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Columbine Video-Games Suit Dismissed
Dr_LHA writes: "This story on Yahoo! reports that the federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit that claimed the influence of video games and movies where what caused the Columbine High School massacre. Obvious to those of us who play GTA3 regularly but still manage to overcome the urge to plough over pedestrains on the way to work in the morning, but good to see someone high up showing some sense."
One more scapegoat for bad parenting taken away.
Now lets work on the rest. All we have to do is wait for some money hungry family to start suing.
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Then again, maybe it was the combination of a bad environment and GTA :) (*attention Columbine parents)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Obvious to those of us who play GTA3 regularly but still manage to overcome the urge to plough over pedestrains on the way to work in the morning, but good to see someone high up showing some sense.
What the hell are you talking about? It's well-documented that no murders or school violence took place before Magnavox created the first videogame system thirty years ago.
I wholeheartedly agree. Those parents are just trying to shift the focus of blame off of them, and onto something else, like media. It's a typical move. They portray the illusion that, somehow, society has failed them by not helping them raise their children. It's wrong, so very wrong.
There is nothing quite like the feeling of having 16-on-16 in a good CounterStrike game.
Parents.
Pretty much anything can influence someone, but it depends on how you were raised whether or not you're going to actually want to copy it or do something similar. When MOST people play a game like Doom, they would never ever even consider doing anything remotely close to that in real life. But some people don't have that type of conscious or morals(or ability to distinquish between reality and fiction), and when they see a movie or play a game and enjoy it, sometimes they go and do it themselves. It's possible they were influenced by it...it gave them an idea. That's all it takes when someone hasn't been raised right or fell off the wagon along the way for some other reason. But games/movies/music/etc are not to blame, the parents are. If the kid is going to be influenced by something like that, they shouldn't be playing/seeing/reading it in the first place.
It should also be noted that video games are a popular scape goat because they are relatively new. Books had the same problem back in the day. And most of you can probably remember all the hooplah when rap and the like became popular.
It's just like Itchy & Scratchy Industries president Roger Meyers Jr. said in that Simpsons episode...
Meyers: I did a little research and I discovered a startling thing... There was violence in the past, long before cartoons were invented.
Kent Brockman: I see. Fascinating.
Meyers: Yeah, and know something, Karl? The Crusades, for instance. Tremendous violence, many people killed, the darned thing went on for thirty years.
Kent Brockman: And this was before cartoons were invented?
Meyers: That's right, Kent.
Replace "cartoons" with "video games" and add a hearty "get bent" to the censors.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
Obvious to those of us who play GTA3 regularly but still manage to overcome the urge to plough over pedestrains on the way to work in the morning
Let me tell you that urge is getting harder and harder. Thank God I don't have access to Rocket Launchers, M16's and Uzi's.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
There's always the fact that murders have always plagued humans. We simply tend to lock into the 'new' angles of sensational stories. In this case, a connection with videogames was very obvious, and it suited the already growing anti-violent-videogames sentiment at the time.
I tend to look at these things, and shrug. Nuthing new. Humans will always have a few who fall through the cracks and are forced to scream out for attention and revenge for perceived wrongs; its just too bad we strive so hard to 'categorize' the influences instead of trying to understand the less material catalysts behind their physcological state at the time of the tragedy.
I was teased, ridiculed, and ostricized from school, and I thoguht about suicide more than a few times. To me, it doesn't seem like that far of a leap from what these kids to from the psycological states that thousands upon thousands of outcasts suffer from school. Their reaction was out of line, their actions uncondonable, but I cannot simply dismiss the fact that popular school goers get away with psycological torture that is far more of an influence on what these kids did than video games.
And if you don't understand, thats half my point. Humans look for the bright red flags that say, "Look at me, I caused people to do this," and usually dismiss what outcasts are consistantly saying: "It fucking hurts to be hated by so many people." You have to take the extent of the pain caused by seemingly flippant adolescent peer to peer behaviour on faith.
"Old man yells at systemd"
No kidding. Ever since the release of Pac Man and Burgertime the number of obese Americans has risen dramatically. Coincedence? I doubt it.
Also consider the number of times that America has had to flex its millitary muscles since Battlezone and Missile Command. It's no wonder people are scared to death of video games.
Now, if you'll excuse me I need to go threaten my supervisor with a joystick up-down-right-right-left-left high kick medium punch if she doesn't give me a performance bonus.
