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.

Comments

Re:Is that even legal?

[gorilla]

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..

THE CAFES ARE NOT BEING SHUT DOWN

[b0r1s]

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.