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California City Issues Internet Cafe Moratorium
DarkZero writes: "The Sacramento Bee is reporting that the City Council of Garden Grove, California has issued a 45 day moratium on internet cafes following a fatal stabbing and several other crimes, with the justification that internet cafes are "improperly supervised environments" that very large groups of minors frequent daily (mostly to play games), and that a lot of gang violence has cropped up because of this. Another new restriction is that minors may not stay in any internet cafe past 8PM on a school night, though it isn't clear whether or not that restriction will be lifted after the 45 day period." The New York Times has a similarly breathless story, emphasizing the violence of games played at such cafes.
The supreme court and the ACLU disagree with you. For example, This page, the ACLU cannot teach every high school kid, everybody in the nation, what their rights are..
In India, it was the burgeoning growth of the ubiquitous cybercafe that brought about more or less, a revolution. True, it was the novelty of seeing and listening to an entirely different medium but as the rage caught on, people and the government began to realize the potential reach of these cybercafes so much so that for some time, it was even subsidized. Today, India isn't far off from having near-complete access to the Internet, something quite unimaginable a few years ago.
Of course, perceptions vary soon as we take America as a case study. The cybercafe culture has come to symbolize a pseudo-liberation of a youth both from the family as well as from reality. Significantly, it is usually the adolescents in a confused period who throng to these places. Even though, hard-core First Amendment fanatics might come to criticize this move, it is necessary at least temporarily, to enforce peace and order.
Try reading the article instead of making assumptions from the title and summary.
Not once in the article does any governmental or authority figures claim a link between the gang violence and video game violence.
Rather, the concern is over having an area where a large number of minors gather, while having virtually no method of enforcing security. Sure, the solution doesn't seem like a very good one, but this topic is relevant to Slashdot just because the internet is mentioned?
Moral Panic regularly shows it's ugly head.
...and sometimes the consequenses can be really, really horrible.
It tends to hit all new, and all youth related trends in society.
For example, every single new kind of music since the renaisance(sp?) has been accused of courrupting the youth. (Jazz, Rock, Rap...) Not to mention, comics, novels, violent movies etc.
There is a very obvious pattern of finding scapegoats for complex issues. This is probably as old as man, and very hard to get rid of.
Fact is that scapegoating is a easy way to analyze a problem. Of course it's not accurate, but people tend to like simple explanations. And if you think you have an explanation to a problem it makes the consequenses of the problem less frightening.
For example, the statements:
Children kill eachother because they play too much quake!
Al Quaida bombed us because Bin Laden is evil incarnate!
Makes people feel good, because they see a clear cause to the problem, an easy fix, and most importantly:
It's not their responsability! It makes people feel good that it is not their fault.
They don't want to hear things like:
People join Al Quaida because their lives suck so much they think it makes sense. They blame you for their misery, partly based on that you have (for example) bombed at least one country in the middle east region every decade for some time now. If you or your family got beaten wouldn't you consider the person on the other end of the stick an enemy? With a different US foreign policy Bin Laden might not have (m)any followers.
This statement is probably at least equally true to the statement of Bin Laden being Evil. But for the reasons above it will obviously gather less followers.
I think this is just a basic flaw in humans and the only way to deal with it is to be aware of it, and show some healthy skepticism about overly simple solutions to complex problems.
Because they don't work.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
That's South Korea you're thinking of, not Singapore.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Yea, I live down the 57 from garden grove, and it is a nice place ....
Except it's dominated by asian gangs. The problem isnt the internet cafes, or the games played within. The problem is that the internet cafes are placed in an area known to have a substantial gang problem. Combine: 1) a bunch of young people and 2) an area known to have a high gang population and you're bound to have conflicts. THAT is what happened (just for refernce, I saw the story of the stabbing on the local news the night it happened. definitely gang related, according to everyone involved).
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Please, ignore the poorly worded intro on slashdot, and read the article for yourself. The City Council, responding to a fatal stabbing and other crimes at this Los Angeles suburb's many cyber cafes, placed a 45-day moratorium Tuesday on the opening of any more of the establishments. (emphasis added)
They're not shutting anyone down. They're putting in place an 8pm curfew on weeknights, and asking that the established cafes enforce the standard 10pm curfew the on the weekend.
Please, lets not let this turn into "this city is trying to take the internet away from the people because there are violent video games on the computers". This is a response to gang related stabbings. It has nothing to do with the internet, or geeks, or nerds, or whatever you choose to call yourself. It has everything to do with a rise in the number of cafes in a bad area, and the consequential rise in gang activity at those cafes.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
it's only a 45-day moratorium on opening new ones.
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