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Rockstar Investigated Over GTA - Vice City
Jubii writes "Seems the State of Florida is about to investigate Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for possibly violating state hate crime laws. This comes right after Rockstar and Take-Two issued an apology and a promise to remove offensive dialog found in the game. This could cause significant changes for 'mature' games in the future." Since Rockstar has already apologized and pledged to update the game, is it just me, or is the state of Florida only looking to line its pockets with some best-selling game profits? Update: 12/12 00:19 GMT by S : Haitian community leaders aren't satisfied either, saying "the manufacturer's pledge to change future editions did not solve the problem with games on store shelves now."
When I played VC, I *never* once thought, "hey, those haitians, they're pretty bloodthursty!" And you wanna know why? Cuz it's a GAME, not a how-to guide or a travel brochure!
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I thought the whole premise of the hate crime laws was that the offender had to be doing something else illegal that was motivated by hate, and that was the only way it skirted the 1st amendment.
I guess all the people that say "slippery slope" is an invalid argument don't know much about governments or laws.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Is a strong arm militant group to bribe the government officials like the RIAA and MPAA. I can't even begin to think of all the racial, sexist, and otherwise hateful things I've heard in music or in movies and GTA gets hit on something completely stupid? I'm serious though. Video games are just as legitimate a form of expression and entertainment as movies and music. Why isn't it treated as such?
That's scary.
That GTA:VC is a generally offensive game, yet they want Rockstar to remove one relatively innocent line? It's ridiculous, because it's a game. Rockstar isn't advocating killing Haitians. They aren't encouraging people to go on killing sprees to make their own criminal empire either. It's a freaking game, a work of fiction.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
How much have the people who are making these claims looked into the game? That game bashes pretty much every group out there. You have the religious right guy talking about the commy Reds and his statue/spaceship, a goth guy that goes outside when it rains or he needs milk, some happy woman who's just.. Disturbing, NPR like announcers who are money grubbing [edit].. And that's just from a radio station. So, if that game is guilty for hate crimes, it sure isn't guilty for discrimination, because it hates everyone. It's humor, guys. Get over your ego.
Things like this make me doubt the future of the human race.
This statement is false.
Video game developers are just seen as an easy target because they don't have the massive financial backing of the MPAA or RIAA (movies and music routinely have far more offensive content).
The supposed Haitian community leaders (9 times out of 10, "community leaders" are just obnoxious individuals who decide that they speak for everyone else) are simple using this as a chance to grab some attention at Rockstar's expense.
The state of Florida is just going after the cash, because they know that video games don't have enough popular esteem yet among those with power to be well-defended.
I'm going to go out and buy GTA3, just to spite them.
Remember, if you advocate killing cops in a Rap song, that's protected free speech! But if you advocate killing a particular group of people in a videogame, that has to be against the law! (Of course, I'm sure these same people would probably like to make offensive songs and movies illegal too, but unfortunately the record and motion picture industries have more powerful lobbying groups.)
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I've made comments about this situation in the last thread, so I'll try not to repeat too much.
I think that this effects much more than M-rated games now that the State of Florida is getting involved. When Rockstar and Take Two self-censored, I didn't like it, but it was their decision. However, to use political muscle to try to censor the comment that the Haitian group misinterpreted is fascism. The Florida Attorney General should be removed. No matter how you slice it, it's protected speech. Not to mention, it's pretty scary that the government is trying to blatantly censor speech.
But, can the State of Florida even do anything? Does Rockstar or Take Two even have offices there?
Good work Rockstar and Take Two, now that you tried to please the Haitian community by removing the content, but because you apoligized you indirectly admitted that you were wrong when indeed you were right. You made it that much harder to say that it was protected speech considering that you wouldn't even protect it yourselves.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
I'm sorry, what are they supposed to do with the games on the shelves now? Release magic DVD fairies that will change the dialogue to less offensive dialogue?
/shrug
What this amounts to is that the censor-happy idiots weren't able to block the game because fo the sex and violence like they wanted to, and so they had to resort to getting it on a crap charge like this.
The censors never win in the long run.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
I am not a lawyer, I am a programmer. That said IMHO, If I was the game manufacturer I would simply hide behind freedom of speech and freedom of press.
..don't tread on me..
It seems that our local governments have forgotten that freedom is the key. The judge should remind them of this and toss it out of court.
If I want to make a product, and there is a market for the product, I should be able to sell it on the market. It should be up to the retailers to decide if they want to put it on the shelf.
The leftist or rightist or whatevers will always be yelling about right and wrong, but thats their opinion and they are allowed to say it.
The product is already listed as an adult game. For end users that are responsible enough to understand the game is fiction.
"kill the Haitians" is simply a line in the plot of a fictional game. If they started a kill the Haitians advertising campaign available to the public eye, thats different.
pretzel_logic
Yea, we should really kick Florida out of the union.
The dead vote there, they can't hold a proper election, they don't seem to comprehend what free speech is... I mean the list goes on and on.
We're watching you Florida, one more screw up, and your phallic landmass is out!
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
.. I am making fun of this ethnic group at every opportunity.
They weren't targeted specifically in the game. The game leveraged and/or poked fun at a plethora of stereotypes. They need to get the fuck over it.
In my opinion, I think the point at which Rockstar lost was the instant they decided to issue a statement apologizing to the Haitian community, they basically said "we are wrong, everyone feel free to sue us now, because we admit defeat".
Rockstar should have done the right thing for all games everywhere and fought this out in court as a free speech issue, which it clearly is.
