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Violent Video Game Restriction Struck Down
Nutsquasher was the first to submit news that a ban on selling violent video games to minors has been struck down, reversing an earlier decision in this case that held that video games were not a constitutionally protected form of speech. The decision (pdf) is available. Since the Federal government has been considering a national law along these lines, these decisions on local laws may be important soon.
The corporations have all of the money and weild recently gained legistlation, so you have to expect that the momentum will favor them. Consumer backlash won't hit a politician's radar until the outspoken make up a large number of their own constituents (or consist of a few of their wealthiest constituents). The courts will continue to side with the corporations more often then not, because again, it's still their home turf. Until the ripple effects of the DMCA start to annoy more people (not just the "technically inclined" or the random college student), the bulk of the rulings will go towards the corporate masters.
FATALITY!
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
She keeps playing minesweeper on my computer. Thats pretty violent, i mean with all the dead happy faces and all.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Because I swear, I was gonna kill someone if it didn't.
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
If I take 'Debbie Does Dallas 24' from a DVD, add some interactive components, like some sort of with-your-mallet-hit-the-boobs thing, can I suddenly go out and sell it to minors?
poor parenting does. You can play video games and not go on a rampage at your local high school. Instead of ignoring children for your favorite TV show or leaving them home alone in the afternoons with a video game, try talking to them.
Professor Jane Healy discusses this in her book, Endangered Minds.
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Free your mind.
There is an ESRB rating system in place for several years to keep those kinds of games out o the hands of minors.
Before Yet Another Moron gets on here and starts ranting about how it works for the movies, why not for the games, won't someone PLEASE think of the children:
The MPAA ratings are voluntary and are not enforced under penalty of law. There is nothing about them at all that is legally binding. The only pressure theater operators face to enforce them is economic, not criminal. This is arguably what makes them constitutional, where this law is not. IANAL etc.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
If a shopkeeper allows a 13 year old to buy a pornographic game or a game about serial murder, then it's not the game (its developer or publisher) that needs to be looked at.
I didn't get to play Operation (the Wacky Doctor Game) or Clue until I was 18. I can see why, now that I am older and wiser.
I could at any moment tried to extract the funny bone from a schoolmate, or hit my sister with a candlestick in the study.
Thank goodness for calming coloring books and play-dough. Well, time for lockdown, night...
However, the person referred to by the OP who rejected that request is Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, Sr.- his uncle .
"Our review of the record convinces us that these "violent" video games contain stories, imagery, "age-old themes of literature," and messages, "even an 'ideology,' just as books and movies do." ... Indeed, we find it telling that
the County seeks to restrict access to these video games precisely because their
content purportedly affects the thought or behavior of those who play them."
I dissagree. If my child is old enough to pick up the controller and start driving around and shooting people, then I think he's old enough to learn the diference between what's real and what isn't. I'd consider myself a failure as a parent if I couldn't teach that to my kids by the time they can play a console game with any proficency.
The pictures in the box aren't real jimmy!
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
I'm 17, I've been playing violent video games for longer than I can remember without parental supervision or limitations. I'm the polar opposite of "aggressive", to the point that I can't drive in heavy traffic because I'm not aggressive enough to switch lanes. When a recruiter for the Marines called me, I told him, "I'm sorry, I don't kill people" and hung up the phone.
On the other hand, I played a Ferrari racing game in an arcade yesterday, and 10 minutes later I was in my car peeling out at red lights and red-lining in every gear.
I guess that means that I "suffer a deleterious effect on [my] psychological health" when I play racing games. Those evil devices should be illegal!
Or maybe it means that I'm a bad driver. That game didn't hypnotize me and make me drive like an asshole. I was fully aware of what I was doing, and chose to do it anyway. Sure, the game triggered that behavior, but something else could have triggered it just as easily. Being passed by a 350Z on the highway does the same thing. Vroom vroom.
I'm willing to bet a good sum of money that that's how violent video games work too. They don't make people violent, they make violent people active. The question is, would their violence be triggered by something else if not by a video game?
