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ESA to Sue California Over Violent Game Law
Advtg writes "In response to last week's bill banning the sale of violent video games (/. coverage),
the Entertainment Software Association has announced that they are preparing to sue the State of California. From the article, "The Entertainment Software Association is
planning to sue the State of California over the passage of AB1179, a bill that has outlawed the sale of violent video games to minors. President Douglas Lowenstein said that he
'intends to file a lawsuit to strike this law down,' and added that he is 'confident that we will prevail.' The article goes on to show how muddy the law is in comparison to other
laws meant to protect minors."
Regardless of whether one agrees with the banning of sales to minors or not, I think it is somewhat one-sided to only look at the relatively clear alcohol laws. Looking at the Children's Internet Protection Act, for example, reveals that such vague terminology is not unique to this act. CIPA includes language such as the following:
(2) HARMFUL TO MINORS.--The term ``harmful to minors'' means any picture, image, graphic imagefile, or other visual depiction that--
(A) taken as a whole and with respect to minors, appeals to a prurient interest in nudity, sex,or excretion;
(B) depicts, describes, or represents, in a patently offensive way with respect to what is suitable for minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or a lewd exhibition of the genitals; and
(C) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as to minors.
What is "political value as to minors"? Minors lack the right to vote, so political value to me is quite unclear. What is scientific value? Is breast cancer research of scientific value as to a minor, who is unlikely to contract such disease at a minor age? While slightly clearer than the California act, I think CIPA is a good example of the fact that laws protecting minors are often ambiguous, and that this is not groundbreaking legislation in terms of lack of clarity. Are we to say that all legislation must be binary? You're 21 or you're not? If so, we need to re-write a significant portion of our laws in the US.
... go get them EA. It just feels wrong saying that.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
They ARE going up against the Terminator. And we know how THAT always turns out...
The feds need to stay out of states ethical laws. Let the states dictate how to control mature content. The feds have their hands full with the drug war.
Wasn't CIPA found unconstitutional?
The law doesn't say that it will ban the sales of games with just violence in them, but heinous and sexual violence. If parents don't have the sense enough to not let their kids play games with that in them, then I wonder if the government should step in. We are talking about minors here.
On the other hand, maybe there should be two different levels of minors. Minor minors would be under 12, regular minors would be 12-17. Regular minors could buy these games, minor minors could not.
There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling! -- CBG, "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"
The MPAA sues every country for not allowing minors to view rated R(18A) movies.
"WONT ANYONE THINK OF THE PROFITS!"
-EL
Clearly parents aren't responsible enough to make sure their kids aren't deranged, and that they do not feed their psychoses with violent video games.
The only solution is obvious, let a government entity dictate it for us! They've clearly demonstrated tremendous judgement, and organizational skills!
My ZooLoo
The fact that the law mentions "standards" and "values" in determining which video games qualify really lead me to believe that this is just a "feel good" sort of law that is there to appease the people who want legislation, without actually having any sort of enforcable merit.
And no, I am not a lawyer. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
There's nothing in Grand Theft Auto that doesn't happen every day in Southern California.
If it offends you, do something about the real crimes that occur, don't take it out on videogame makers.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
It's the parent's responsibility to say what their kids should and shouldn't buy. If I feel that I can give my kid $50 and know that he's not going to buy something stupid (drugs, etc.) then I trust that he knows right from wrong enough that some violent game won't make him decide to go postal in the real world.
We MUST water down all entertainment to protect the children!!
Won't anything think of the Children???
Personally, I'd favor a law that enforced the existing video game ratings, instead of the vague "You could make a bland football game illegal with this" law California passed.
On the other hand, if they made it illegal to sell a video game to a 15 year old that's been rated as "Mature" then I'd consider that far more reasonable. The ratings tend to be a good way of estimating a game's age appropriateness, but they need some enforcement.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
The two parties just announced that they will work out their differences over a cup of hot coffee
According to the bill a violent game should be clearly marked as such with a 2 by 2 inch label.
wtf, 4 square inch on a package that 38 square inch (I assume most games come in a DVD Box like package).
Why not put up a electric fence with armed guards around the shelves these games are on.
How exactly do these laws protect minors when the parents of the world(doing a wonderful job) go out and buy Grand Theft Auto: SA the day it comes out for their 11 year old?
