Banning Violent Arcade Games Unconstitutional

zTTTz writes "The US District court ruled that it was not only unconstitutional to ban violent video games from public arcades, but also ruled that the city of Indianapolis pay $318,000 in legal fees to the video game industry. This will probably make other cities think twice about trying to censor video game content again." Update 17:45 GMT by J : We covered the Indianapolis story previously in July 2000, October 2000, and March 2001. Check out NCAC's open letter, too. We haven't bothered covering the recurring news of declining real-world violence (while video games just get more gruesome and explicit), mostly because it's the same story over and over.

Comments

Re:Expect more rulings like this

[gamgee5273]

Actually, being a strict constructionist or a broad constructionist has no bearing on this. The judges who ruled on this are, in all likelyhood, probably Clinton-era appointees. And, while Mayor Peterson is a Democrat, he is typcially seen as a conservative one (a "New Democrat," if you will), one of the reasons he was elected in a city that hadn't seen a Democratic mayor in over 30 years.

I, for one, am a broad constructionist and I abhor censorship laws of this nature because of the fact that it takes the responsibility away from the parent allowing them to rely on the government for babysitting.

I'm thinking your touting of Dubya hasn't been thought out completely, considering the fact that he hails from Texas, a state that still, to this day, censors the works of Shakespeare sold in the state. Not just the works read in school or sold to children, but the works sold in the entire state to everybody.