I agree with your point, but not your example. See Legal Myths: The McDonald's "Hot Coffee" Case for more info. The basic deal is that McDonald's has been serving coffee at an arbitrary high temperature, knew that over the years there had been a number (~700) of injuries due to this, and did nothing to reduce the chance that these injuries would occur. So the question isn't really whether one coffee burn is cause for suit, it's whether a repeated pattern of coffee-related injuries constitutes reckless conduct on the part of McDonald's. Should spilling coffee in your lap make you feel stupid, damp, and very warm? Yes. Should it give you third-degree burns in three seconds? Considering that there's no advantage to serving coffee at that temperature, I would say no.
I agree with your point about personal responsibility, though - a video game doesn't make someone kill; if those kids were killers then it was because of something else that had already made them like that. Perhaps the fact that they could plan the whole thing in a parent's garage without the parent knowing is a good indication of where the problem may lie.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I guess its sort of a sad thing that the judge should probably be applauded for this.
It seems all too popular these days to blame the symptom rather than the disease. When are we going to wake up and realize that guns don't kill people and video games don't corrupt youth. The problem with Columbine isn't the guns. Its the fact that two teenage boys thought that it was OK to kill all of their buddies.
The root of the problem lies in the continual de-moralization of our society. I think it would help to remember our priorities: when we say - Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, life comes before liberty. And in order to preserve life morals are essential. It becomes a delicate balance between an individual's freedom to believe and carry on as they choose and if some of these activities and beliefs are downright bad for society as a whole.
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I know it isn't popular but games and movies do influence people (including youth). Maybe most of us can tell the difference between a minigun and a minimart. Don't underestimate the power of suggestion on an individual who is under a pressure situation or lives in an environment without consequences
You're absolutely right. If someone is unbalanced, they can be influenced, by damn near anything. That includes TV, video games, movies, books, magazines, newspapers, friends, music, and just about anything else. The point is that those things aren't responsible for your actions, you are. If you are unbalanced, you are unbalanced. We can't ban anything that could ever have a bad influence on someone who is unbalanced.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." -- Anonymous Nintendo employee
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
Maybe the events of September 11th, the current and ongoing war in the Middle East, and all the other various world conflicts made the judge smack himself in the forehead and say "It ISN'T video games that cause violence." I feel for the families of these kids, and the families of the victims, but sometimes you can't find someone to blame. Sometimes bad things happen, for no reason that makes any sense. Sometimes there ARE no answers. A lot of people blame the parents, but in fact they probably aren't to blame for this. I am sure there are a lot of worse parents out there, and their kids didn't go ballistic.
What is even more depressing to me is that I had almost forgotten about Columbine.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I see quite a few posts already saying that this decision helps to place the blame where it "belongs" -- on the parents.
But what about parents who do a good job? Parents who read Dr. Spock, have family dinners, spend a night a week with no TV but playing games and talking to their children, and yet STILL have children who grow up to be Charles Manson?
It's entirely possible that even the best parents in the world could have evil, maladjusted, sociopathic children.
We, as a society, are very quick to (1) Assume that someone "must" be responsible for anything that goes wrong, and (2) sue the crap out of whomever is currently assigned blame for #1.
For a while it was ADHD and Ritalin. It's often lousy teachers. Then it was rap music and/or video games. Sprinkled in there occasionally are parents, teachers, and school administrators (not to mention on-site security officers or the bus driver).
Hasn't anyone thought to blame the people who actually commit the crimes?
We as a society have to get used to the fact that you don't always know why, that there isn't always someone who has the power to stop things, and that we aren't always entitled to restitution.
Alright, everyone, repeat after me: "Shit happens."
This is probably true to some extent, but the fact is that millions of people indulge in violent video games and movies on a daily basis but still keep their finger off the trigger. The influence is most likely negligable.
Don't underestimate the power of suggestion on an individual who is under a pressure situation or lives in an environment without consequences
Now you're getting warmer. But again, I don't think this has anything to do with video games. More than likely it is the myopic world view of most teen-agers mixed with romantic notions of death. Torment day in and day out, an authoritarian school administration that merely re-enforces the social pecking order at the school, and the inability for a teen-ager to realize that there is a better life after those four years of Hell called "high school" - pressure situation is right. If a person is not given a way out of an unbearable situation, they will make their own. Violence and ridicule is all these kids were subjected to on a daily basis - it shouldn't be surprising that they responded in kind.