Scratched Emulsion
I don't understand how restricting the sale of violent videogames to minors has to be jumped on as a 'freedom of speech' issue. It seems to me that taking this tack plays into the hands of the industry's representative (read: lobbying) bodies, who do not necessarily have the best interests of the development community (let alone society at large) at heart (read: they'd sell their grandmothers for a quick buck).
Aiming violent games at kids (even in an indirect way) may be profitable but it's a guaranteed way to ensure that video games (the medium as a whole- as casual observers do not make distinctions between good and bad) continue to be viewed as cynically exploitative and not worthy of the same standard of intellectual appraisal as other media. This perception is more of a handicap to the medium's evolution than any number of vague retail laws.
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And why not? I don't care about your opinion; can you cite any scientific studies that prove actual harm? Why is it that a day before his 18th birthday, a young adult shouldn't be allowed to participate in fantasy violence, but the next day it is perfectly ok to ship the same young adult to Iraq on a mission to actually kill real people? Isn't that a bit hypocritical?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Unfortunately the Iraqis trained on GTA3, which is why the United States is having so much trouble occupying their country.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
There are 2 escapes from 1st A. protection considered here. If it is obscene it is not speech (per the SC, not me); if it is not obscene, then it can be restricted only for the most compelling reasons and necessity. Obscene is legally defined as material lacking literary, artistic, political or social value. Here the 8th Circuit apparently has an earlier ruling saying across the board is NEVER obscene, so the obscenity argument is out the window; then they ruled that the paternalistic argument is not enough.
:) I wouldn't ban any of this stuff, but would consider limiting access to minors in a way that at least allow parents to parent as they see fit.
As for Debbie, well she may be obscene (for depicting erect penis, insertionn, or other random criteria) but tolerated in many communities, and enforcement on porno is spotty. Adding an interactive component certainly will not make it less obscene. Indeed what carried the day here was that it was violence and not sex, which if you at the movies is far more tolerated in our culture, and i'll be the first to concede *that* is the real sickness. I vote for more sex, less violence.
reflects my behavior in real life, for your sake, let's just hope I don't become a god with a giant animal friend.
*SMACK* Did I tell you to feed the hungry? Now go fetch the ball I threw at the creche.
How can we all agree that "violent video games" don't make kids into hell-bent killers, and then turn around and say "bad parenting" does? If I go out and kill someone, I'm the murder. Not my parents, and not my Gamecube.
Just because we're "minors" doesn't mean we can't be held accountable for our own behavior. You don't have to find someone else to blame. It's hard to determine exactly when a child has transitioned from ignorant to insane, but it's definitely earlier than 18. It may be that a 15-year-old kid kills his teacher because he's violent and his parents/teachers/video games/movies didn't teach him how to deal with anger properly, but he's still the violent one. If you don't think a 15-year-old realizes what the result of killing is, then perhaps it's been too long since you last spoke with one.
One problem lies in our whole system of treating "minors" completely differently. If a 15-year-old kills his family, it's blamed on his parents and his hobbies, it makes news headlines around the world, and inspires weeks and months and years of angry discussion about what causes violence in youths. If an 18-year-old kills his family, everyone just says, "he's one sick bastard" and he goes to prison. The minor is rewarded with fame and attention, the rest are rewarded with hatred.
Scratched Emulsion
The parents are, arguably, the primary source of psycho-social imprinting for the child. Typically, children learn their behavior, morals, values, and identity from their parents. The more involved the parents are in the child's life life the stronger that influence. The less involved the parents are in their children's life, the less the influence; and the stronger the influence that outside sources (neighbors, peers, television, etc...)have on the child's identity.
That is why in most cases the minor is sentenced and the parents aren't convicted as accomplice to the crime. The fact that the 15 year old may or may not understand/realize the effect of murder (although that could be the case in rare circumstances) is not relevant. It is accepted that a fifteen year old understands the concept of "dead". What is relevant is the degree to which video games, television, movies, music, etc... desensitize the youth to the effects of killing, and thereby contribute to the condition (mental) which causes the youth to kill. There is compelling evidence to correlate violent video games and aggressive behavior, though not conclusive.
I am not familiar with that case, although most social scientists would examinate a killer's background for study. I would blame the media for sensationalizing a criminal act, not necessarily the social scientist.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.