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California Passes Violent Games Bill
TecnaDigit writes "Today, after sitting on the bill for nearly a month and constant political pressure, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 1179, the bill that would prohibit the sale and rentals of violent video games to minors. Again, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) are challenging the bill. According the the VSDA, the bill is faulty in that a game is decided whether or not it is 'violent' by juries, and different juries could have different opinions on what is defined as 'violent'." Commentary on GamerGod.
California, along with the rest of the U.S. already has a system like this in place. It's called the ESRB ratings system. M (mature)-rated games can only be sold to people 17 and older, and AO (adults only)-rated games can only be sold to 18 and older.
http://www.esrb.org/
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
The problem is, that there is already judicial precedence on the issue.
The above is from http://fact.trib.com/1st.01.02supr.htmlAlso check here http://www.constitutioncenter.org/education/ForEdu cators/DiscussionStarters/BanningViolentVideoGames .shtml
and here http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers /walsh.html
So this is nothing new people. Ever since the ID brought us a world where we could literally kill and watch Nazi's die (even before that really). This has been an ongoing debate.
The one thing you MUST realize is that this is not a bill being pushed by the Right-Wing Conservative Nut Jobs (granted they aren't really all against it), this is being pushed by DEMOCRATS. You want to know who hates freedom of speech? Hillary Clinton, after the Columbine murders ordered the surgeon general to find a link between school shooting tragedies and Quake. He found no conclusive link, but that didn't stop her, Lieberman, and the rest of the gang from going hog wild trying to censor video games. I lean left politically, but you can bet your ass I don't agree with censorship.
Do what I did, I joined the EFF http://www.eff.org/ and joined the ACLU http://www.aclu.org/
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
The VSDA, according to the headline, suggests that juries will be the sole determinant in whether or not a game is "violent". The bill, however, is fairly explicit in its definitions:
(A) "Cruel" means that the player intends to virtually inflict a high degree of pain by torture or serious physical abuse of the victim in addition to killing the victim.
(B) "Depraved" means that the player relishes the virtual killing or shows indifference to the suffering of the victim, as evidenced by torture or serious physical abuse of the victim.
(C) "Heinous" means shockingly atrocious. For the killing depicted in a video game to be heinous, it must involve additional acts of torture or serious physical abuse of the victim as set apart from other killings.
(D) "Serious physical abuse" means a significant or considerable amount of injury or damage to the victim's body which involves a substantial risk of death, unconsciousness, extreme physical pain, substantial disfigurement, or substantial impairment of the function of a bodily member, organ, or mental faculty. Serious physical abuse, unlike torture, does not require that the victim be conscious of the abuse at the time it is inflicted. However, the player must specifically intend the abuse apart from the killing.
(E) "Torture" includes mental as well as physical abuse of the victim. In either case, the virtual victim must be conscious of the abuse at the time it is inflicted; and the player must specifically intend to virtually inflict severe mental or physical pain or suffering upon the victim, apart from killing the victim.
(3) Pertinent factors in determining whether a killing depicted in a video game is especially heinous, cruel, or depraved include infliction of gratuitous violence upon the victim beyond that necessary to commit the killing, needless mutilation of the victim's body, and helplessness of the victim.
Interesting that mental torture is included in the definition; so much for Medal of Honor: Abu Ghraib. There does seem to be a theme that simply blowing away your enemies isn't enough -- you have to relish it, go out of your way to cause extra pain to the digital victim -- "gratuitous violence upon the victim beyond that necessary to commit the killing."
In the UK some games are rated by the official censor, notably those with adult content or excessive violence, which get legally binding age marks on them. But yes the ESRB stuff is all voluntary everywhere I believe.
On a practical level, I don't really care about this legislation, beacause, on a practical level, it won't have any effect. Most stores have a policy of not selling M an AO games to 13 year olds anyway. However, the comments about how violent games increase crime rates piss me off. It's simply not true. There was like a six page article in Computer Gaming World a month or two ago on the subject, and it showed a graph of video game sales vs crime rates. If there was a relationship at all, it was perfectly inversely proportional (at least until the war in Iraq started, when the crime rates started to creep up again.) Video games are still a scapegoat for politicians and the media, and they will continue to be until people who grew up with the medium, and actually understand it, find their way into positions of power.
No single raindrop believes that it is responsible for the storm.
You are being sarcastic, but what you are saying is true.
In a murder, there is a body. Everyone knows that a crime has been commited, it is just a matter if the person accused of the crime is guilty.
With this, you are going to have a whole bunch of busybody housewives making subtle decisions on the content of games... something that most people who can't or don't want to get out of jury duty are not mentaly capable of doing.
Banning GMail
Feng Shui
Cute, but there is a substantial difference between deciding a matter of facts (did John Smith kill his wife?) versus deciding a matter of opinion (when Mario stomps on a koopa, does that make the game violent?).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Are you serious? They HAVE. Long ago.
It's called the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, ESRB, you can find them at www.esrb.org. They are a non-profit ratings group started by the games industry to rate games. Developers submit games for ratings, the ESRB rates them based on known criteria, and then returns a rating. You may then place that rating and ONLY that rating on your game.
It's those little stylized black and white logos. They have a letter, tilted to the left in them. They are located on the lower left or lower right of the front of the game box and are clearly visible. On the back, there's a clarification of why the game got that rating. So, go to a retailer some time, and look at the games. See how many you find that don't have an ESRB rating. My bet? You'll find none. Nearly all games are submitted for ratings (all large publishers submit all their games) and most retailers will not carry unrated games (even retailers that carry unrated movies).
They already have a very effective regulation system in place, that is just like the one the movie industry has. The logos and ratings are trademarked so you cannot use them without the permission of the ESRB, and they only grant permission for the rating your game actually recieved (same way the MPAA does it for movies).
So get off your high horse. The game industry has done a great job of regulating itself. If you can't control your kids and won't take the time to play the games first and see fi they are acceptable, that's not their problem. There are plenty of adult gamers out there and we don't want you telling us what we may and may not play.
This law seems to serve no purpose other than to let bad parents lash out at retailers and distributors when they fail as parents and their kid does something wrong. HAte to break it to you but if your kid does a drive by, GTA did not make him do it, he had much deeper problems.
If he did not want to sign this bill, then he should have not signed it, regardless of how much political pressure he was under.
Wrong. The system of government where one man decides what the law should be, based on his own personal likes and dislikes, is called "tyranny". In the system called "democracy", the law is decided based on what the people want, and the government - as servants of the people - are required to implement and enforce the laws the people want, regardless of their own personal beliefs.
Therefore, if the people of California want this law (or have been convinced by $SLASHDOT_BOGEYMAN* that they want it), then they should get it. Period. Don't like it? Don't live in California.
* $SLASHDOT_BOGEYMAN = random selection from (liberal_media, conservative_talkshows, religious_right, microsoft, gnaa, cowboy_neal)