It wasn't about video games or movies - it was about power - it was about acting out an unanswerable revenge.
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
So the question isn't really whether one coffee burn is cause for suit, it's whether a repeated pattern of coffee-related injuries constitutes reckless conduct on the part of McDonald's.
I dunno. It may be a legitimate question to ask, but I think the personal responsibility of the person involved should be a mitigating factor with regards to damages.
It would be one thing if the woman in question was sitting at a table in the restaurant, reading a newspaper, misjudged where the coffee was and spilled it into her lap. It is entirely another thing to have a cup of potentially-scalding hot coffee wedged between your legs while driving (and, frankly, if you aren't assuming that hot coffee can burn you, you are being stupid).
McDonalds was at fault for making their coffee so hot for no good reason; however, I think in this particular case the damages awarded to the woman were totally outrageous considering how negligent she was in the role she played.
That game already exists, in a way.
Do a search on Google for the Columbine Mod for Half-Life, you'll find it.
Many people simultaneously believe that:
1) Behaviour Can Be Learned
2) Video Games Can Be Educational
3) Video Games Cannot Teach Negative Behaviour
Does this belief make sense? Children take their cues from all aspects of life, including the games they play. No, I don't believe violent video games should be banned - but I believe they should be rated, and those ratings enforced. 18+ for games like Quake. "Let's see some ID kid. No? Well, I can't sell you this game - I'd risk a fine or revocation of my business licence."
The parent could still buy it for their child, but at least they'd be forced to accept their responsibility as a parent.
Columbine happened right smack in the middle of a time period when we are witnessing the breakdown of the basic family unit, and the collapse of parental responsibility.
Video games are not the direct cause, but neither are they unrelated or innocent. They are one contributing factor in the fabric of society.
Studies of bullying behavior are just now starting in the scientific community. One of the things that researchers are recognizing is that people who are abused tend to have *different* values for what is abuse and bad behavior - basically, someone who goes through abuse or neglect tends to "grow up" faster and not recognize abuse in themselves. That is one reason why children of abusive families tend to carry on the vicious cycle to their own kids; and it is also a key to how someone who is bullied in school (or maybe bullied at home and carries that to school) would resort to such mind-bogglingly violent options.
There needs to be more investment in counceling and positive reenforcement in schools - perhaps as early as elementary school. Yes, a significant number of people who read this site were probably bullied and ostracized when they were younger (I still have bad memories of a rather unfortunate day in 6th grade when I wore a yellow hair band that did not match the rest of my attire). Most people do not go home and gather up the dynamite and a few gallons of gasoline, but some individuals have different receptors for pain and abuse. This is just a prime reason of how environment can alter our brains at the *cellular* level - changing even how the DNA is transcribed.
"If the whole world depends on today's youth, I can't see the world lasting another 100 years." Socrates
Sure. I had been playing Halo all night and the next morning my fiance came into the room while the lights were out and i was half asleep. As my eyes opened at the noise, I saw her silhoetted(sp) in the doorway and she was walking torwards me. I jumped backwards (well, to the other side of the bed) and screamed.
So yeah, video games have an effect on me.
Luckily, I never had the urge to shoot her with my assault rifle, because:
1) i dont have the lucidity to grab an assault rifle while im half asleep
2) i dont keep an assault rifle in my bedroom
3) IM NOT A MALADJUSTED FUCKING MORON
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Well DUH! EVERYBODY knows that Hitler had a PS2! er... wait... No, but he watched the Dukes of Hazard! er... He read Mad Magazine!!! no... Well, he had a moustache!! NO MORE MOUSTACHES!! Won't someone please think of the children?
About a new possible Bill in the State of Michigan regarding the sale and rental of video games that have violent content in them.
I am going to find out who this idiot is and ask him why he believes that parents are incapable of raising their children.
I was also going to point out that a law similiar to this was passed and then reveresed in court, in the city of Indianapolis recently.
Parents do not need additional laws that give them even more reason to shirk their duties in raising their children. If they do, then they really shouldn't be parents. Work a few less hours and frikkin' raise your children. I know that when I have children, I or my wife, whomever is making less, will stay home and raise the children.
