California Anti-Videogame Bill Author Interviewed

rsmith-mac writes "As an update to last week's story about a proposed California bill to bar minors from buying first-person shooters, HomeLANFed has an interview up with Leland Y. Yee, the assemblyperson responsible for creating the bill. While there are some good intentions with Yee's actions, I can't help but feel that this is a classic case where the road to Hell is being paved with those good intentions."

Comments

Re:M rating OK, but who provides the rating?

[PainKilleR-CE]

M = NC-17
AO = R

You've got those swapped ;)

Maybe they can't use the same letters because MPAA has them copyrighted? (I don't know if they do, just hypothesizing)

From the MPAA's ratings website:
The rating system trademarked all the category symbols, except the X. Under the plan, anyone not submitting his or her film for rating could self apply the X or any other symbol or description, except those trademarked by the rating program.

Note: at the time the rating system was G, M, R, and X, with M being Mature, but allowing all ages, the rough equivalent of PG. They later revised M to GP, then to PG, because people were confused by the M rating (thinking it was a step above R). In 1984 they added PG-13. In 1990 they added the NC-17 rating to specify movies that had been rated by the MPAA, but were not approved for anyone under 18 (X was never trademarked so that it could be used by people that did not want to submit to the ratings, but was basically taken over by the adult film industry, not exactly what the MPAA intended, so NC-17 is trademarked as well).

By law, you have to enforce trademarks to keep them, so using the movie industry's ratings would be inviting a lawsuit from the MPAA.

Besides... look at the back of the box, there's a breakdown of everything objectionable in the game. I am willing to believe that the parents who feign ignorance are really striving for it, or they just can't tell their kids "no" so checking for graphic content would be a futile pursuit

Exactly, and the MPAA did the same thing with the R rated films back in 1990, and has since added the descriptions to PG-13, PG, and NC-17 movies because, in their words, they 'believed it would be useful to parents to know a little more about that film's content before they allowed their children to accompany them [to R rated films]'. Even the R rating has always been about letting parents know what they're in for, and asking parents to attend with their children rather than just sending them off to the movies. The M rating for games should be viewed the same way, asking parents to play the game with their children, or at the very least pay attention to the game to know what their children are exposed to.