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Oz Government Seizes Games For "Full Classification"
sprayNwipe writes: "QGL is reporting that the Office of Film and Literature Classification has raided game stores in Australia and removed games from shelves, after deeming that said games are offensive earlier in the day. Some of these games are big christmas sellers, too (Grand Theft Auto 3, and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon). Why must our government be filled with luddites?" Can any Australians comments on what "full classification" means? Does it only mean labels, or are some games outright banned?
Under the shade of a parliamentary inquiry
And he sang as he pulled and classified 'til the children weren't spoiled
You'll come a-seizing matilda, with me.
Apparently, the Australian government doesn't take kindly to games that promote the stealing of cars and running down of people; they won't even give GTA3 a rating so it can be sold.
Do they censor books and other forms of entertainment/media like this in Australia?
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Maybe it's all a cover so they can get the good games for themselves.
Other than humor, I find this action too stupid to even comment upon. I hope nothing like this happens in the U.S. If the gov't wants to enforce a rating system (something I don't have a problem with), they need to get their act together before the product is on the shelf.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I wonder if this has got anything to do with "Computer Games and Australians Today" a "major national study about computer games and the way in which they are perceived and used by Australians" which were released on Monday by the government?
This government is so openly divisive for its own ends that I would not put it past them.
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I find it amusing that they took these games on the pretense that, if the public had access to them, they would learn by example to do things that are not good for society (ie, stealing cars).
So the Aussie government's solution is to go out and legally steal all of the video game copies from the stores.
Yeah, really great example there guys.
I guess their message is that stealing is ok if it's being done For the Children(tm).
It reminds me of the tee-shirt, with a picture of a swat team breaking into a house, the caption reads "We're from the government, we're here to help!"
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''I think it's pretty simple. If the government takes away these 'unsuitable' games from shelves, the people will get them by other means, either by downloading them from warez rings or importing them from overseas. As always, the gov't is just making a huge ass of itself and farting in our faces.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Interesting how the government body uses the word "classification" instead of censorship ...
The Australian EFF equivalent site has a lot of interesting information on censorship in general, and they also a review of some of the guts of the issue.
This doesn't seem to be a new issue though -- in 1999 The Age printed that the first game banned for violence actually occurred in 1997.
Stealing IS okay when it's done "for the children." Whenever I play GTA2, you'll frequently hear me yelling "Raaah! Take that, pig-f***er! This one's for the children! Raaah!" ... It makes me feel kind of justified.
GTA3 lets you pretend to steal cars and run down animated people on a tv screen. It doesn't promote really stealing cars or running down people in actuality. My son plays good guys/bad guys with his friends, and he pretends his finger is a gun and pretends to shoot his friends with it. Is his game one that "promotes" the shooting of people? Should the government be able to regulate my child's imagination?
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
But I know that the Linux distro was banned there a few years back for having things like, "Torvalds fucked up the networking for this ..." in the kernel source.
Anyone have more specific areas?
Thanks
Just like when I was driving home one day and I heard that our illustrious governers decided to ban/tone down Carmagheddon.
Guess which game I picked up next ?
If they want to ban it, it must be cool !
This isn't an outright ban. You see, when you have beaurocracy, they create procedures. If you try to sell something without going through the proper procedures they get upset. Alls the gaming companies had to do was go through the right procedures and have the games classified and everything would have been alright. But because they didn't, now they have to wait for the OFLC to get around to classifying it in their own time. It's a bit like coding. If you don't comment your change the merge and build manager will send it back to you. You have to follow the procedures.
Back in 1994, I think, 3D realms voluntarily censored Duke Nukem for the Australian market by forcing the parental lock, and removing the mechanism for turning it off. Of course, the crack went the rounds (a friend of mine can still recite the hex patch).
I believe the assumption was that a child in the US is more capable of handling the 'content' of Duke Nukem than an Australian adult.
Doom skirted the edges. It was violent, but it wasn't realistic. You were obviously killing monsters, not people.
Now that 3D technology has gotten to the point where the graphics leave nothing to the imagination the issue has arisen again. At the core, these are the same games that have been played since the beginning of computer games. But on the surface the games look real. What this means is that with a single glance a non-gamer can be exposed to violence -- while previously you had to get into the gameplay and use your imagination to feel/see the same thing. Violent computer games used to hide behind graphical limitations. Whenever the technology catches up with the designer's imagination we have problems like this.
QED
It wasn't that long ago that the Aussies decided to severely regulate/ban most firearms. Many in the firearms owners' rights community in the USA have proposed that once the government is finished stripping us of our Second Amendment freedoms, they'll come after the First Amendment. It certainly seems that way down under.
Two interesting side notes:
If one looks at the figures on firearms imported into Australia for a number of years (10?) prior to the crackdown, one would find the number of firearms surrendered and registered as required to be only about 20% of that figure...
Violent crime (assaults, rapes, domestic violence, robberies, burglaries) has INcreased dramatically since the new firearms regulations went into effect. (The crackdown directly resulted from an Aussie, going "Postal", and a desire to "reduce crime".)
This is just another example of well-intentioned government running amuck. It's no different than the state of California buying power and locking in exorbitant prices that they are now stuck with. When will we ever learn?
If they thought GTA3 was bad, I wonder what they'd think of Postal and it's sequel?
If an item is 'Refused Classification' in Australia this means that it is banned from sale to quote from the Guidelines for "Classification of Computer Games" (available online):
"Refused Classification. Material so classified may not be sold, hired, exhibited, displayed, demonstrated or advertised."