Again, those children in Columbine, including most of the "Copy-cat" children, were all on some kind of psycotropic medication, had two parents that worked more hours than they spent with their kids and probably barely knew what their kids were doing, thinking or planning.
That never happened to me, because my parents were there. Sure, sometimes they seemed annoying, but for the most part, they spent time with me and my siblings. They took us places, explained the actual difference between right and wrong and helped us become the good citizens that we are today.
Today's children don't have parents, they have lax animal trainers that are barely there to feed and change, let alone train the children they bore. Get a grip people, stop supporting these silly laws and start supporting your children.
Another thing, your children are growing up. If you don't teach them about the REAL WORLD, then they are going to learn all the dangers on their own. If that means they get pregnant at 15, then that is really your fault for choosing not to talk to them about sex. If they end up whacked out on drugs, again, you should have talked to them about drugs.
My parents did that for me and yours may have done that for you. If you turned out okay and actually had parents there to raise you. What makes you think that your children will be okay without parents?
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.sig seperator
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I was watching the Discovery Channel, and "they" were taking about how baby monkeys that were separated from their mothers early, or raised without them grew up to be antisocial monkeys with low serotonin. They also said that a study of the really violent, troublemaking Marines also were found to have low serotonin. Being on paxil myself, I can tell you firsthand that increased levels of serotonin reduce any urges I might have to bring my rifle (Weatherby 'Walmart special' Vanguard 7mm Remmington magnum) somewhere to kill as many people as possible before I am brought down myself. I'd much rather be happy. I'm trying to get an attractive, loving girlfriend, which would increase my serotonin levels, but I haven't had much luck. So, instead I immerse myself in hobbies, like photography, MOHAA, UT, Serious Sam, Red Faction, RTCW, NOLF, and going to the shooting range. Oh yeah, and going to strip clubs, and occasionally getting a dirty magazine like Private. Paxil makes the world a better place for me. I don't seem to feel so depressed, lonely and hopeless while on it, even though nothing has changed. If people were happy, they wouldn't commit mass murder-suicides. I think if anything causes violence, it's low serotonin, which could becaused by lack of attenion or touch as a baby, abusive or neglectful parenting, a bad bunch of genes, or maybe being mistreated on the playground for years and years. Everything has a reason. It's nature's way of keeping it's own, sometimes objectionable balance. In this magazine I was reading, even baby hyenas will kill their siblings if food is scarce. It's all nature and chemicals. Don't feed your dog or cat or rat for a couple of days, and see if it affects their mood any.
"Yeah, they played video games that made them go and kill people. Lets sue them. Lets just forget about the fact the guns that they used to kill everyone are easily attainable and loosely regulated. Obviously pretending to kill people is much worse then manufacturing the tools to actually do so."
So let me get this straight... You've been presented with a problem. Kids have somehow been raised with the inclination and ability to kill their companions in cold blood. Some aspect of social engineering has failed, and they've been dramatically warped.
Your solution? Don't give them guns.
How wonderfully shortsighted of you. So what happens when they build slingshots? Do you take away all their wood?
Now here is a classic example of treating the symptom, and not the problem.
I think in earlier times, it was easier to work out this rage, either fighting was more accepted (my parent's time), or you had to actively hunt for food (grandparent's time), or by 13 or 14, you were out fighting [i]real[/i] wars.
I don't think I was an atypical teen, but I had a lot of anger and angst I needed to work out. Luckily I had an outlet for that. I don't think it was unhealthy, most of my angst was about things I couldn't control and didn't have the emotional maturity to deal with yet. Adolescence is a very hard time to deal with. Mine was made better knowing that someone felt the same way I did (or at least did at one time) and there were outlets for my irrational rage and aggression.
Unfortunately, I see many parents trying to take away every one of these outlets, on the idea that they somehow cause violence. They'd like to ban everything from football to video games to violent television, because they aren't comfortable with the violent aspect of them. Somehow, they think if you just take these things away, people will somehow stop being "animals". It doesn't work that way. Man is violent by nature, and I'm sure that's part of the reason we survived to build society. You don't breed that out in a generation or get rid of it by legislation. And, the more you close off the places to get rid of this aggression safely, you will encourage more and more school shootings.
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"Graphic violence in the media...
Does it glamorize violence?
Sure.
Does it desensitize us to violence?
Of course.
Does it help us tolerate violence?
You bet.
Does it stunt our empathy for our fellow beings?