People like us who are asked to make games typically strive for an experience that's as close to reality as possible.
None of the crimes you see in violent video games don't exist, i.e. this stuff happens all the time in cities.
So these "steps" you think should be taken -- what's the purpose? Are you denying reality?
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
Sue? Just get ya homie's and do a drive-by. Oh... wait...
After seeing the wild-eyed look kids get after they squash an innocent mushroom or turtle, after seeing the sadistic glee they obtain from causing Sebulba's pod racer to crash, I fear for our next generation.
My question is, what are they going to do about black trenchcoats?
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Selling porn to children is something most of us agree is Bad. But porn could be as hard to define as video-game violence. The famous quote is "I know it when I see it."
Violence is hard to define, if you're trying to separate the "squashing goombas flat in Mario" type from the "setting people on fire and laughing at their cries for help" type. It's going to take some subjective words like "sadistic" and "intentionally causing suffering."
But if it's hard to define legally, I don't think it's that hard for most people to see that Mario and GTA are totally different things in the hands of a little kid. The question is: can we make it legally clear?
They have to sue to overturn this. For one very major reason...
Most of the games that feature this stuff, that stuff isn't of major interest to most people playing it.
I mean, the "hot coffee" mod was pretty lame, all things considered. If you were tittilated by the poorly pixilated hanky panky that happened in that mod, you haven't seen a naked chick or had sex, and probably spank your monkey while sitting in a chat room.
It's time to take the government out of parenting. Let the parents screw up if they want. I'm tired of paying babysitter money for brats that aren't mine.
The algorithms involved are surely interesting, yet must also be incredibly difficult to implement.
I know they typically search for skin tones and then the outline of a body and compare the percentage of skin to the surface area of the entire body to determine if the individual is clothed.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
Schwab
California Resident
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
For what it's worth, the criteria for this law are very similar to the FCC's profanity rules (through 1995 or so at any rate). The real problem in both cases is that everything is subjective and there is no formal review process in place to question uneducated rulings. Assuming games could be considered "art" or that a game may include content which is intended to provoke discussion, the possibility of hasty judgements resulting in 'improper' censorship are very real (assuming a store may not carry a game because it has an 'M' rating, which seems a reasonable assumption). For reference, this has happened with radio broadcasts from time to time (google "Sarah Jones" and "Your Revolution"), and the resulting mess took years to sort out--a time which could make or break a game company .
What exactly does this law hope to accomplish? Alcohol and cigarette laws make sense to a degree--a child can drink or smoke anywhere and both involve health risks. But games are typically played at home (where parents should be aware of the child's activities), and there are obviously no health risks involved. I half wonder if the movie industry lobbied for this law in order to regain viewership lost to video gaming.
..... Maybe a BFG9000 would be more effective?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
...want to KILL somebody.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Isn't it great? The ESA is standing up for the right's of minor's to purchase and play violent video games.
In related news, the NRA is fighting to allow children to purchase guns too. After all, it's not the guns themselves that kill people right?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I dont think its illegal for anyone to let minors into R movies, since here anyway, R movies are 17... Its just internal theatre/video store policy, the industry policing itself, as it should, and as it does in the case of video games! Most stores have a policy that they dont let minors buy M games, much the same way they dont let them buy R movies. Nobody's clamoring for laws to make it illegal to sell R rated movies to minors, since its not a real problem! The real problem is mommy and daddy buying their 10 year old GTA, and it would be the same problem with them buying him *glances at DVD collection* uh, fight club or pulp fiction.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
It's offensive to think that people have sex with their pants on (especially dirty gansta jeans), it's like believing Ricky and Lucy Ricardo slept in twin beds.
Is it really the minors that are being "protected?" Or is it protecting outdated/outmoded thinking by a large portion of the population in the state? Or is it protection the public's "right" to not have to think about what their children are doing?
Come on, people... you can't legislate morality. It didn't work in the Prohibition Era, and it won't work here either. Young people, regardless of what the "moral high ground" would lead us to believe, don't require such close supervision regarding their entertainment choices. For the most part, kids are a little more astute than many people would give them credit for. Yes, for the extremely young children (under 10) there should be close parental supervision while online. Older children start understanding the difference between reality and what is portrayed as entertainment.
