Slashdot Mirror
Law Professors on the California Violent Video Game Bill
Rydia writes "In light of the California Legislature's amendment and consideration of AB 1792, regarding violent video games, Findlaw's Vikram Amar (UC-Hastings) and Alan Brownstein (UC-Davis) have written an editorial on a child's vs. an adult's protections under the first amendment, and the right of the state to introduce legislation in this vein. It is welcome to see the topic discussed on its own legal merits, in lieu of actual law, and not the moralistic turf both sides of the debate have attempted to claim as their own."
80% - "Leave parenting to the parents."
10% - "Who cares, kids shouldn't get violent video games anyways."
5% - "FP! W000t!" / goatse / anti-katz flames
3% - Bitching about the fp / goatse / katz-flamers
1.5% - People who observe if we only had a beowulf cluster of natalie portmans in soviet russia, the people who bitch about fp / goatse / katz-flamers would just chill out
0.5% - People who write smug predictions and then download pictures of natalie portman -- this is me
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
We humans have most of the times a distorted idea of morality. How come a violent picture produces violence? How come a 'bad' show up produces evil? The greatest people of this world were the ones that were able to see violence, to see the 'bad' things and still stay calm in front of them.
We should try to make ourselves better and our environment will become better eventually.
As far as I see it, there are other problems in the world that need more attention than deciding whether or not kids should play violent video games.
As far as I see it, let kids play violent video games all their life. But don't try to take it out on the video game industry because you screwed up. Otherwise, make a squeaky clean society in which nothing that encourages a crime can be aired/made into a video game.
...
The gaming industry should, as a whole, start regulating itself. Start forbidding retailers from sellings M rated games to minors. I like my Vice City as much as the next guy, but if a 13 year old is going to be playing it, their parents should be aware of the content and it should be up to them whether it's allowed in their house or not (for the record, I'd let my kids play it). By restricting the sale to minors, you don't bring up any more issues than not allowing kids into R rated movies does. This is something every gamer should get behind, just as most everyone did with the ratings system a few years back. The more the industry and its customers regulate themselves, the less the goverment gets involved.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
According to the bill, the key requirement of heinousness, atrocity, or cruelty can be established if, in addition to other requirements, the game "depicts exceptional pain or suffering on the part of the victim and is accompanied by a graphic depiction of the victim's injuries," and "the circumstances surrounding the violence indicate that it is committed without conscience, pity, or empathy."
What if a game depicts no pain or suffering on the part of the victim, but is accompanied by a graphical depiction of the victim's injuries? Surely its worse if the consquences of violence are not made clear? If you are not reminded of the suffering then perhaps you are not going to be aware of the consequences of violence?
Arguably all the programmes like starwars where there is fighting all the time, but noone gets injured, noone gets hurt could be worse in terms of desensitising people to violence?
just my two pence.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Violence is a part of the Human Subconcious, and Shielding kids from Violence will only make them unprepaired when their put in a violent situation
/. is overrun by bed-wetting elitist nerds
let it be known, for anything other than servers, a *nix OS sucks
Food for thought:
Back in the 1950's the government considered a similar situation concerning the comics industry and its influence on minors. It response to a near witch-hunt the comics industry created the Comics Code Authority to regulate itself. The government was satisfied, and supposedly minors would be saved from degenerating society. Today, however, the CCA is viewed as archaic and many comics no longer stick to it (the CCA stamp is no longer need to sell). American youths have continued down the path that the government was so concerned about, and everyone realized that comics were not the cause of the "decline" of American youth culture, but societal causes for the changes. The same thing is beginning today with video games. My opinion is that the causes of the "problems" with youth today are not video games, but the decline of parenting in American households (more parents working longer hours, higher rate of devorce, etc.) Maybe we should address the parenting issue instead of retarding the development of an industry.
> It is welcome to see the topic discussed on its
> own legal merits, in lieu of actual law, and not
> the moralistic turf both sides of the debate have
> attempted to claim as their own
Oh yes, heaven knows how terrible it is when people
discuss issues on their moral merits. There's no
money in that.
Next thing you know, people will be making actual
decisions on the basis of *right* and *wrong*!
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The xbox has two settings for content -- one slider for movies, one slider for games. You simply set a button-combo, and if you want to play a game that is rated higher than the allowed setting, it forces you to enter your set code.
simple. easy. fantastic.
Newsie, Moderator, www.tauniverse.com
How is regulating video game sales going to change anything? Sure video games have violence. But so does TV and the Internet. And most of all, the real world has more violence that all of those combined. Look at all the war and poverty and famine and crazy things that go on in the world. I fail to see how violence in a video game could even remotely compare. There are children that grow up in neighborhoods that are overrun with crime. There are children that have witnessed murders.
You can restrict video games sales and censor and block all you want. But you can't keep children from being curious. And all you have to do to see violence is turn on the evening news. 9/11 footage showed a violent acted that was replayed over and over again. Children were bound to have seen it.
I've missed earlier articles regarding this law and looked em up and didn't see anything regarding the fact that this law specifically allows anything as long as it is 2+ player competitive. So UT with no single player is okay? Is this right. And if this is the case why do you think this is in the law? US Army protecting America's Army maybe? Then again that AA is covered because it has historical/political value. But yeah who knows what's up?
When self-regulation happens out of fear of government action, it's little different than actual government action. Imagine, for example, that Cuba were to 'lean' on Internet Cafes, telling them that unless they self-regulate out all possible anti-Castro sentiment from the internet effectively, they'll come in and establish strong laws. Is this really any better? Is this really any less censorship? When the industry acts to avoid a not-so-veiled threat of government intervention, the resulting acts are still, effectively, government intervention.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
The industry won this round hands down.
Yee pulled AB 1792 because he knew for a fact that he didn't have enough votes for the bill to get out of committee. This victory by the industry gives them further legitimacy and continues to make video games equal to movies, books, and music(the 8th Circuit ruling last June gave them this legitmacy).
AB 1793 was weakened considerably from its original intent. Originally, it would made retailers keep M- and AO-rated games seperate from the others if it passed. Now, it says only AO-rated games have to be kept from the others if passed. This is another big victory for the industry as there have been NO AO-rated console games and only a handful of AO-rated PC games since the ESRB was formed ten years ago. This also further legitimizes the ESRB rating system as equal to the MPAA rating system, if not surpassing it.(Frequent critic Joe Lieberman has even said that the ESRB system is the best rating system in the entire entertainment industry.)
In the long run, these victories by the industry damaged the credibility of their critics, especially Yee and Rep. Joe Baca(D-CA). Yee's comments in the last couple of weeks indicate to me that he is a sore loser that expects to get his way every time(that and he didn't plan on the industry fighting him, ignoring the fact that they've fought everything with pretty good success). Baca's credibility took a huge dive because his own home state rejected similiar legislation that Baca filed in Congress.
BearDogg-X
This bill would set forth legislative findings and declarations regarding the harmful effects of violent video games on minors. It would prohibit a person from knowingly distributing or exhibiting to a minor any video game that appeals to minors' morbid interest in violence, that enables the player to virtually inflict serious injury upon human beings or characters with substantially human characteristics in a manner that is especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, as defined, and that lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors. The bill would exclude from this prohibition any game in which the visual depiction of violence occurs as the result of simultaneous competition between 2 or more players, as specified.
So basically, it's uncool to beat up people in GTA3, but it's perfectly acceptable to kill your friends in UT2004.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Any law that is going to limit the distribution of violent games to minors will pass because pretty much 99% of people who oppose the law are not old enough to vote.