Slashdot Mirror
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.
blah blah blah, lets make us an issue for the upcoming election...blah blah blah. I remember back in the day it was "RAP causes violence", and "Rock n Roll causes violence", and eventually "Peace rallys cause violence" 'twas inevitable.
All these instituted regulations on minors remind me of the fundamental flaw that is at work here.
Namely, if it is so important for said minors to not be playing violent video games after 8 PM in the evening, then where are the parents? If you want to replace parents with government, then just say so and call the modern family a failure.
I doubt "the Internet" has anything to do with this issue. It's just another thing for kids to do. Movie theaters were probably thought to be similar breeding grounds for dissoluteness back in the 1920s when the problem was really that the parents didn't care enough about what their children were doing.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Doesn't minors have civil rights?
no, they doesn't. Or perhaps even don't.
Sure it's legal. As a minor here in california, i have the rights of a turnip. Curfew, age restrictions on movies, drinking, driving, etc. Even 18 year olds, while technically adults, can't drink. Nobody will notice if they step on our toes some more.
One of the new restrictions will be that minors not accompanied by a parent or legal guardian may only stay at the cafes until 8 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays. Fridays and Saturdays they can stay unaccompanied until 10 p.m., city spokeswoman Kathy Moore said.
That solves it! So what do you think these youngsters are going to go do after they get booted out at 8/10 p.m.? I assure you, they won't be going home for bed-time. This just gives the kids a few extra hours to get even more bored--just think of all the stabbings they could accomplish with all this new free time.
Good to see government still knows how to protect the children.
I wish just for once.. i could read about a problem with kids and hear about a solution instead of some rediculous feel good legislation.. For gods sake help these kids.. become mentors.. work on getting better parenting for them. Solve the F*cking problem! Making them leave an internet cafe is brilliant?! So they walk down to the local park, field, parking lot.. and kill each other there. The people in charge don't care enough to do anything that would make a positive difference so they do something.. just so they cant be accused of doing nothing. It disgusts me.
why can't people regulate this 'phenomenon' themselves? if someone is stabbed,
and people think this is a bad thing, DON'T GO BACK!
why let the govt place unnatural controls on cyber-cafes? blows my mind. why does the govt
feel they need to protect me by regulating a business?
it's all about control. the old, gray men are trying to control innovation.
Uh huh. Seeing as how the bombers also facilitated cars, why not ban and regulate them as well? They probably used cell phones also, so why not tap all cell phones too?
Let's not forget that the everything the bombers used is used today with a benign intent. Just because some nutcases do crazy stuff with "household" items, doesn't mean the rest of us do.
I used to work for a company that would break every Friday at 3 to play UnrealTournament or HalfLife. Two hours of every week we'd spend splattering eachother's body parts across digital walls and floors. A good time was had by all. And when the boss stopped paying us because he'd wasted all the company funds, we simply walked away, and called our lawyers. We didn't kill him, like we had done so many Fridays in the digital universe - we didn't even give him a severe pounding (which he sorely deserved). Somehow, despite the excellent sound and graphics of the game, we still seemed to grasp the difference between the game and reality.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
Internet cafe has now turned into a modern day, high tech arcade. They should not have to do anything different from a arcade owner. If an arcade owner has to apply for a license, so should internet cafe. If an arcade has to abide by a certain regulation, so should the internet cafe. However, extra burden should not be place on the internet cafe because it is modern and may seem different.
That's what I find troubling with a lot of new regulations coming out. There are a number of prior laws that could be used to cover the computer industry but they often make new laws specifically targetted at it. Remember, computers are only another tool.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
(c. 1923) Police in an unamed mertoplitan area banned all sale of alcohol, after noting its' strong correlation to domestic crimes. "People expect the police to protect them," a spokesperson said. "We can't do that if these crime-enducing liquors are on sale."
Wow, you'd think people could learn from history. Two things may be related, but changing one doesn't neccessarily change the other (cause & effect).
Do you like Japanese imports?
People's rights aren't in question here, since they aren't the owners of the establisments. Although this does affect the minors it is only indirectly.
were playing Counterstrike then being booted out of a cybercafe at 8pm and hanging out on the streets.