This isn't to say that some kids will never grasp the concept that GTA or UTx or other games are not meant to be practiced in the real world, but those children require professional assistance, and not from a lawyer either.
Government shouldn't be a substitute for common sense and good parenting, but it's trying too damned hard to be that way.
I wonder if Zonk ever gets tired of posting the same three flamebait stories every day.
Mr. Lowenstein proceeded to give quite a rallying speech:
"We are one people. With one will. One Resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves
to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion! We shall prevail!"
About which time some mysterious running woman threw a hammer into the large projection monitor behind him.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
Has this law really changed anything?
It seems to me this is against clerks and stores and not consumer rights. A store clerk is liable for selling booze to minors. So doesn't this make store clerks legally liable for underage sale of GTA to 12 year olds? I get ID'ed buying rated R movies in most stores (I'm 22). Isn't this the same thing?
What I don't get is why this law made it past (even) semi-sane legislation. It looks like a knee jerk reaction to "Hot Coffee". But even more so, kids will use the same old ways to get the games.
Since Mortal Kombat came with a voluntary warning sticker, to the ERSB... kids just get the older sibling or parent to buy it for them. Or just get a copy from friends...
So again? What?s this law's practical "real world" effect?
--Digital-Madman
A bullet sounds the same in every language. So stick a fucking sock in it...
...including a severed arm tumble out of the back of a car on prime time TV but showing a pink dot on a female chest (as opposed to the SAME PINK DOT on a male chest) or using a short list of "bad" words- many not bad in other contexts gets everyone riled up.
I don't think kids should know about sex or that kind of violence until they are 15 or 16. But in the real world- there are too many sources so why pick on video games over movies, television, radio, books, magazines, etc?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
More nanny statism. Good riddance.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Brooklyn girl, 9, admits killing playmate, 11
Now do you think violent video games or violent media helped perpetuate this?
Personally I think the latter. This little girl probably didn't play Halo, GTA, Manhunt, Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid. But probably watched some shooting and killing that's on broadcast TV. The parents probably didn't have parental controls on any of the channels and could have let her watch HBO or other movie channels.
What do you think?
Causing Chaos Everywhere,
Nik J.
The strange world of a loner, in a populous city, drowning in society
The law is so widely open to interpretation that it provides no enforcable measures by which to "draw the line".
It isn't just standards and values that are vague. Whether the violence is good or bad depends on your point of view.
Consider this child's description of a toy:
"Haven't you seen the Haibo doll? It's like a pet, a robot pet. You have to feed it and pet it or else it dies, and it's the coolest thing ever! Santa has to bring me one!"
Sounds like a nice, wholesome toy, huh? Now consider this description:
"Now I'm never gonna get my Haibo robot doll!"
"Is that what this is all about?! You came up with this whole idea so you could get a stupid toy?!"
"It's not stupid! It's a toy that you can starve! If you don't feed it, it dies. It's sooo cool."
Same toy, different point of view. It's not the toy manufacturer's fault that this kid treats the disincentive as an incentive.
Now, instead of the fictional Haibo, substitute "The Sims".
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Fogger should be banned. I once got board and made him jump into the path of a lorry. It made me smile for a nanosecond.
It's been widely discussed whether or not Video Games contribute to silent destruction of our society (cough cough); and it has been discussed for; oh hell let's pin it at a good fifteen years now. (As far back as the date at which red pixels could be written using Qbasic only to be portrayed as blood splatters to be precise.) And I'm not going to get into that. Whether or not it becomes regulated by some prodigal facet of the Californian government or not, software is software; and as much as we church going suburbanites would like to see our children stay far far away from any type of negative influence (regardless of how pleasurable it may be).. kids will be kids and just download it anyways. Right? Just like hanging out at the local 7-11 waiting for some scruffy to buy you cigarettes; it's point and click and you can easily download the virus infected full blown .EXE for immediate enjoyment.
Tongue in cheek.
To make the frightened parents happy, I suppose a few things "could" change. (To keep happy those people who will take this into serious consideration when marking the X on their ballot slip..sigh)
Refer to this faq on ESRB's website. The point here that I've linked to could use some work I suppose. Revise the standards so that every game must be rated.. maybe build it into the industry standard publishing contract????
