Slashdot Mirror
Video Games Not Protected Form of Speech
E-Rock writes "Video Games are lumped with child porn as unprotected forms of speech. "A federal judge said local governments can limit children's access to violent or sexually explicit video games, saying games are not constitutionally protected forms of speech." Story with limited details at Nando."
You can get the Judge's opinion here (96k pdf).
In the past we have learned to treasure even that speech which is most offensive, including pornography, slander, Nazism, lynchings, and shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre.
Nazism is the only thing you listed that IS protected speech.
Slander, speech that presents a clear and present danger to the US, and speech that endangers the public safty are all illegal forms of speech.
these have been set forth by cheif Justice Marshall. the 1st cheif justice of the United States.
so giving away national secrets is not protected speech, elling fire in a crouded theater is not protected speech, and telling a lie about a person to people in a credible mannor (ie not satire)that damages their reputation (like saying a person rapes little boys when you know he does not) is not protected speech.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Yikes. I feel like flailing my arms and shouting, "danger!" There is indeed a huge amount of evidence that violence in media -- music, games, movies, and books -- influences people. Hell, the entire advertising industry is built upon the idea that media can influence people.
I suspect you're saying what you're saying because either you personally are unaware of any evidence, or you're perfectly aware of it and reject it as hogwash. But psychologists going back to 1864 (I think, that number is off the top of my head) have documented something called the "werther's effect" which nowadays is called social proof. Wether was a writer (or the main character of a book, again, this is off the top of my head). Anyway, the main character of this moving, well-written book eventually killed himself. The book was immensely popular, and soon a wave of similar suicides began to sweep across multiple countries. By 1866, the book was banned by entire continents. Since that time, this has been studied to death -- they've studied accidents where everyone drove by without offering assistance, video games, rock music, laugh tracks, advertising, movies, you name it. It all ties in to social proof, which states: the more a person identifies with the environment, the more likely the person is to be influenced by it.
So your normal, healthy, well-adjusted slashdotter (cough) is NOT going to identify with pac man and start eating ghosts. Nor will he/she identify with doom and start shooting up everything in sight. But a young angry white boy who sees a lifelike portrayal of young angry white boys is going to be influenced. A middle-aged Asian dad who interacts with a game or movie or people who are also middle-aged, Asian, and fathers, will be influenced. There are a lot of reasons for this, and you can use Google to get some really great, really boring papers and essays about the research in this area. But the bottom line is realistic portrayals of anything will influence people of similar background.
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