Violent Video Game Law Struck Down

The Importance of writes "Washington State banned the sale of violent videogames depicting violence against 'law enforcement officers' to minors under age 17. When challenged, the law was blocked by a preliminary injunction. Yesterday, a federal district court decided that the law was unconstitutional because it failed the strict scrutiny test and was also void for vagueness. Read the 15-page decision [PDF]. A summary of the case's holdings with quotations here."

Comments

Re:i love violent games.

[dirk]

While many studies have linked violent video games and movies with violent crime, there have been no studies that they prove that violent movies/games CAUSE violent actions. Correlation is not causation.

To steal an example from Michael Moore, why do these people playing violent games mean that is what caused their violent actions? The Columbine kids liked bowling as well, but no one is trying to say bowling causes violent actions. While it is easy to say that most people who committ acts of violence see violent video games and movies, that ignores the fact that most people who see voilent videos games and movies do not committ acts of violence.

Re:i love violent games.

[AuMatar]

Cases of Polio go up in the summer. Amount of ice cream eaten goes up in summer. The two are linked. Therefor, ice cream causes polio and must be banned!

Don't be too ashamed, its a common misunderstanding to think correlation means causation. I highly suggest reading this course on Causal Reasoning from CMU.

Study vs. Study

[lakeesis]

For those following the "your study is better than my study" debate, the Seattle PI ran this article in early July giving a general run-down of several of the well known, and often quoted, studies on both sides of the fence.

The most telling part of the article is the tagline at the end - "Media violence is only one of many factors that contribute to societal violence," Anderson has written, "and is certainly not the most important one."

Re:i love violent games.

[I8TheWorm]

Once again... it comes down to good parenting. If your children are of school age, then you need to have spent time with them teaching them how to deal with other people. If there is a problem with them in school, then you need to have a conversation with them about it. You also need to have conversations with them all the time regardless of wether or not their behavior is appropriate in group situations.

I'm not perfect, nor are my children. But we spend a lot of time just talking to them about what's going on in their lives. That's where you find out how they're applying the skills you've taught them.

"So and so did this" and "so and so said that" are what you hear. "How did you take it? How did you respond?" are your responses. You get to the right and wrong pretty easily, and very often they'll make you proud in how they deal with adversity they come up against. Don't get me wrong... when they do something irresponsible or downright wrong, not only do we have lengthy conversations with them, but punishment is dealt out as well. One of the hardest things to do in the world is to punish your own child, but it's an important factor in their growth, when appropriate.

That being said, most people can't afford to supervise their children 24x7. But if you're at all suggesting that schools are part of the problem, then I'll simply write you off as one of those parents who think school is a babysitter and you should let them teach your children behavior skills rather than you having to do it.

Doubt anyone will read this at this point, but...

[Mmm coffee]

Started thinking, and virtually half of all video games ever made have depicted violence against "law enforcment officers" --

Zelda 3 - The first dungeon of the game is nothing but killing LEOs.
Metroid 3 - You remember that corpse in a spacesuit in front of the door to Kraid? Now, that's most likely another bounty hunter like Samus, and thus could be seen as a LEO.
Final Fantasy. Any Final Fantasy - Most notable is Final Fantasy IV, where the first half of the game is spent directly fighting the most powerful nation in the world.
Super Mario Bros. - You spend the entire freakin' game flattening goombas and stomping koopas, who are trying to kill Mario by direct order from King Koopa.

The list goes on and on. This is the problem with broad laws - they can be used to cover literally anything if you look at it from the right angle.

Castlevania - The story of a proud nation ruled by the ageless Count Dracula, and it's struggle against the treasonous Simon Belmont. Hundreds - nay, thousands of Dracula's innocent followers have been mindlessly slaughtered by this heartless terrorist who is hell bent on overthrowing the great leadership.

Etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Re:i love violent games.

[Izago909]

Remember in comic books when the good guy turned the bad guy into the cops? Now the 'good guy' rips the cops guts out and leads the others on a high speed chase killing more.

Around the time of the red scare and HUAC the comic book industry feared being black balled as communists so they voluntarly censored themselves for over 30 years. No shadow could be cast over a law enorcemnt officers, government was blindly trusted, and no talk of drugs (even anti-drug story's). Personally, I'm glad that's changed. I couldn't tolerate living in a fake, leave it to beaver world.

As far as cutting class and slapping women are concerned, country music has been doing that for decades, and people have been romanticizing killers and gangsters for even longer. And it's not cool to be a drug dealer, but some people have nowhere else to go and there's too much money to be made. I do recall some of the prohibition era gangsters being idolized too.
Same product, new wrapper.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[CreatureComfort]

I find your proposition interesting. Can you provide links to reputable, scientific studies showing a positive correlation between pornography and rape?

