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

i love violent games.

[Sovern]

I think they let members of society get out thier frustrations without physically acting them out.

Re:i love violent games.

[SIGALRM]

i love violent games

On August 5th I will begin letting some serious frustration out on "personal demons"... :)

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.

[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.

So..

[manavendra]

... if a cop is killed in a movie, then ban the movie?

And possibly all future productions by those involved in it?

Re:So..

[chris_mahan]

14 years old can pull the trigger as easily as a 22 year old.

In this country, ([stand up straight, remove hats] our Blessed and Glorious Country), you are a child, a child you hear, with no rights, no voice, no nothing, until you turn 18 and then wham, society hits you with a ton of bricks (paperwork) and all of a sudden you're supposed to conduct yourself as an adult and a productive member of society. Well, if you don't get the training and exposure, sherlock, you ain't gonna be any good at dealing with adult stuff.

I'm of the opinion that all the under 17 or under 18 laws can be brought to under 13 and society will be better off in the long run.

US, wake up, the other 5.7 billion people can't all be wrong.

Re:So..

[gUmbi]

... if a cop is killed in a movie, then ban the movie?

*shrug* At least the public would no longer be tortured by Police Academy sequels

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

My favorite line

[hether]

"Do the Roman centurions of 'Age of Empires' ... qualify as 'public law enforcement officers'?"

Shows just how laws like that could be misinterpreted...

Useful metaphor for this kind of reactionism:drugs

[vuvewux]

Drugs became illegal in the US because of these exact types of stupid legislators. Now, it's part of our culture. Walk down the street and you can find zillions of people who actually believe that pot kills. Same with video games. Once they ban them, it's easy to "educate" people with PR campaigns. Eventually, hardly anyone will remember the days when a 10 year old could play space invaders. Zillions of people will actually believe that videogames cause violence. Truth won't matter. Science won't matter. Research won't matter. They will believe it because they don't think about it, and are afraid to take a minority stand.

Good

[vuvewux]

Long ago we needed a separation between Church and State. Now we need a separation between Parent and State. Parents need to take some responsiblitity in raising their children and stop blaming every form of media that doesn't fit into their package of morals.

Re:Good

[I8TheWorm]

I wholeheartedly agree. My fiance (a police officer) and I have three kids. GTA hasn't found its way into our collection of PS2 games, because, strangely enough, we act like parents. Neither of us is going to try to tell other people they can't play it... that's not any of our business.

What's interesting about her job is she is now a PO with the local ISD. When she worked at the school in east county where the average income is much lower, and people are more "common" for lack of a better term, a phone call to a parent resulted in an apology and an action. Now that she works at the school in the "affluent" neighborhood, a phone call to a parent results in blamestorming, "not my child" and "you people should be doing more to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen." Those folks want the rest of the world to raise their children so they're not inconvenienced, and they're the people that think laws like this are a good idea.

Re:Good

[PsiPsiStar]

>When you get into an accident, you have to get >rescued/treated and perhaps go to a hospital >and get treated there. Then everyone else gets >to pay.

Everyone else pays? Then why am I shelling out all this money for insurance. You go to a hospital in an ambulance, you pay for the ambulance. They make insurance mandatory for a reason. And I support mandatory insurance, because it forces people to be able to pay for their own mistakes.

If people hurt themselves, so long as it's their own fault, that's life. The alternative is other people making my choices for me. I don't want the government to be able to say I can't go white water rafting or rock climbing or scuba diving because it's too dangerous. Warnings are one thing. Telling someone to get down is one thing. Fines are idiotic.

Why doesn't anyone consider the political consequences of the US government's recent conversion to the belief that people are basically mentally incompetent and need a parental government to protect them?

I can't drive along a 20 mph stretch of road with my seatbelt off, but I can drive 65 mph down some strech of highway with it on. Where do you think I'm safer? The government is doing a shitty job of protecting me from myself. If I get in an accident, I should sue them for letting me drive on that fast, dangerous highway, right? It's their responsibility, not just to warn me, but to force me to be safe.
Ah, but they figure people get more benifts driving down a fast highway. Shouldn't I be allowed to make that decision, for better or worse?

Maybe people just live in a society where they think others should force them to do the right thing, and the consequences for their actions should be other people's responsibility. It would explain a lot of the insane lawsuits flying around.

It's not the government's job to stop stupid people from hurting themselves or to decide what risks are acceptable. It's their job to stop stupid people from hurting me, or cheating me, or giving me false information. The government can give helpful information, but it isn't my parent and it shouldn't have any burden or compulsion to make my cost-benefit anlayses for me. These are the same people who wanted to invest Social Security in the stock market, remember? They suck at cost benefit analysis.