While these Internet Cafes are unregulated, I don't think there's anything besides a temporary moratorium that The Man(TM) can do to shut them down. However, if they decided to step in and make the the operation of these things a legal privlege (such as driving lisences, licquer lisences) that can be revoked, then we'll really start to see them stopm on what used to be our rights.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
It's disappointing that they're not going after the real problem, gangs, and are instead treating all youths as a problem. But then this isn't new either. I remember well seeing signs "No more than 2 students in the store at a time" or "All school bags must be left outside" and so on as a teenager. The significant difference is that the local government is making the regulations. A private store should probably be allowed to do this, but for the government to do it should be unconstitutional, its directly squashing the right to free assembly. Of course that doesn't matter, juveniles can't vote, most adults have carefully excised any memory at all of what it was like to be a teenager.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
I, like many others, have already stuck the boot in with a sarcastic comment about this turn of events.
However, could there not be a link between on-line "clans" and off-line "gangs"? Where rivalry and competition on-line spills over into violence and bloodshed in the real world? After all, this has happened elsewhere in the world before, as reported by slashdot.
Last year, I use to visit the internet cafes (though these are in NYC) pretty often. I, like most other people, went to play Counter-Strike.
When one or two first opened around my place, they were relatively quiet, filled with kids who would rather be out with friends playing a game than sitting at home doing it.
But then they started getting pretty popular. Soon, we'd all go in and almost all the computers would be taken up.
And when you played, kids would truly get violent. You'd make a kill on someone and they'd get up out of their seat and start saying stuff like "Yo! Who da fuck is _______ (insert username of person who just killed him here)"
The thing is, you can't just go about banning these places because of these assholes. Unfortunately, there is normally only one person supervising the place and they normally try to avoid doing anything but collecting the 3 dollars a hour you pay.
At first, when I read about the 45 day stall, I was kinda taken aback. But now that I look at it, it's appropriate. It's not permanent. It gives these places a month and a half to hire more staff, or security, or what else is going to be needed. It's really unfortunate that this stuff is needed in the first place, but kids apparently can't take a game.
One other thing: To say it's the game itself that causes violence is bullshit. Absoutely bullshit. If this is the reason the restriction is being placed, then you better do it to all competition. Gangs are formed there too, except they're called "teams".
They key to competition is having it supervised tightly so it never gets out of hand. As lame as that sounds, it's the fault of kid's my age that brought it to that.
Regulation will solve it? Licensing will solve it?
Come on. How about considering the option that the person responsible for the teenager should be held liable to the full extent of the law.
Don't make cigarette shops card a teenager, don't make internet cafes card a teenager, don't make ANY commercial or private individual become a watchdog for the government or a parents -- because that's how we've become a nanny state.
Parents are lazy because they feel they don't need to parent anymore. Instead of watching TV with their kids, they can set their V-chip to "Rated G" and forget about it. Instead of browsing the web with their kids, they can install software, in hopes it will work 100%. Instead of finding out why their kids weren't home by 10, and grounding them for a month or three, they can hope the government will regulate a coffee house, arcade, net cafe, whatever. Instead of searching their teen's jackets and drawers looking for drugs or cigarettes, they can rely on the nanny state.
I say get rid of all regulations like these, and lets finally force parents to do the job they are responsible for: parenting.
Oh boy, not another death where a bunch of people get together?
While it is sad, the loss of human life, this had absolutely jack shit to do with the location. Anywhere a large group of young people (hell even middleaged people) gather, there is a good chance someone will get hurt or killed. It's human nature. Putting a moratorium on the i-net cafes won't do a damned thing.
Sheesh
Sent from your iPad.
Mod me the fuck down, if you dare:
US minors are not responsible, but they can be sentenced to death. Almost no other country in the world does that. Way to go, USA!
US adults below 21 cannot drink alcohol, but they can serve and get killed in the army. Way to go, USA!
First of all, I don't think the part you highlighted means what you think it means. Second of all, if you look at a number of laws and regulations, children and minors are often not afforded a good amount of the constitutional rights in exchange for laws to protect the minors.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
A man is stabbed in an internet cafe. The response: put a moratorium on opening new cafes, but not on selling more knives. Knives don't kill people, people don't kill people, internet cafes kill people. God help us all.
This is where it gets really funny:
Let's suppose that they could magically enforce this. Do they know nothing about the history of trying to control demand by stifling supply? Heard of a little thing called Amendment 18? "Hey, I know of a great little Clickeasy behind the funeral parlour... I wannanother cuppa Java..."
Semi-seriously, I'm reminded of a curfew in Paisley in Scotland, when all of the nightclubs were instructed to kick everyone out at 2am on the dot. The result? The emergency services quickly learned to dispatch units at about 1:50am to arrive in time for the stabbing frenzy. If gang violence is really an issue here, I don't in all honesty see how this situation would be any different.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Most of you are being pretty shallow with your analysis of cause and effect and completely ignoring the psychology at play. All through adolescence the hormones are raging, little teenies begin get pride and egos, they begin to compete.
