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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."
but wasn't one of these kinds of things thrown out in some big court case five years ago?
*checks*
Interactive Digital Software Association v. St. Louis County, Missouri.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
This kind of legislation works extremely well. Remember the Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics notices on CDs? Since those have been implemented, not a single child has heard a swear word. Rap sales plummetted, and good old fashioned folk music is number one on the charts. One can only be hopefully that this kind of legislation can be enacted on a national level so that we may all go back to playing Centipede and Space Invaders again.
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
But that's my $.02...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Fines for (retaliers) selling to underage people in Illinois:
S afetyNetwork-PromotingAlcoholResponsibilityThrough CommunityPartnerships.php
Tobacco: $50 http://www.ilcat.org/lawsumm.htm#stma
Alcohol: $500 http://www.alcoholsafetynetwork.org/state/Alcohol
Video Games: $1000
Yup, that's reasonable.
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."
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!"