Notice that possession of the material is not itself an offence. This is different from Child Pornography where mere possession is an offence. In the case of games it would be interesting to see if playing a game in public (say at a LAN party) would fall into the exhibited, displayed, or demonstrated categories.
Why doesn't /. have a <troll> tag?
Many in the firearms owners' rights community in the USA have proposed that once the government is finished stripping us of our Second Amendment freedoms, they'll come after the First Amendment.
We're going under the assumption they haven't already gone after our first ammendment rights here. Uh huh. Right.
(If you can be arrested for saying where you can get instructions for acquiring tools which may be used to commit a crime, it seems like we're definitely slipping)
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
'Aaagh they took away our guns' is hardly a substitute for a real discussion, kids. Especially when you either don't live here or never bothered finding out the facts. They banned automatic and semi-automatic ones. You're still allowed to get those if you have a good reason, and you can still buy a gun as long as you're capable. (ie. an adult and not a violent raving crim.)
Meanwhile, this whole censorship thing is plain weird. This coming from a country that permits all maner of naughty Violence 'n' Cuss Words to be used in prime time TV is just a knee jerk reaction.
But the fact of the matter is that rating systems (similar to TV ratings) have been in place here for ages. Literally ages. You are not meant to buy an MA-rated game when under the age of 15. There is, apparently, going to be an R rating for those of us over the age of 18.
Do stores enforce them? Not on yer nellie. It's my suspicion that if the retailers actually got off their collective lazy hineys and enforced these regulations they're meant to be doing, the OFLC wouldn't be in such a tizzy.
La de fricking da.
Do stores enforce them? Not on yer nellie. It's my suspicion that if the retailers actually got off their collective lazy hineys and enforced these regulations they're meant to be doing, the OFLC wouldn't be in such a tizzy.
Fine, great, sure. Working at a retailer (US, mind you-- same general problem everywhere, though), I bust my balls trying to stop people from choosing games that are completely inappropriate for their child (prime example being the woman who came in wanting to purchase Grand Theft Auto III for her nine-year-old son). I explain the ratings system, I tell the parents to read the back of the box, I even use the ratings as a gauge myself when checking if it's something I want to play (believe it or not, bloody is not always better).
And still the parents decide that they know better than to trust the judgement of the clerk in the store, and say "well, if that's what little billy bob wants, then I have to get it and not complain". It's not the retailer's faults, it's the parents'.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
As someone else here mentioned, we've had a ratings system in Australia for awhile. A few years ago, censorship of games was a hot issue. The government of the time (I can't remember which party was in) produced an excellent (in my opinion) review of the issue. The document actually made sense, was well thought out and full of information. Unfortunately it got lost somewhere, or so it seems. When Australia first introduced the ratings system for games that we have now, there was no R-rating. I don't know if this has changed or not, but from what I see on the store shelves, it hasn't. The highest rating I've seen at the moment is MA15+, which means "for Mature Audiences 15 and over" -- it's one step below a restricted (18+) rating. I've seen many games that are rated R in the U.S given an MA15+ rating here, so it may be equivalent.
I think the first game banned here was Phantasmagoria (an FMV adventure game by Sierra On-Line which had a few violent scenes, one that was really over the top but B-grade anyway). Thankfully, a shop where I used to live had a version imported early, before it was banned (I bought it in 1996).
What we really need in Australia is an R-rating. I'm all for *classification* and educating people how to use it. Violence for violence's sake isn't good (games with nothing else don't usually succeed anyway) and people need a way to make an informed decision about what they're purchasing (I think they already do here, btw, except for the R-rating issue).
Remember when you consider something like GTA3 - the market for that game isn't really mature PC users in the same sense that something like Quake or Ghost Recon or even Soldier Of Fortune is. When I heard that you could pick up a hooker, use her then beat her up and take her money, I had visions of these kids getting home, playing this on their PlayStation2 and thinking that it was 'cool'. It made me feel very uneasy, for the first time ever when considering violence in games. It's more what the violence symbolises (I'm not against prostitution, btw) and how it is presented. In something like Ghost Recon, the violent elements are secondary to the plot (the violence is the after-effect, almost). In GTA3, the violence is marketed as one of the main attractions.
(I'll probably get GTA3 to check it out, I enjoyed playing the first two -- but then, I'm a mature adult who is making an educated decision).
It seems like they'd let you play violent computer games since they've already confiscated all the guns and knives (except the government's of course) there.
You must feel a lot safe there knowing that all the criminals turned in their guns too. Oh, wait a minute, they're criminals, they don't obey the laws and they didn't turn in their guns. Wow, maybe sticks and pipes are enough to scare off gun-toting thugs in Australia.
Actually, over 30% of the guns turned in during the buyback and amnesty in the state of Victoria were unlicensed and/or illegal guns.
And yes, dear, I do feel somewhat safer knowing that I live in a country where the murder rate is a quarter of that of the US.
La de fricking da.
That's true. OTOH, one may be fined $5000 for selling tobacco to a minor, and one may be fined something-or-other for oermitting a minor to see an R rated movie, so I'm wondering why the different standard for stores?
La de fricking da.
Excuse me, do you have any idea what the word luddite means? It's a person who is against technology because it took away their jobs. This has NOTHING to do with that. You (And SlashDot) need to get your act together. Misinformation has become far too popular here.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
"And yes, dear, I do feel somewhat safer knowing that I live in a country where the murder rate is a quarter of that of the US."
where did you get your numbers for this statment? i would love to know.
Our constitution is about the division of powers between state and federal governments. No official document guarrentes free speech in Australia.