Its not that these kids will commit violence without a trigger. They might be more prone to responding in a violent manner if they feel threatened or their egos have been insulted. If you bring a bunch of hot head teens together in one location they'll be stepping on each other's egos, especially when competing on say fast paced shootem ups, and tempers flare at a compounded rate.
I'll agree that putting them out on the street isn't the cure, but many of you seem to think that it does nothing to reduce the number of violent incidence between children. For one it disperses them causing the density of egos to be less. For two it takes away a pretty good stimulus for adrenaline to course through the body. Adrenaline, massive egos, hot head kids, all cramped into a box is a volatile mix.
There's nothing really saying here that the video games are causing violent behavior directly. And even kids that are normally nonviolent will defend their pride if someone just whomped um and is talking trash.
Banning kids without adult supervision is pretty common practice in many of the arcades that I've been to. Most of those have been attached to restaraunts though.
This might not be a perfect solution, but it does more than many of you seem to think. When parents don't raise their kids, and you can't make them, what else are you supposed to do? This is about the best a government should be able to do. Its common practice by police to try to disperse hot headed crowds that can turn violent. The city is realising that this is a real problem, they posted a temporary solution, and will likely use those 45 days to try to find a better one. I just don't know if there really is such a thing as a solution that works with hormonally edgy teens.
Of course it's legal.
This is a local government issue that is dealing with Zoning and licensing, so it's legal.
People can whine and moan all they want about Speech and Assembly rights, but that's not the issue, the issue is about Zones and the right of a local government to regulate businesses within it's jurisdiction.
"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."
This isn't about minors rights, or the right to speak or assemble, it's about a city legislating a business. It happens all the time with Bars, Porn Shops, Video Stores and whatnot, why should an arcade be treated differently?
The beginning of the article seems to be trying to imply some link between violent video games and real-world violence, but the statements of experts in the article don't seem to support that idea.
It looks like the violence has moved from the schools, not from the computer screens, to the parking lots outside the cafes (or, presumably, anywhere else the kids might gather).
It seems to me that the mayor and others involved are imposing these restrictions because they were just recently exposed to the fact that the kids were ditching school, not because of some presumed causal link between video games and violence:
Now that I think about it, the whole darn article is just a bunch of bunk holding together a few useful statements by people who might actually know something. Other favorite parts are the repeated references to race with no apparent point ("umm, by the way, they're all Vietnamese -- draw what conclusions you will, *wink*, *wink*"), and this classic bit:
The "harmless nerds" bit is just funny, and the idea that gangs are somehow not dangerous until mixed with video games is laughable as well.
If your traveling and are looking for a place to check your mail. Your only offering $3.00 total maybe $6.00 if your a slow reader. Whereas the people playing Quake are playing for hours on end. They (The Game Players,) are the true customers of the establishment. Not you. If your pissed. Sorry, but your not the deciding factor in the store owners mind. Your $6.00 is moving on in a day and doesn't carry the same weight to the owner as the 15 year old kid who spends $20 a day there. Of course, I've never equated "Internet cafe" as a "serious service for people who need it."
-raibeart-
- "Yeah man, I tell ya what, man...That dang ol' Internet, man...You just go one there and point and click...Talk about
How did government ever obtain to the right to tell me how to raise my kids?
Because you weren't doing a good enough job.
Before you all erupt in mindless rage, I'm not referring to anyone specifically; this law, like most laws that attempt to regulate parenting, was done in response to a problem.
I'm not saying it's a correct response. I'm not saying it's moral. I'm not even saying it's Constitutional. But the automatic negative characterization by people on these forums of those who try to deal with these problems is just pathetic. These are NOT comic-opera villains passing laws simply out of a desire to restrict YOUR freedoms, as they twirl their long black moustachios and chortle gleefully. They're not always ambitious and greedy bureaucrats bent on advancing their career by passing frivolous legislation.
Quite often they're dealing with serious problems that don't have easy answers, and the fact that so many people here try to reduce everything to such simplistic terms reflects poorly on this community. Instead of complaining, why not suggest an alternate method of dealing with the problem?
Then we were told that the city was just regulating a sleezy, crime-inducing, immoral, women-degrading filthy porn shop. We said, "OK, that sounds reasonable, after all we regulate bars, why should a porn shop be treated differently? But no more regulatin', ya hear?"