Then just blame the rest on the retailers if a restricted game is sold to a minor. That OR the parents. You know. Good 'ol family made rules.
I'd vote for the latter.
The beatings will continue until Morale Improves!
http://www.mavav.org/
Looks like the Terminator got front page news - http://mavav.org/images/mavav_arnold.jpg
Can you imagine the uproar if overturning this law also overturns the laws around movie ratings?
I have been killing aliens and bad guys (and even cops in GTA) for 20 years in videogames and have never once, even thought about doing something harmfull to another human being. So somehow videogames are bad, but football, a sport where coked out, steriod slamming, thugs beat the ever-loving shit out of each other is ok? I'd love to see a study to find out who ends up being more violent on average: nerdy kids who spend their youth playing videogames, or testosterone addicted jocks. When's the last time you saw a bench clearing brawl at a LAN party? Actually, that might make them more fun.....
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -Hunter S. Thompson
... of taxpayers dollars and time.
While I worked at Gamestop, we couldn't sell M rated games to minors, but that sure as hell doesn't stop us from selling it to the parents who are standing right there with the kids that are playing the games.
Besides, if the kids want the games they will get them whether there is a law slowing them down or not. Kids drink alcohol before they are 21, they smoke before they are 18 and get porn before they are 18 too.
If it's a "knee jerk reaction" to the so called "Hot-Coffee" mod, the government is really out of touch more so that I thought before. Worrying about some lame-ass "porn" like that in GTA is retarded when the whole point of the series is shooting cops and selling drugs.
Lawmakers really need to get in touch.
Sig* sig = theOneSig();
Well, with violance being banned, the super conservitive, nanny type anti-skink anti .xxx domain government in controal of the internet, is there going to be anything good left? (apart from /. except for the soon to be outlawed anti-bush stuff)
I remember the days when speach was free, being "kinky" would not get you sent to a mental hospital (no, that is actualy real) and the internet was a good place. oops, no, sory, that was my imagination.
Let the parents deal with this, it is there responsibuility, there child, and the childs choice of the parents retirement home. Hell, I was reading Cujo at the age of 12 and laughing...
ok, maybe that was not sutch a good example...
The fact that the determination of which games are harmful will be done by juries is wrong in that depending on the jury a game can be determined harmful.
An example: One jury views lets say 10 different games and determines that 5 are harmful. Those same games could be viewed by a second jury which could say that only 2 were harmful. Now the question is, which jury is right.
If this law is to hold up, strict guidelines must be set in which to compare the games to. The way it is written now, a game might be considered harmful to some but not to others and it would be a gamble in court as to which way a jury would vote. It would come down to who was selected to set on a jury.
Many of the above are bipartisan, as well. I'd bet money you can find a lot of decency laws encapsulated in common law as well. It's nothing new, nor is it strictly a Democrat thing.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Clarity? A law that has clarity? No such thing, especially where lawyers and politicians are concerned. The second amendment has been misread for generations by the legislative and judicial branches of the government is just one example of what the writers thought would be the clearest declaration they could that government could not limit, prevent, or take away the arms of its citizens. Jefferson: "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Now as far as the article is concerned, perhaps this quote from Jefferson indicates his views on attempting to legislate morality: "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion."
The quotes above can be found here as well as other thought provoking quotes still relevent to our society and government. One could write a thesis on just how our government has diverged itself from what he and the other founding fathers intended and how Jefferson predicted it just from the quotes on that page alone. I wish all the bleeding hearts, security blanket hopefuls, etc would all read and discus Jefferson, Franklin, Paine and other founding fathers' writings so maybe they would get a clue. Frankly at the moment we are getting a "false" response to Jefferson's if/then statement "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
Wow. I never expected the European Space Agency to sue over this.
How will this affect the game America's Army, the U.S. military's Orwellian recruiting tool? They're having trouble with their recruitment numbers already (I wonder why?). The right will have to figure out whether they want the game played by minors so they will be more likely to sign up to fight wars, or if they want to continue scapegoating the video game industry for all of society's ills.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
...or more of the right wing heavily-armed-cop state BS. Neither party is a rich source of social libertarianism right now. So it depends on your PoV.