On the contrary, most of the reputable sources I can find have distinct quotes such as:

One of the first authoritative bodies to spell out an unequivocal verdict of not guilty for pornography was the Danish Medico-Legal Council whose 1965 report to the Danish Penal Law Committee concluded that, to the Council's knowledge, based on criminological and clinical evidence 'there exists no scientific investigations to form a basis for the supposition that pornography . . . can contribute to normal adult's or young persons' committing sexual offences' (Penal Law Committee 1966, p. 80). This distinguished body of forensic physicians and psychiatrists explicitly mentioned that the statement referred to pornographic writings, pictures and films describing normal as well as perverted sexual phenomena. Five years later the United States Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (1970, p. 53) (or rather twelve of the seventeen participating members) arrived at a similar conclusion, stating that 'empirical research designed to clarify the question has found no evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behaviour among youth or adults'. Another verdict of not- guilty but this time based on overwhelming amounts of research: careful reviews of earlier research and thirty-nine additional effect studies sponsored by the Commission."

and

"a number of researchers in the late 1970s who, applying modern sexological laboratory techniques, were able to measure erectile responses in convicted rapists and normals who were watching, listening to, or reading depictions of sexual activities including consenting and coercive sex. The first results (several studies by Abel, Barbaree, Marshall, Quinsey and others) seemed very promising: while normals showed greater arousal to scenes of mutually consenting sex than they did to similar scenes involving coerced sex, rapists appeared to be equally aroused by the consensual and the coerced scenes. However, subsequent large-scale replications of these studies, as well as a more recent intensive study have shown that among a group of rapists, arousal to forced sex was significantly lower than it was to consenting sex; moreover, the rapists did not differ in this regard from groups of ordinary men (Kutchinsky 1991; forthcoming). Meanwhile, despite the negative findings of the United States Obscenity Commission, which were later reiterated by the British Williams Committee in 1979, the idea that pornography may be the direct cause of rape had continued to gain support among anti- pornography groups; and since the mid-1970s the Christian/Conservative moralists viewpoints (which had been voiced, among others, by the minority of the U.S. Obscenity Commission) were joined by feminist oriented groups."

Re:Someone help me out with this one...

[Piquan]

But why is a type of speech restricted simply because it isn't used to speak out against 'the Man'?

It's not. If we're referring to obscenity, it's restricted because it is believed to have "a substantial tendency to deprave or corrupt its readers by inciting lascivious thoughts or arousing lustful desires" (Commonwealth v. Isenstadt (1945), 318 Mass. 543 [62 N.E.2d 840, 844], or People v. Wepplo, 78 Cal.App.2d Supp. 959, free reg req'd).

There are other classes of speech that typified by GTA, for instance which may also have a substantial tendency to corrupt. Let's identify one such class as 'depictions of violence' for the moment. Now, depictions of violence may have a substantial tendency to corrupt, but because they are often used as vehicles of social or political commentary, are protected under the First Amendment. That's what this case (Video Software Dealers Assoc. v. Maleng, PDF) is about.

Obscenity, by legal definition, is "utterly without redeeming social importance" (Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957)). The full context of that quote is as follows:

All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance - unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion - have the full protection of the guaranties, unless excludable because they encroach upon the limited area of more important interests. But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.

Because the obscenity has "a substantial tendency to deprave or corrupt", it is considered to be bad for society. Now, were obscenity used for social change, then it would be protected under the First Amendment. But it's not, so it isn't. From Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942):

"....There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene.... It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality...."

Now, let's get back to VSDA v Maleng, since that's what this article is about. In the case of depictions of violence, it also may be considered to be bad for society. However, these are frequently works which contain vehicles for social opinion. That means that they merit First Amendment protection. The judge in this case said:

Sexually-explicit materials were originally excluded from the protections of the First Amendment because the prevention and punishment of lewd speech has very little, if any, impact on the free expression of ideas and government regulation of the sexually obscene has never been though to raise constitutional problems. The same cannot be said for depictions of violence: such depictions have been used in literature, art, and the media to convey important messages throughout our history, and there is no indication that such expressions have ever been excluded from the protections of the First Amendment or subject to government regulation.

Contrary to apparent popular opinion, the government doesn't feel that violence is "less profane" than sexual content (which is distinct from obscenity, Roth v. US).

Contact Info for Bill Author

[Anonymous Coward]

Washington State Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson can be reached as follows:

http://www.leg.wa.gov/house/members/d36_2.htm

I encourage you to contact her regarding this outtrageous, unconstitutional law.