Good to see

[XeRXeS-TCN]

It's a good sign that free speech and common sense has largely won out in this circumstance; it's been some time since I've seen a legal issue on here that actually followed the principles of freedom granted by the constitution, rather than blatantly ignoring it ;P

One thing that I did notice though, was:

Given the nationwide, on-going dispute in this area, it is reasonable to ask whether a state may ever impose a ban on the disseminations of video games to children under 18. The answer is "probably yes" if the games contain sexually explicit images, and "maybe" if the games contain violent images, such as torture or bondages, that appeal to the prurient interest to minors.

Which suggests that as expected, the debate over violent/explicit video games is long from over, and more restrictions may well be brought in over time.

Mod Parent Up

[mfh]

This is bang on the money. Violent Video games give people stress relif; they are good for society. Would you rather someone take their frustrations out on other people, instead of fake people? Let's face it, there are plenty of injustices in the world that require more attention than any injustices proportedly caused by violence in media, be it video games or film.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Cat_Byte]

If you use it for practice you'll be soreley disappointed when you can't aim with a mouse and find that one returned bullet does more than take a little health away.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Hatta]

Same thing with pornography BTW. If you can beat off to a girly mag you're less likely to have pent up frustration that will make you want to cheat on your spouse, hire a hooker, harass that cute technician, etc.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[NanoGator]

"Same thing with pornography BTW. If you can beat off to a girly mag you're less likely to have pent up frustration that will make you want to cheat on your spouse, hire a hooker, harass that cute technician, etc."

I wish more women understood this. Some of them out there actually get offended that the guy they're involved with looks at porn. "I should be enough for him!" *Shudder* Hint, ladies, there is no such thing as a woman on this planet that would 100% completely satisfactorally squelch a guy's curiosity about other women. We are not WIRED this way. We are not programmed to take one mate, settle down, and that's it. We were developed to run around and make everybody pregnant. Don't believe me? Look at other examples of the male's role in nature. We bend over backwards to have monogomous relationships, we should be granted at least a little bit of release.

I think the story is similar for the violence in video games debate. It needs to be understood that there are a LOT of people out there who aren't against video game violence because they grew up on it. Despite that, they are not violent people. They don't have violent tendencies. They don't have anything wrong with them that they would desperately want to avoid spreading to other children. For this reason, very serious proof needs to come about. Unfortunately, that proof is going to have to by the truckload. One kid shooting a car and blaming GTA3 is not compelling. 100 kids, well maybe. 10,000 Okay, we can believe it.

In both cases, a level of understanding has to be developed.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[RazzleFrog]

Too bad that none of that is actually true. Interesting that in everything else in life being content is a bad thing yet in finding a loving relationship we should just be happy with what we have. The reason marraiges get ruined is because people do settle. They think that they have to get married by a certain age. They go into marraige with this false idea of what marraige really is. I find it most disturbing that people get married without living together and without having sex. It's funny that somebody who wouldn't think of buying a car without test driving it or buy a house without having it inspected would marry somebody without having even seen them naked or seen what they are like living with every day.

There is also absolutely nothing that says that having sexual fantasies is actually going to make you leave your wife. I fantasize about being a baseball player sometimes but that doesn't mean I am quitting my day job. You are basically saying that fantasy is unhealthy. If that is your point than I don't think you will find a lot of converts on this site.

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:Mod Parent Up

[Pharmboy]

Its very easy, the confusion between men and women. Once women realize that men are incredibly simple creatures, and they should leave us alone, they can be happier. Its very simple:

Women want ONE man to fulfill her EVERY need.

Men want EVERY woman to fulfill his ONE need.

Its almost that simple, really. You want to impress a man? Show up naked, bring food, and don't block the TV. We really don't need much, but we can't stand being bitched at, or told our constant hornyness is wrong or bad. You leave us alone about dirty movies, lighten up a little, and we will do anything for you. Anything. Fortunately, my wife already knows this, which is one reason I married her.

To all the women here reading slashdot (both of you), please pass this on.

Good...and bad...

[nebaz]

It is interesting that the court appears to have said that obscenity can not be used as a justification (i.e. can't sell Playboy to minors) because obscenity deals with sexual matters, rather than violence.

While I think that this is a great win for free speech, does it seem a bit weird that the ability to blow someone's head clean off is given a higher protection than showing someone's nipple? Which one is really worse in the long run?

Note: I am not for censorship of any kind, though I think voluntary ratings and PARENTAL INVOLMENT I N CHOICES are the best solution, but it speaks volumes that violence seems to be celebrated but anything sexual must be covered up "for the children". It really goes to show the almost paradoxical prudist warrior culture that permeates America today.

So...

[Unnngh!]