Right, left, my preferred PoV is first-person. And as a proud player of violent videogames, all I know is that laws like these make me want to take a chainsaw to a legislator.
PS - Check out Barbara Ehrenreich's "When Government Gets Mean: Confessions of a Recovering Statist" from the Nation, 11/17/1997. (Sorry, paper research req'd.) Basically, anarchism isn't just for Grover Norquist anymore.
Note to modders: These paragraphs are intended as insightful/funny/informative respectively. If that's not enough, keep in mind I also love Google and Linux.
I'm not sure if it was posted yet, but: "Outlaw games and only outlaws will have games."
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Sounds like a law written by people who never played video games being fought by people who want to sell them to minors. Maybe they should be told about other games. Return to Castle Wolfenstein teaches kids to set fire to Nazis. Freedom Fighters teaches kids to hate commies. C&C Generals teaches kids to fight terrorists. Doom 3 teaches kids to fight hell. Final Fantasy 7 teaches kids to fight city stomping monsters. It's all about context. Kids under 15 probably shouldn't be allowed to play GTA, the lesson there is that you can get away with crime. But there are other games containing violence they should be allow, SWAT3 allows you to be violent but encourages you not to.
"The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak." --Robert Heinlein "The Man Who Sold the Moon" p.188. People say Mark Twain said "Censorship is like telling a man he can't have steak because a baby can't chew it," but I can't find the source for it (and neither can wikiquote).
Right, left, my preferred PoV is first-person. And as a proud player of violent videogames, all I know is that laws like these make me want to take a chainsaw to a legislator.
Don't you mean that you want to take a virtual chainsaw to an image of a legislator?
/allegedly
They are right, this bill is trying to clearly define things that are subjective.
What happens when laws like this pass? We start making borderline games that will pass for sale to minors, but are just as bad AND large software companies will push a little cash one way or another to get their game an "okay."
They should really ban the sale of electronic games to minors. If they want them, relatives can purchase for them. Unfortunately, the idea of a game is almost as vague. "Mouse Trap" is obviously a game, and it's probably not electronic, but what about "Operation?" What about today's fancy graphing calculators?
Let's look at what the electronic violence bill hopes to do:
-involve parents
-prevent children from buying and playing "violent" video games that do shape their developing perspectives
As for the arguments, here are some pre-argument questions:
What part of growing up requires children the ability to play games?
-look back a few generations to the people who grew up before video games existed
-think third-world children
Is it some sort of torture to disallow children access to games?
-stop thinking about third-world children
-think about children doing something that provides intellectual stimulation, like chasing each other or playing tag
-if a child is tortured by their lack of playing, couldn't we call it an addiction?
-the only time this will be torturous is if one child is allowed to play while another one watches
Do video games have any truly positive impact on the development or well-being of a child?
-so-called hand/eye co-ordination
-entertainment
-stress coping (fantasy worlds; places where they are in control of things)
-keeps kids out of trouble (mischief and even drugs)
-potential for learning something
-potential for work creating or playing games (I'm stretching)
Some negatives?
-time consumption (starting a hobby young grants the hobbyist a grand advantage)
-physical strain (hand, eye, and postural)
-artificial reality during development can lead to psychological problems/disorders (ADD, addiction, and [meh]violence)
-overload of entertainment may lead to disinterest in reality and a lack of motivation and inability to self-entertain
-reliance on external device for stress coping
I was even being pretty modest about the negatives.
Is the Video Game publishers and stores not actively enforcing their Voluntary ratings system. The government gave the industry a chance years ago to leave it in their hands.
But, as always, greed and making a buck in the short term won out and the industry ignored the potential consequences of what they were doing. The precident is already there...the movie industry is enforced already by a similar set of laws.
All that needed to be done here was simply rate the games fairly, then don't sell the games with a certain rating to someone not the appropriate age. That's it.
Yes, proper parenting is the most important thing here. Parents should be aware of what their kids are doing and take an active role in their child's life. But, all normal parents want(not the generation gap fanatics) is a rating system that gives them an idea of what they are buying, and a system that prevents children from buying stuff under their nose to make their job as parents easier so they don't have to worry about kids hiding stuff(we all know they do).
