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Illinois Passes Explicit Game Law
The law that the Illinois system of government has been tossing around for a while explicitly banning the sale of Mature games to minors has been passed into law. Gamasutra reports: "Like the similar bill proposed by California Senator Leland Yee, the Safe Games Illinois Act would require retailers to use warning labels in addition to the existing ESRB labels, as well as post signs within stores explaining the ESRB rating system. Sale of offending games to minors will earn stores a $1,000 fine on a petty offense, while failure to post explanatory signage will draw a $500 fine for the first three violations and $1,000 for each subsequent count."
Look, if it just took the ESRB ratings and used them as the basis for this law, then I'd love it, because it'd put a bit more authority and force behind the Mature and AO ratings.
These games shouldn't be sold to kids in the first place. Putting a fine in there can only help, but the ambiguity makes things too tricky.
Beyond the Polygons : Because 50,000 polygo
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2001-05- 16&res=l/
This law means nothing when junior can get away with this kind of crap. And he does. He does every day.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Right idea, wrong point. The legislators are taking it upon themselves to tell you how to be a better parent. Worse, it seems they're trying to remove parents from the parenting process. They put the burden on retailer and public institutions like schools and libraries to police your children's behavior and values, but if you dare raise a hand or make any other effort to discipline your child, you'll get slapped with jail time. We're raising an increasingly permissive society that elects to make others responsible for the bad decisions and behavior of a few. There was a great editorial cartoon that summed it up this weekend. A parent questioned his child playing GTA if he had been accessing the sex game, and the child replied with (I'm paraphrasing" "Nope, just doing the usual stuff, killing cops."
"I think that if parents WANT to purchase an M-rated game for their children that they should be allowed to. However, if the child isn't ready for it and starts doing stupid stuff like killing their siblings mimicking a move then the parents are held responsible, just like anything else."
Except for the fact that the parents who don't realize their kid is ready for an M game won't hold themselves responsible.... they'll hold everyone else responsible. The blame game, it's a wonderful thing.
Insert Sig Here
Although I do agree, I dont think a law is going to do much to change anything, if anything, it will make things worse.
1. Unable to buy the game, those who want to play it may end up just pirating it.
2. This doesnt do anything about parents going into the store to buy thier children inapropriate games.
3. Taxpayers are paying for what parents should be doing.
Im going to sound like a broken record, but the real issue is with parents not wanting to take responsibilty for thier kids and then turning around and blaming the games they play when they do something bad.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
Actually, the parents doing the lobbying probably already don't let their kids play these kinds of games. (Or don't know that their kids play them).
The problem is that they want to be able to tell every other parent what they can let their kids do.
What?
I believe that this will put more responsibility on parents.
Now hear me out here. I do not belive this law will do much good, as some stores will inevitably ignore the new reguluations, game development companies will still produce violent/sex-filled games and parents will surely buy these games for their kids... nothing will change in that respect.
What will change is the fact that when the next Little Deranged Johnny does go on his shooting spree claiming to have been influenced by videogames, who can overprotective parents, lawmakers and lawyers alike lay the blame on?
- The stores that sell these products are not to blame if they follow the new regulations
- The companies that make these games cannot be blamed, as there is legislation now in place that protects them. How often do gun companies get successfully sued for children accidentally shooting each other? How often do alcohol companies get sued because someone drank their beer and killed someone driving drunk?
- The kids cannot be blamed because by law they are minors and don't know the difference between fantasy and reality (mind you this is from the point of view from the Overprotective Parents Association - OPA - not my personal view)
How did Little Deranged Johnny get his hands on such a twisted, evil, dispicable piece of software? The parents! The only way that he legally got the software would be through his parents who bought it for him or from a friend's parents who allowed him to use it.I fear though that the wrath of the OPA will be turned elsewhere instead of on the parents where it belongs... "How could it be possible that the parents are to blame when he could have just as easily pirated it off of the internet? Regulate the internet now! Crack down harder on piracy!"
The general idea goes something along the lines of "Why should the government care what kinds of videogames I buy, regardless of who I am?"
...) anything they please, and the government isn't allowed to have an opinion on it.
We have this thing in our constitution called freedom of speech which is supposed to guarantee that anyone can "say" (includes music, written word, art,
You could imagine, for instance, a new law saying "Books that portray the President of the United States in a negative light are age-restricted, and it is a federal offense to sell or otherwise provide these items to anyone under the age of 115."
Now, granted, that's a perversely extreme take on this, but it is a slippery slope. As soon as the government is allowed to determine what is "appropriate" for people to say, or for people to hear, the government can start attacking freedom by hiding "unpleasant truths".
And the trouble with freedom is that it can be taken away with the pen, but usually requires the sword to regain.
So we zealously defend it.