...are most cops that get injured in the line of duty attacked by people under the age of 18? I'm glad the law has been stopped--this is, IMO, the duty of the parent not the gov't.

I get more violent watching Congress on C-SPAN

[Anonymous Coward]

Than I ever did playing Doom, Quake, or Half-Life.

BS

[thedogcow]

This is such bullshit. There is no formidable connection between violent video games / music and a proclivity to commit violence in the long run.

I'll tell you what the problem is with the youth of today with all the violence.... Shitty parents. Mystery solved.

Someone help me out with this one...

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Graphic depictions of depraved acts of violence, suc as the murder, decapitation, and robbery of women in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, fall well within the more general definition of obscenity. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has found that, when used in the context of the First Amendment, the word "obscenity" means material that deals with sex. Only "works which depict or describe sexual conduct" are considered obscene and therefore unprotected.

Why exactly is sex deemed to be worse than violence? Why are violent portrayals protected but sexual portrayals not?

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

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

I never said that I thought sex was harmless, but a lot of the harm that sex causes can be avoided by educating children properly. And by properly I mean none of this "don't touch anyone until you are married" nonsense that one would have to be an idiot to think that most people will follow. For some reason (probably the same reason Americans don't like sexual portayals in the first place) we refuse to consider open, honest and frank sexual education.

Video Game Demographic

[Eberlin]

As the demographic moves from teenyboppers to more mature folks in their 20's, are they even really focusing on the right people? Yes, I understand that it's not exactly wholesome material when 47 fiber-wires the local law enforcement officials. I also understand that I'm playing a video game.

For the younger crowd, there's a rating system in place. If mommy buys Hitman: Contracts or Vice City for little johnny (even after reading the rating for it) -- and continues to let the PS2/TV/Internet babysit the child, I believe no law can help that "family."

It's a strange society that looks to everyone else for responsibility in raising children. When all else fails, I suppose we can always blame Canada. Until then, spend time with your children. Make sure they know the difference between reality and fantasy. Give them a sense of morality. Lead by example and for fsck's sake, let them know they matter. I bet that'll work much better than any legislation could.

Download them from DC?

[Eudial]

The law is leaving the poor kids with no option but to illeagally acquire the games (warez). Great job!

Violent, ok... sexually explicit ,no?

[192939495969798999]

Yet again, we teach our kids and everyone playing games that pretend death is fine, but pretend love is not... and they wonder why everyone's weird!

Re:Why is that...

[I8TheWorm]

Offtopic, but ontopic later...

Erm... that's been a long standing arguement here in the USA, so I hope you didn't get the feeling you'd come up with something original ;)

When the founders of this county added the second amendment, they knew that the only way to remove an oppressive government (which they'd just been under) was with force. Protecting the right to own arms was essential to being able to use such force.

We have laws banning such substances as cocaine, marijuana, crystal meth, etc... None of these laws stop criminals from being in possession of those substances. The long standing arguement against banning guns is it means only the criminals will have them.

ontopic

The idea behind laws such as this one is that children/teens are desensitized by violence in games and on tv. I don't agree with that, but it's what these pretentious lawmakers think. These same people seem to think that, in the 1950's, the world really was like Leave it to Beaver portrayed.

The simple solution is for parents to become parents again. We (I have 3), collectively, need to quit blaming other people for our shortcomings as parents and own up to the fact that kids turn out pretty much how we raise them (and who we let them hang out with). We, not laws, should be the filters that sort out what our kids watch and do.

My 11 year old boy is a big fan of Will Smith, and we own (lease?) the Bad Boyz DVD's, and he's allowed to watch both of them. Why? Because we speak with our children all the time about how people should act and how they should treat other people. He understands that what he's watching is purely for entertainment, and stuffing people in trunks, while funny on tv, isn't funny in real life.

The idea of having more laws on the books infuriates me, wether it be banning violent games or guns. We just need to stop blaming other people when our ignored child turns out rotten.

Re:Useful metaphor for this kind of reactionism:dr

[GigsVT]

everyone knows that pot just makes you stupid

Yeah, the several Nobel Laureates that were pot smokers were pretty stupid.

Reminds me of when I was a young lad...

[John Courtland]

...and my parents took me to the local Egghead Software to get a video game for my birthday. Being a young computer nerd, this was fine by me. Well, I chose some game that I really wanted (I now forget the title) and my mom INSTANTLY asked the sales guy if it had ANY violence in it. Yep, it sure did. So I put it down. I then chose "Blades of Steel", and the sales person told my parents you could get into a fight in the game (it's hockey, for those of you who don't know). So now, frustrated as hell, I put that game down. So then I decided on Microsoft Flight Simulator 4. Seemed to go ok, until we got home and my ma opened the package and read the manual.... "WHAT?!? WORLD WAR ONE COMBAT! YOU CAN SHOOT PEOPLE! AHHAHHAHAHHH YOU AREN'T PLAYING THIS!" I was a social retard for a while because of this constant shielding from the Chicken Little that was my mother. Hitops were 'gang shoes'... Etc etc. Funny that after all that, I still got into fist fights at least once year until I was in High School, because of my lack of height and my raising (social retard). At least I learned how to fight. :-/

Fucking stupid Tipper Gore bullshit, and my ma bought into it like a sucker.