Now, in my neck of the woods, video stores aren't regulated. But since they seem to be in yours, you (in the you're-all-citizens sense) were told that the city was just regulating [insert inflamatory adjectives to get people to give up more freedom here] video stores. And you said, "OK, those sure are scary words you used, so yeah it sounds reasonable. After all we regulate bars and porn shops, why should a video store be treated differently?"
And now...we're being told that internet cafes are crime-inducing, violent, immoral, gang-fostering, unsupervised, and appeal to certain ethnic groups therefore they need to be regulated. This, dispite the fact that the gangs developed elesewhere, that the conflict was carried over from the school yard, and that there no reason to single internet cafes out. Well...no reason except that we already regulate bars, porn shops, video stores, and whatnot, why should an internet cafe be treated differently?
-sk
* Bars are *far* worse locations for fights, brawls, property damage, not to mention driving while intoxicated and the related crimes that stem from that--and yet I don't see any moratorium on this recently. Oh, wait, I forgot, they're 2 amendments dealing with something with this.
When something bad happens, blame Canada! Or something like that.
:)
Hmm, not that I read the article, it's standard stuff really, but I feel the need to point out that this is a typically polemic response to violence. After all, you can possibly blame violence on the parents, or the school, etc. It would be slander and no one makes any money. Not very American is it? Now, if one blames the video games... well that's a valuable law suit.
In the early days of this century, Pool Halls were condemmed as polluting our youth with sin. Anyone remember the Music Man from High School?
In the 30s, it was "Jitterbugging", Swing Dancing, and seditious characters like Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong that were ruining America's youth.
Back in the 50s violent comic books (Like EC's "Tales of the Crypt Keeper") were blamed for "Juvenile Delinquency". A popular book "Seduction of the Innocent" by Frederic Wertham caused the creation of the Comics Code Authority which pretty much censored news stand comics for 30 years.
Back in the halcyon late 70s and 80s, similar claims were made about Video Game Arcades. XTC jokes aside, Pac Man didn't ruin American youth.
Same old denial. My kid isn't bad, it's that damn (fill in blank) that's making her bad. To paraphrase Ann Landers: Wake up. Smell it.
My father is a blogger.
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.
So Instead of controlling the crime which is already a problem in these areas (not only Internet cafes), let's impose restrictions on legitimate business activities. Also, the article only mentions parking lots of these establishments and somehow tries to incorporate that with juveniles playing violent games on the Internet.
From the article:
The City Council... placed a 45-day moratorium Tuesday on the opening of any more of the establishments [cyber cafes]... The ordinance called for the issue to be reviewed again in 45 days, after which time the council could extend the moratorium for the rest of the year.
No more new cyber cafe businesses in 2002!
The council also tightened rules aimed at keeping juveniles out of the cafes on school nights... One of the new restrictions will be that minors not accompanied by a parent or legal guardian may only stay at the cafes until 8 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays. Fridays and Saturdays they can stay unaccompanied until 10 p.m., city spokeswoman Kathy Moore said.
In other words - kids! Be polite, rest during weekdays, do your killings on weekends please.
The [cyber] cafes are a fast-growing phenomenon in Southern California's suburbs... "The problem is, these places were going into operation faster than we could get a handle on them," City Manager George Tindall has said.
We have a new approach - instead of controlling crime (something we haven't done in a long while) we can control and suppress the business development in the city.
Yeah, that's a great way guys - since when has restricting businesses has helped the crime numbers in this way? It is my belief and many others' that business development and new jobs are more likely to reduce crime than this kind of regulation.
"...it's about a city legislating a business. It happens all the time with Bars, Porn Shops, Video Stores and whatnot, why should an arcade be treated differently?"
...it's about a city legislating a business. It happens all the time with Bars, Porn Shops, Video Stores and whatnot, why should a Church, a YMCA or a Library be treated differently?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
IMHO, not so simple. Conservatives remain a group with more or less stable agenda (do we like it or not), and they aren't all the same.
The "Liberals" simply don't have the persistent agenda, they're (I mean Dems, Greens, Sierra Club etc.) just a generation- based party that airs the ideas shared by Boomers at any particular moment of time, while the Boomers themselves are essentially overgrown children that never had any other ideology except conventional egotism.
Given this generation has become parents, the Dems try now to be parents and *model the State after the school*. It's effectively a new brand of totalitarianism unseen ever before- we saw regimes modelled after Armed Forces (Germany), factory (The Soviet Union), Church (Cromwellian Britain, Iran), and now we're going to see something new.
Let's see. folks, it's gonna be real interesting...