Slashdot Mirror
Planned California Bill Targets Video Game Sales
joeflies writes "'California Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, plans to introduce legislation making it illegal for minors to buy the most violent video games and requiring game dealers to separate youth games from adult offerings.' Story
here from the Sacramento Bee."
Kids will still get their hands on violent video games either through clueless parents or bigger brother/sister/friends.
I still don't understand why people accept this with movies (R- and X- ratings), but have problems when applied to games and music.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The idea of not selling M-rated video games to minors has already been around for years. Almost all major chains already do this. Making it law will change very little. As for separating violent games from the rest of the games, where exactly would they go? Most stores dont have an incredible amount of room in their video game section. Where would they move them to? Also, why shouldnt stores be doing this with R-rated movies or Parental-Advisory CDs? Shouldnt any law enacted against adult video games be put into effect against other media?
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
This must be inspired by the huge success of the war on drugs!
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
It certainly makes a lot more sense then censoring pornography the way we do in this country. Why is it so much worse to see someone get blown then to see them get their head blown off?
This country's priorities are all fucked up.
By the way, playing violent video games does make you more aggressive. The affect only lasts an hour though. No long-term effects have ever been measured.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Mr Yee is simply playing off his electorate's bizarre image of video game stores as vile dens where the employees push GTA on unsuspecting 5 year olds.
What I found most distrubing was this quote from the Bee:
I'm not really anti-violence, but personally I'd much rather the kids saw sexual imagery than ultra-violent imagery. Where did we get this weird idea that sex is so horrible that you shouldn't see a nipple until you're 18, but if you're over 13 its perfectly fine to see someone's head blown to bits?"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
*sigh*
...).
How about just taking them from the parents. After all our society neither allows a parent to discipline a child nor does it require a parent to be responsible for the child.
If I was a parent in California I might be tempted to sue the state for defacto removing my parental rights all together.
If the reading above makes you think I'm all about parental right, why yes I am. But I'm not letting the other 2/3'rds out of it either. I'm also a pretty firm believer in parents being responsible. And that includes responsible for rearing a child in a reasonable manner as well as being responsible for the child's actions and the results thereof.
*sigh* sometimes I think we should rename the country The United BubbleWrapped America. Some groups think I'm not capable of deciding for myself outside the house, other's want a say in what I do inside my bedroom (or bath, or kitchen, or
And away I go... Time to find my thorazine.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
From the FA:
Their study argues that playing violent games is directly related to violent behavior.
So are they violent because they play violent games, or do they play violent games because they are violent?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
From the article: "[It] would regulate the display of violent video games, requiring that games with a mature rating be stocked on a shelf separate from other games and at least five feet off the ground."
Did I miss an important study or something? Do psychotic killers now average under five feet in height?
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
What you describe is already in place for alcohol and tobacco. It's really just an extension of that. I'm not advocating for the law, just to be clear. Only pointing out that what you describe really isn't all that new. It's being done currently with two other "vices" that society deems inappropriate for youth.
A better argument against such a law is that it's a burden for tax-payers, not so much for stores and employees. Anytime such a law in enacted, a large chunk of tax-payer funds is used to implement the law, educate the public AND the companies, and monitor the effectiveness and execution of the law. Therein lies the biggest issue, IMHO. It's just another tax-payer burden.
You are correct in saying that most stores already have this policy. Therefore, it is unnecessary to shoulder such a burden on the tax-payers.
No one cares what kind of burden such a law puts on stores and their workers. But they sure do care when you talk about taxes. And we are talking about California, afterall.
Said it before on /., seems I say it every time this topic comes up:
Movie ratings are a voluntary system adopted by exhibitors and the MPAA in order to classify content. I'll say it again: It's voluntary.
If a 12-year-old goes into an R-rated movie, the only penalties facing the exhibitor are economic ones levied by the MPAA and perhaps distribution trouble in the future.
There is no criminal penalty for showing r-rated content to minors.*
Now mind you, it's not that I want 12-year-olds playing Manhunt1 , but making it illegal is arguably in violation of the first amendment.
Yes yes, I know, this is the same fucked-up country where a judge ruled games aren't speech. Thank god that one got overturned.
Anyway.
Movie ratings: voluntary.
ESRB ratings: voluntary.
Therefore: both qualify as constitutional.
Proposed law: mandatory.
Therefore: likely in violation of the first amendment.
*(I'm leaving X-rated films out of this discussion b/c then we breach the topic of pornography law and that's a lot murkier)
1 The objective of Manhunt to kill as many unsuspecting victims as possible as brutally and graphically as possible for the adulation of the twisted pervert watching you on TV. You're armed with weapons like meat cleavers, garottes, and plastic bags, and gain extra points for how fucked up your kill is.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
I couldn't give two figs about the ESRB rating of a product, as I am over 18. But I can't go into a store without seeing and noticing the rating signs. Why don't parents see these signs? I've seen clerks at EB flat out tell parents that a game is now OK for their kids, and the parents buy the game anyway.
The game industry does a far, far, far better job of clearly rating the content of its products than the movie industry, the music industry, or the TV networks. And yet, you don't see these do-gooder politicians trying to regulate movies more, do you?
This is ridiculous -- the problem isn't a lack of regulation among game stores, or violent games, it's a total lack of parental responsibility. (And yes, I am a parent -- and I pay close attention to what media my son consumes.)
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
I didn't know that much of *anything* had sexual content yet. And assuming (as I hope) that he doesn't have GTA prostitutes in mind, what are these games he's thinking of and where do I buy a copy? Has this guy been importing Japanese dating sims for the express purpose of not giving them to his kids?
Not to mention that the American perspective on violence vs. sexuality is rather badly fouled up, as many other posters already remarked. Sexual behaviors -- love and physical reproduction both -- are quite thoroughly natural to humans, for obvious reasons. But any human's one strongest inborn aversion is against doing harm to another human. Even armies have never done well in overcoming all of a person's instictive aversion to doing harm or taking life, and I suspect that the totally unnatural is a bit more harmful to kids than the obscure but natural.
Someone tell these idiots that this isn't the 19th century any more, thank the Lord -- and that the US is no longer a frontier...
Yes, because children will always blur the lines between reality and fantasy when they play video games for hours on end. Why, I know from personal experience that my hours upon hours of playing Galaga has made fighting the Martians that much easier....
Oh wait....
Let's face it. If Knothead Jr. is that likely to mistake the cartoony animation of GTA for reality, then odds are that he was already messed up, and the gameplay wasn't adding much, if anything to his lack of a firm grip on reality. Parents and legislators need to grow the fuck up themselves and realize that once they stop using movies and games as parents, and start actually being parents themselves, maybe, just maybe, their kids won't be so fucked up.
Blaming the games for "giving the kids the wrong message" is a cop-out. Parents should be the ones giving their kids the message. If they do their job right, the games won't mean jack...
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.