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Illinois Senate OKs Violent Games Bill
The Illinois senate has approved the violent games bill proposed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The bill was also passed by the House, but the Senate stripped the possibility of jail time out of the wording before approving it. The House must now reconsider the bill before it can be passed into law. From the article: "The sponsor, Sen. Deanna Demuzio, denied the measure would interfere with free speech rights.'Video games are not art or media,' she said. 'They are simulations, not all that different from the simulations used by the U.S. military in preparation for war.' Apparently I have been misinformed as to what exactly I've been doing for the last twenty-odd years. Thank you, Illinois Senate, for correcting my error.
That's funny. My sister has classes in art school to make 3D Art for Video Games.
I'm sure she would be surprised to learn that she is getting a "simulation" degree and not an Art degree.
Why can't our legislators deal with real problems, you know like our economy and the environment. Oh yeah, because this makes for an easy deamon.
How can they say that it's not art? What about pen and paper, then? It has it's roots in war simulations from way back when video wasn't feasable. Are books about war simulations, since they recreate the war as a visual image in our heads? The question I want answered now is what should and shouldn't be considered art, if practically everything can be considered a simulation by someone's standards?
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
"Video games are not art or media," she said. "They are simulations, not all that different from the simulations used by the U.S. military in preparation for war."
,Compare the number of violent crimes related to computer games with those related to people taking bits from the bible a bit too literaly .
They are art and media , Some games atleast are comparable to works of literature other are stylistic master works.
Yet i doubt the lady would have any problem with kid reading great works of literature, religious books or historical documents , Alot of which have explicit violance which is far in excess of that of games.
These games do not turn people into violent sociopaths anymore than reading the bible/torah/tao te ching/quoran etc does
The numbers would fall heavily in favour of banning the book if we did .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Let's float some other equally meaningful statements, for comparison's sake:
This is actually kind of fun, maybe someday I'll get elected to something and can use this kind of bizarre hyperbole to compare things I don't appreciate or understand to the military.Since when has it been the government's job to decide what constitutes art? If this is the case, then I know of a few museums that are going to start needing to issue bans for the younger patrons.
No less amount of artistic talent is used on painting on 3D geometry than painting a traditional canvas. In fact, I know of a few game artists to paint their UVW maps on real canvas and scan them in as game readable texture files latter on.
Still, even some critics said they would not vote against the measure for fear it would be used against them politically.
"I'm going to vote for this bill, but I'm voting for it for one reason -- because this is a political bill," said Sen. Mike Jacobs. "If I vote against it, it will show up in a campaign mail piece."
This is why I hate the political spinmachine so much. I can just see it now- "This man ignores the blatant debasing of morals that violent games display to today's youth. Do you want this person in office?"
Thanks a lot, Baloneyvitch.
"I'm going to vote for this bill, but I'm voting for it for one reason -- because this is a political bill," said Sen. Mike Jacobs. "If I vote against it, it will show up in a campaign mail piece."
This really concerns me. I'd like to think that politicians would have enough faith in the populace that they could vote against bills they didn't agree with. If someone mentions this as a "doesn't care about the kids" swipe in a campaign brochure, they should respond with a "protecting free speech" piece in theirs. If they made their position clear on this issue before they were elected no-one should be surprised enough about it to vote the other way the next time just because of that. Then the politicians might actually enforce the principles in the manifestos they were voted in on to some extent - imagine that!
One good turn - gets all the covers.
All this bill does, if I read it correctly, is create penalties for any store that sells games beyond a certain threshold (sexualy or violently, or both if you like it like that) to minors.
However, as I understand, the bill does not explain how violent or sexual is too much.
Frome the article:
The measure approved Thursday would require store owners to determine which games are too violent or sexually explicit for anyone under 18. Anyone selling them to a minor could be fined.
So who's making the decisions about what's too violent/sexual? Does the store owner determine what's inappropriate, but if (s)he sells it anyways, (s)he gets fined? No, that doesn't make any sense. Does the store owner decide what to sell, but then a parent disagrees with his decision and then he gets fined? Well, that would suck.
The reason I hate these restrictions is because they are invariably too vague and invariably done by people who have no clue (video games aren't media, they're stimulations, what?). If they just legally enforced the ESRB, I'ld be ok with that, though I'm sure if they can, since ESRB is a private organization. But people who don't play video games making up random restrictions? I'll pass.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Not to mention that once the government starts reviewing and approving certain titles for sale/restricted sales it looks an awful lot like text-book case of censorship.
The standard in Illinois will probably be found to vague to be constitutional. I imagine it will end up in court almost immediatly after being signed into law.
The only reason they are doing it is so that all the politicians can run under the family-friendly label in the next election.
Save a life, sign your organ donor card.