That's all, and no the government doesn't need to be enforcing this, and I wish they weren't trying. But, it still is the publisher and retail seller's fault for blowing the chance they were given.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
"Censorship is banning steak because babies can't eat it".
(Could be apocriphal, but the idea still is sound).
"either of the following: (B) Enables the player to virtually inflict serious injury upon images of human beings or characters with substantially human characteristics in a manner...cruel...in that it involves torture or serious physical abuse to the victim."
All I have done there is remove some of the "or" options. As I understand it, one of the most popular games of all times, The Sims, allows one to lock one's Sim into a house or even a closet and deny them food or water or a bathroom. If that isn't torture, I don't know what is. Even a stick figure is an image of a human being, so when game with educational value like SimCity allows you to "test" your city by starting fires or tornadoes or plane crashes or monster attacks, it can be argued that you are terrorizing and therefore tortureing the people of your city. All you have to do is find a D.A. and a judge or 12 people to agree and there is a great deal of software that would be illegal.
This law is worded so vaugely that it isn't just about beating a prostitute to death with a big, purple dildo.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Hahahah, looks like yet another gullible person who doesn't know that MAVAV is a hoax. Nice try though.
FC Closer
...but that's okay because the victims are different from us.
Ha! Give me a break. Now Mario promotes racism?
And the fact that "people empathize with the victims in GTA" hardly makes the player go, "Gee, violence really is bad." If anything, it tells you that other people's remorse is just part of your fun.
I'm not trying to establish cause and effect, but let's not be ridiculous. It's much easier to draw a "moral" from a game that simulates real crimes in a real city than one with a a leaping Italian plumber in a pastel fantasy world. I've personally played GTA, then later caught myself wanting to swerve erratically on a real road. I've never had Mario give me stompin' fever.
Can we get someone to churn out a doom mod replacing the imps with bmp's of representatives?
Because that would be sw33t with a capital 3.
But personally, I think the baby CAN eat steak. My kid's growing up listening to Snoop and watching John Woo. For some reason, I worry more about deprivation of culture than about potentially unlocking a sociopath. But more importantly, to say ratings systems have nothing to do with censorship ignores the chilling effects of centralized speech guidelines. Content producers constantly strive to comply with arbitrary ratings systems contrived by the MPAA or ESRB. Effectively, ratings ARE censorship. We'd be better off with decentralized ratings boards, and each community could listen to the ones it respected the most. People who want more restricted content already do that, they consult Parents Television Council or something similar. Since people with more restrictive values will already fend for themselves, it seems like the official ratings should be the most permissive. That's the only way to make the most people happy. And people who are PRO-ratings shouldn't have any problem with decentralization. Eliminating centralized ratings would never eliminate ratings, it just means no monopoly on ratings. That way, no one who's anonymous and unaccountable could make capricious decisions about what's commercially feasible, as they do now.
I'd agree 100% on the Republican core value shift, if you consider the current administration and those of the same mindset as "Republican". Which is hard to do. McCain and his ilk strike me more as the Republican party than Bush and his cronies.
And I don't know if I'd say the Dems were against control; perhaps that's just my ignorance of their historical relevance but they've never struck me as. . . non-invasive. ;) After all, the term "tax and spend" was coined to describe the Democratic party. And taxation is very much Government control in your private life. Some would contend the only control that matters ;)
But yes, times have changed. After all, I'm SOBER right now!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Considering the wonderful success rate of other age-specific laws, I look forward to seeing this law keep games out of the hands of impressionable youth the same way I no longer see illegal guns waved by minors, minors drinking, or smoking, or watching porn in California. Just wave the legal wand - and POOF! Problem solved.
It's MAAAAaaaagic!
This message was brought to you for The American Progressive Youth Legislative Council. We put the - "Suck" - in success.
My kid's growing up listening to Snoop and watching John Woo.
No! You should put your child in a *box*, lock it, and never let him out! Completely shelter him from the world! That way, when he hits eighteen, he will be completely mature and capable of dealing with the world! Why, you can dump him out of his box in the red light district, and he'll do fine!
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
If a PARENT wants to keep their kid from buying something, by all means, let them. But the government has no place to tell people "No, you can't buy this!"
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
I'd say that most people are a little irrational about good and evil.
A *lot* of people (anyone that describes themselves as a moral absolutist is a good candidate, but most people probably vaguely have some opinion along these lines) feel that we order society based on morality.