My point? Kids are smarter than people give them credit for, and they need to be held responsible more often. I knew what the fuck the difference between fantasy and fiction was back then (I was 8), and so do kids today. In fact, I truly believe they are smart enough to game the system for protection when it comes down to it. What really needs to be done is for children to have better education. Spend all this wasted money on effectively teaching kids and giving them a future, and shut the fuck up about violence, because we all know that it's bullshit anyway.

Of course they struck it down

[Whyzzi]

Do you realize how much tax revenue would be lost if they banned violent video games?!

Re:Useful metaphor for this kind of reactionism:dr

[RatBastard]

You've never met kids who've gone through the D.A.R.E. program. They tell all kinds or horrific lies about drugs. Crap like pot will turn you into a heroin junkie.

Now, I support teaching kids about the dangers of drugs. But I'm against lieing to them about it. If you want your kids to be able to deal with drugs they need to know the truth.

The problem with lieing to kids about drugs as mostly-harmless as pot is that when the kids do try it, and none of those evil things happen to them, they doubt your word on the really dangerous stuff like cocain and heroin.

Honesty is paramount when dealing with children if you want them to have the tools to survive.

The important thing that everyone missed...

[Samari711]

is that the courts found that video games DO qualify as protected speech. This is a very good thing because it sets a precedent that will make banning/restricting games much harder.

Woulda Coulda Shoulda

[FreeUser]

1) Think how much smarter they would've been without.

Probably not at all smarter. I'm not a particular fan of pot (it makes me paranoid; I much prefer a nice glass of 2000 Estancia Meritage), but there is absolutey no evidence it "makes you stupid" and a great many studies that indicate it is quite innocuous, including several fairly recent studies by the US Federal government that were subsequently squashed for political reasons.

Chronic abusers of any drug are another story, however, even there we see far greater damage resulting from alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs. Recreational use isn't terribly healthy (no alien chemicals to the body are), but there is no correlation between pot use and lack of intelligence except in the most egregious cases of chronic, ongoing, long term excessive use where the abuser is essentially stoned 24/7.

2) Wonder how many others would've been without it?

Again, probably none. Anyone who abuses marijuana enough for it to impact their intelligence probably has an addictive personality, and would have substituted alcohol or some other equally if not more harmful substance had pot not existed.

Accountability

[dgagley]

I agree with others that people need to be more involved with their children. There are games my children will not play. I have taught my 8 year old what the ratings are and to ask me.

Have these people ever watched the news?
The difference between the Nightly News and a violent video game is that the games are NOT REAL. My kids are smart enough to know the difference.

Life must be lived not legislated.

Because parents...

[Kjella]

Why exactly is sex deemed to be worse than violence? Why are violent portrayals protected but sexual portrayals not?

...find it much easier to answer "Mommy, why did he shoot her?" than "Mommy, why did he put his thing in her bottom?" And because it is much easier to say "You should never shoot anyone" than to explain the complexities of when, where and with who it is reasonable to have sex. "Not until you're <age>" is hardly going to work...

Kjella

Re:Kinda like pr0n in that regards ...

[tgibbs]

Same for the video games. In the case of the all-too-well-known example of Columbine, those were certainly users of violent video games. In fact, their shot-accuracy was better than the police trained people tend to be because of those video games.

It's funny how many people buy ridiculous statements like this without asking the obvious questions: "Who measured their shot accuracy? How did they measure it?" Just a moment's consideration should tell you how implausible it is. Think about what would have to be be involved to actually be able to honestly make such a claim. Did somebody really go around and try to figure out where every shot was fired from, guess what the kid was aiming at, and calculate how close the shot came to the target? And then somehow work out an appropriate metric to compare it to police accuracy? That would be quite an accomplishment indeed! Where is this tour de force study published?

This is awesome!

[transient]

Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson wrote this law and said, "While we may have lost this one battle in the sale of violent games against children, the war is far from over."

What kind of idiot uses violent metaphors to describe their initiatives against violence?

Violence Begets Violence

[rinkjustice]

A child's mind is like a bank, whatever you put into it, you get it back 10 years later with interest.

Porn and violence is tearing apart marriages and families. Anyone who can't see the moral decay and complete deterioration of society as a whole because of these two abhorations has their head up their ass.