Wont be long till we see other developers and publishers get sued, or worst of all banned or censored industry wide. If you though games were getting too many sequels and relying too much on franchise IP because publishers were not will to take risks, I can only imagine how much harder it will be to make original games with realistic content.
I take it you haven't seen Three Kings.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
In order to satisfy the demands of the florida haitian community, Rockstar has degun devellopment in a time machine that will be used to go back in time in order to remove offensive content from their game.
The machine will then be used to back to the paleozoic era and Rockstar employees will then wipe out all life on earth as we know it, applying the only possible way to never offend anyone ever again.
You can't take the sky from me...
From a Miami Herald story about the issue:
"American society is racist, even though there are antiracist laws," Lesly Voltaire, minister for Haitians living abroad, told The Herald. "It's based on a formerly slave-owning society, which has left its mark, and there are people who think they can make money on that racism."
And it's not offensive and prejudicial when a government official from another country makes a judgement on an entire society based on a practice abolished over 100 years ago?
The world makes me so mad, and this issue is just idiotic.
--- "Yeah, I'm a bit stressed out. I have a research paper due tomorrow and it has to be +5, Insightful."
Free Speech.
I know this will result in a discussion of "is it ok to make potentially racist material available to children?" but IMHO, that's where parenting comes in.
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
"Giving low point scores to all the vowels is clearly racist" said Aiiiaoa Oaoaiuuii for the Hawaiian state prosecutor's office.
World Scrabble champion Hzbrgzny Zgknyskqjz of Poland is rumoured to be a key witness for the defence at the trial.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
"To me it sounds like this has got to be against the law," Levinson said. "To tell people to kill a particular group of people? That has to violate some law."
Well, if a game were to attempt to motivate people to commit genocide, then yes, I'd agree, it probably violates some law. The problem is, even out of context, "kill the Haitians" doesn't imply killing a group of people from a particular community. It implies killing specific people, i.e. a gang. Since the Haitians that the line referred to was in reference to that gang, it's even harder to bend the facts in order to support the idea that Vice City is anti-Haitian.
Frankly, this whole fiasco is doing more to make people dislike the Haitian Community than anything Vice City did. Nobody likes misunderstanding to be used for frivilous lawsuits and the like.
"Derp de derp."
And I thought I was the only one who's television told him to do things like that.
Now that Rockstar has caved and announced that the dialog will be removed, what will it be replaced with? I mean, you can't just dump the player into a situation with no objective, that was the purpose of the phrase in question in the first place. In today's America, there is no proper solution. SOMEONE would find SOMETHING wrong with some little bit of something totally trivial, as they have here. Add in a bit of whining and complaining to some sympathetic politician, and nothing is safe.
I would pay more retail if it meant it went into some kind of defense slush fund just for these kinds of suits at this level/quality game.
If they asked for donations for a defense fund for this game I would put up some money, as very rare an occasion as that would be for me.
If we don't pay to support the games we like, and want to see more of, the litigation and new laws will bog them down and keep developers away. A few victorys with a 10$/game defense fund for the next Manhunt could go a long way twords keeping games free from political influence.
Hate (alone) is not illegal. In fact, criticism of people based on race or whatnot is quite legal, First Amendment-protected speech (as long as you don't violate slander/libel laws, of course).
Hate crimes refer to a specific class of crimes that are always illegal, but have punishments elevated by being classified as a hate crime.
If you kill someone, you might be looking at, say, a second-degree murder charge. However, if it is found that you killed the other person because you hated the color of his skin and killed him *for that reason*, then you may be charged with a hate crime, and may undergo nastier penalties.
The rationale, as far as I know, was to prevent racial violence against blacks in the South by jacking up punishments against their attackers. Now, I suspect that a lot of this is emotional and not particularly well-founded, but there is some argument. The idea is that you don't want to make penalties worse than necessary to discourage people from committing the crime. If you have a group of people that have a much higher punishment threshhold before they will stop committing a crime (the KKK, for instance), it might be nice to punish them and them alone more harshly.
I'm not saying that I agree or disagree with this approach (I tend to think that at the least, hate crime laws are quite out-of-date and produce nasty social artifacts), but it isn't quite as scary as attempting to outlaw your thoughts or verbal/written expression.
May we never see th
And that goes for any games. I mean, Christ. Suppose you're playing Yoshi's Cookie. I mean, God forbid the instructions say that "Yoshi should eat cookies", because some idiot might, at least in a totally distorted reality, manage to interpret this as a mandate to eat cookies without stop in real life. Furthermore, this is clearly targetting the defenseless bulimia sufferers of the world.
Sigh.
You know, I really don't have feelings about most minority groups one way or the other. Except when crap like this comes out. The game didn't make me dislike Haitians as a general group nearly as much as said Haitians are doing.
May we never see th
After playing Super Mario Bros. I spent a significant portion of my childhood running around the house looking for gold coins. These games are teaching our kids to chase money! Don't even get me started on the aftermath of my bananna cannon rampage.
No offense to Haitians or anyone else, but WTF took them so long to get pissed off and organized about this game? "Blah blah blah... its to late, they already made their money." Yea, why weren't you protesting a year ago when it would have been easier to resolve the situation? Anyone think Florida would be thinking about hate crime laws if this whole brewhaha happened a month after the game was released?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...is yet another *AA telling us what criminals we are.
Or what about those games that depict World War II? Should the Germans or the Russians be pissed?
When I was looking up info on DukeNukem3D for a post, I noticed this nifty litte blurb for "Wolfenstein 3D":
Due to the game content, this game may not be ordered by residents of Germany.
I'm not going to look for other examples, but if they can't purchase the game...
This is not my sig.