I'd say that morality arises to address social problems. Something causes major social problems? It becomes "bad". Sure, sometimes government or other social structures can solve social problems, but making people irrationally do something because it's "good" or avoid it because it's "bad" is a pretty effective fix in a lot of ways.
I'd say that a concept of "good" or "evil" may even be important to a learning organism like a society. As Turing theorized (and seems pretty plausible), the way to build a learning system is to build a simple system that has the ability to learn, and then give it a "teacher". To avoid pure trial-and-error learning, you want to get the learning system to tend to treat the "teacher" as a significant factor in seeking out that-which-the-mind-seeks (the combination of positive external stimuli and positive internal feedback).
If you believe that "good" is a pretty stable, simple reduction of social fixes to solve otherwise-difficult-to-fix social problems, then you want everyone in a society to follow "good". If you can establish that "good" is associated with that-which-the-mind-seeks and then build a widespread concept of "good", then you have your teacher (well, a teacher) capable of bootstrapping a stable social system.
Because, frankly, I understand how annoying it is when someone says "we're going to ban this because it's *bad*", but you have to figure that if everyone just suddenly went entirely amoral, maybe society wouldn't be stable. Even if it's in people's interest to act in a fashion that mimicks how they'd act if they were acting based on a moral code, you can make mistakes in rational thought -- "maybe it's beneficial to kill this person that makes me angry". It seems like a simple moral code could solve this.
The time I'm most suspicious of people trying to apply morality inappropriately is when it relates to new technology or a wildly new environment. If you believe that morality is a set of societal-level knowledge, then morality is only well-adapted to deal with the past and continuing conditions that accurately reflect the past. So, for example, when it comes to genetic engineering, I'm exceedingly dubious that morality is worth a tinker's toot when it comes to deciding what to do...because moral codes weren't built up in an environment *containing* genetic engineering.
This is your random dose of philosophy for today.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
That would have cut a lot harder if you could spell 'divisive'.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
An adult who buys porn for a minor can be held legally responsible. So what's next, hauling adults into court for buying games for minors?! This whole thing has gone too far already.
Last time I checked squashing some bugs or other sucks things wasn't comparable to killing people either. At the same time, it's how the violence is portrayed... it's perfectly alright to masticate on a piece of deer steak after going out and shooting it blammo, dead... but if you were running around thumping wild animals with a sledgehammer it might be considered less so.
Violence in mario also has a degree of seperation from reality. While the GTA variety may imply negetive consequences if you beat the crap out of somebody with a bat, it still involves a level of violence closer to reality than mario. Those 'in charge' seem to draw correlation between those who pump their enemies full of pixels and those who commit real violence. Of course, it is often enough that those who commit real violence play violent video games, but I highly doubt the axe-murderer type would play powerpuff-girls now would he?
Actually, a lot of stores I know, most in-fact will not sell to minors without an adult present. EB Games is one I've seen this happen recently.
However, most times (and I've also seen this happen) the kid will just go grab their clueless parent, who will listen to the spiel about ratings with dull eyes whilst junior says "gimme gimme gimme" and perhaps a few other kids are nagging on the other ear... and the game is bought. Since it's a sale to an adult it's not against store policy, and unless I'm reading it wrong still not against the law.
And then little Billy will come over to Johnny's place and play GTA, because Billy's dad won't let him buy GTA, but Johnny's dad was clueless and happily forked over the little disc'o'sex'n'violence
What happens when said clueless parent sues the game store anyways, because he/she bought the game for junior? How does one prove a video game store sold the game to a minor, and not a clueless parent. Is it guilt until proven innocent, or does the store have to prove they didn't sell the game to a minor? How about it the parent was present and consented to the sale (as tends to happen now).
Perhaps game stores will start requiring a signature from adults buying mature-rated games? Not only is the definition of the games a little violent, but a lot of the particulars in how they will track such things are as well. Perhaps kids will get bootleggers to buy games for them. I couldn't see a kid confessing to getting "Jamie 18" from bootlegging the game for him, but rather just saying "I got it from EB." Of course it could just be that they will institute spot-checks with kid-agents?
I can see a whole lot of ways this law isn't going to work...
