to a report by activist site Toward Freedom, for the past decade the search for a rare metal necessary in the manufacturing of Sony's Playstation 2 game console has fueled a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At the center of the conflict is the unrefined metallic ore, coltan. After processing, coltan turns into a powder called tantalum, which is used extensively in a wealth of western electronic devices including cell phones, computers and, of course, game consoles.

Allegedly, the demand for coltan prompted Rwandan military groups and western mining companies to plunder hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the rare metal, often by forcing prisoners-of-war and even children to work in the country's coltan mines.

"Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms," said Ex-British Parliament Member Oona King.


So where's the connection to Sony? According to Toward Freedom, during the 2000 launch of the PS2, the electronics giant was having trouble meeting consumer demand. To pump out more units, Sony required a significant increase in the production of electric capacitors, which are primarily made with tantalum. This helped drive the world price of the powder from $49/pound to a whopping $275/pound, resulting in the frenzied scouring of the Congolese hills known for being ripe with coltan.

Sony has since sworn off using tantalum acquired from the Congo, claiming that current builds of the PS2, PSP and PS3 consoles are sourced from a variety of mines in several different countries.

But according to researcher David Barouski, they're hardly off the hook.

"SONY's PlayStation 2 launch...was a big part of the huge increase in demand for coltan that began in early 1999," he explained. "SONY and other companies like it, have the benefit of plausible deniability, because the coltan ore trades hands so many times from when it is mined to when SONY gets a processed product, that a company often has no idea where the original coltan ore came from, and frankly don't care to know. But statistical analysis shows it to be nearly inconceivable that SONY made all its PlayStations without using Congolese coltan."

Currently, the Playstation 2 is the best-selling video game console of all-time, having sold through over 140 million units.

[Churchill]

I got my playstation 2, fuck it.

[Oxyminus]

someone out there is going to be happy about this, citing yet again.....that video games kill people

[Kuya]

Don't they fight over everything in Africa?

[Correction]

"According to a report by activist site Toward Freedom"

Yeah that's totally even-handed reporting there. They're not just parroting the luddite screeching of a single point of view at all! That's research right there, because since 1999 the PS2 has been the biggest single consumer of capacitors, right?

Never mind that 30 seconds on wikipedia yields links to a USGS report that the Congo produces a vanishingly small amount of the world's tantalum, meaning that Sony's claim that it gets it supply from other sources is wholly credible.

Nah, fuck it, why do anything remotely resembling actual journalism when you can slap a catchy title like 'PS2 INCITES AFRICAN WAR' and smile like you've made a difference in the world?

[miokomioko]

"According to a report by activist site Toward Freedom"

Exactly what I stopped reading at.

[Kazen]

Even if it did, the people there would fight over anything that has any form of value, you cant really blame the items using the material, but the people there.

[Krandor]

I've seen this before and it's a load of crap, the entire "report" is incredibly biased. It also seems to forget that this happened years ago, despite the start of the article wording it like this is happening now.

As already stated, Sony did not know where they get the material from, and pushing the entire blame for a material already in high demand (Cell phones/computers/other video game consoles) on Sony is just retarded.

[Lordwafik]

I wonder if the people saying HURRRR SONY realize the chips on their PCs consist of the same african slaves that the PS2 contain.

[BRP]

Kind of slowpoke, surprised it's appearing now assuming there hasn't been another thread.

Also, it's complete bullshit. Anyone with sense who reads it can understand that. Why bother posting it?

[Darus Grey]

This article is true in that PS2 uses Congo Coltan...what it doesn't state is that practically sever single electronics manufacturer on the planet does too. Nokia is a bigger offender than Sony is.

Claiming the PS2 alone caused the spike in pricing is hilarious. The pricing jump was caused primarily by cell-phones becoming mainstream disposable items and the PS2 just coincidently launched the time the spike happened.

Most U.S. metal speculators don't trade in Coltain anymore because of ethical concerns, plus there's a bill that's likely to pass that will make it illegal anyways.