Heck yes.
Does it *cause* violence?
Well, that's hard to prove.
The trick is to ask the right question."
I think the personal responsibility of the person involved should be a mitigating factor with regards to damages.
It was. The jury awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages, but this amount was reduced to $160,000 because the jury also found that Liebeck was 20% at fault for the spill. The massive $2.7 million punitive damages award was, well, punitive, and likely had a helluva lot to do with the 700 claims McDonald's had settled since 1982 involving people scalded by its coffee, was aware that its coffee could cause and had caused serious burns, and was utterly unrepentant of that fact.
McDonald's knew its coffee burned people, and did nothing about it. A quality enforcement manager at McDonald's testified before the court that the coffee was required to be held in the pot at 185 degrees, +/- 5 degrees, and admitted that this would cause burns, but also that McDonald's had no intentions of reducing that holding temperature.
The judge reduced punitive damages to three times the compensatory damages, and called McDonald's conduct "reckless," "callous," and "willful."
It is entirely another thing to have a cup of potentially-scalding hot coffee wedged between your legs while driving.
It is, indeed. But that's not what this woman did. This woman wasn't even driving the goddamned car. She was a passenger. Her son was driving, and he stopped the car at her request so she could take the lid off the coffee and add cream and sugar. She held the coffee between her legs to pry the lid off, at which point it spilled.
She was not driving. She was not holding the coffee between her legs while she was driving. The car was not even MOVING when this incident occurred.
if you aren't assuming that hot coffee can burn you, you are being stupid
Do you routinely assume that beverages served to you for your consumption are capable of inflicting full-thickness third-degree burns in 2-7 seconds should they touch your skin? I'm aware that I should treat my coffee as if it were a hot beverage, not as if it were hydrocholoric fucking acid.
I'm sorry for the off-topic post, but I'm sick and fucking tired of how people who are ignorant of the fundamental facts of this case feel qualified to pronounce judgement upon it.
There was an episode of Picket Fences that I saw a few years ago that had a court case involving television's role in violence with children. The basic plot of the story was a kid fired a potato gun at a teenager's car because the teenager was picking on the potato-gunman's little brother. The potato broke the car's windshield and caused the teen to swerve, rolling the car. The teen suffered a back injury and temporary paralysis. The little brother of the injured teen brought a gun to school the next day and shot the kid who fired the potato gun in revenge.
The city that this show takes place in is a small town and many of the people there suffer from knee-jerk over-reactiveness to events like these. They immediately blamed television for the shooting and pulled it off the air. The defense of the child that fired the gun (not the potato gun) was that television taught him that shooting guns is ok, therefore it's TV's fault.
The way the episode ended (if memory serves...) is that the prosecuting lawyer asked the kid a very interesting question. "When you watch TV, do you see people get shot?" "Yes." "Do they die?" "... Yes." "So television taught you that when you shoot somebody with a gun, they die."
I thought that was an interesting response to this whole TV/Video Games/Music causes violence debate. Movies like Robocop taught me that guns are not something you really want to play with at all. Some would say Robocop glorified violence, but it sure didn't for me. The idea of getting my arm blown off and surviving to feel it didn't settle too well with me at all.
It bothers me that this aspect of television is never explored. Personally, I think TV teaches that guns are dangerous, and that you're really playing games with your life expectancy vs. solving problems with them.
"Derp de derp."
Obvious to those of us who play GTA3 regularly but still manage to overcome the urge to plough over pedestrains on the way to work in the morning
[This isn't a troll, but it sure is going to sound like one.]
My brother has GTA3 (and ironically, he's also a cop). We've both played it and come to the same conclusion - it's just too damn violent.
Don't get me wrong - I do not think it should be censored. I just have to question what is going on in your head when it takes shit like GTA3 to entertain you. It's like watching an animated Faces of Death.
I enjoy games with violence as much as the next guy. Games like CounterStrike or HALO where violence is an effect of realistic gameplay, and it's not done in a gratuitous fashion. It's the pointless violence like beating old ladies to death in GTA3 that I find a little disturbing.
So tell me - what are you GTA fans thinking when you watch blood pool around a dead bystander's head in GTA3? Is it really necessary for the game to be THAT violent? How does it make the experience more enjoyable?
I sure hope it's not just me getting old, because I'm gonna get a hell of lot older than 24.