To take only one of the more notable examples, there's her husband, Bill Clinton, who signed the unconstitutional Communications Decency Act (CDA) into law in 1996, and then when that was struck down, followed it up with the also unconstitutional Child Online Protection Act (COPA) in 1998, most of which has since also been struck down.
Incidentally, most of the Democratic Party's Senators and Congressmen voted for those laws.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Progressives have been for state control of morality for as long as progressivism has existed as a political philosophy. Many of the prominent campaigners for women's suffrage, for example, were also campaigners for prohibition of alcohol.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Electronic Arts is a member of the ESA, and probably the largest member that doesn't make its own console.
"we're giving part of your paycheck to that dude with the nasty goatee who spends his days selling pot on the street corner".
What do you have against people who make and sell baked clay goods?
If I'm bitter about anything, it's the market manipulation.
No one who's seen 1/10th of the internet can honestly say "the market" wants "family-friendly" content. Maybe you're thinking the market only wants adult content in privacy, not in the BnM world. Then why do studios always make
movies that push the edge of the ratings,
NC-17 films that only make it to R
after a healthy bout of resubmissions,
sometimes without changing a thing?
Besides, if the market really wants content to be produced within these arbitrary boundaries, why do we need centralized ratings at all?
So what could explain this apparent disconnect? Maybe it's because rating boards are supported by nothing more than industry-wide collusion. Collusion makes the baby market cry.
Someone who respected capitalism would prefer an open market of ratings systems that compete fairly with one another, as I advocate, rather than propping up these coersive cartels.
So why not make the "official" ratings system incredibly permissive, and let people who disagree with it consult one of the free alternatives that already exist? All this does is kill the chilling effects of a centralized system. This lets you keep your ratings system for your kids, letting me choose differently for mine. Why is that such a threat? Why do you need everyone else to follow the ratings system you happen to prefer, when it's supported by neither a free market nor democracy?
I wonder why a law like this is even necessary. It should be the sole responsibility of the parent, especially with minors! Not the minor should buy the games, but the parent. The government has no dealing into this.
Many times people just don't want to take their responsibility, and expect the gov't to regulate some more, and later they argue about that there is too much regulation.
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
It's a strict reliance until I get a chance to review the game.
How do your kids submit a game to you for review?
I didn't check, is DDR rated T?
ESRB's site claims that at least Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2 is rated T for mild lyrics and suggestive themes. (At the time UM2 was released, there was no E10+ rating, which corresponds to the MPAA's PG. DDR Extreme 2 and Ultramix 3 are rated E10+.) Another music game was shooting for an E rating and was told by ESRB that it had to edit out the word "naked" from lyrics that went roughly "I'm all out of faith, this is how I feel, I'm cold and I am shamed, lying n*k*d on the floor."
If so, maybe the rating takes complexity into account and there's a generalization on the amount of gameplay a teen would understand over a young child. Although I did see my kids play DDR in the arcade without missing a beat early in the game.
True. My 6-year-old cousin passed every song in Dance Dance Revolution Konamix on maniac (also called hard or heavy) before his sixth birthday.
You and a sense of humor.
Getting to the store was easy. Just ask a parent to drop you off with your friends while you browse the games. They can go to the bank or wait in the car. It doesn't really matter. Or you can just ride your bike or walk to the store assuming it's within a mile or two, as I did most of the time.
Getting the money ($35-40) was a little more difficult. I would go door-to-door, trying to do chores for people to make money. Often, I'd do work for relatives for a few bucks here or there. Sometimes I'd make things like puzzle books or some kind of food, and sell it while my parents would have a garage sale. I got much of my money for Christmas and my birthday from relatives, and the rest came from a meager allowance. Depending on how much money we had, what normally ended up happening is that my games were actually 1/2 mine, split between me and a random friend or my brother. I remember one game, Renegade for NES, we split 4 ways.
I boggle when I hear people ask where children get money because they must have had a much different childhood than me. Buying my own games taught me the value of a dollar and hard work. Obviously a parent isn't going to sit back and let their little kid watch hardcore porn or play something horrifically, emotionally violent, and as long as the kid understands this when buying a game, they will make the right decision; Clearly, the last thing a child wants is for the fruit of all that hard work to be confiscated when they get home and turn it on.