Slashdot Mirror
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.
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"
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)!
Fuck the ESA. The law was passed by the elected representatives of the people of California. Are we supposed to let a corporate lobby group now determine what can or can't be lawful in this country. I have more faith in letting the people decide.
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
Perhaps I'm missing something, but isn't this issue one where the state is making the ethical decision? Not the federal government?
There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling! -- CBG, "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"
It was found unconstitutional, but not because the wording for what it blocked was vague. It was found unconstitutional because current filters (NetNanny etc) are rather lacking, have too many false positives, and would therefore filter out legitimate pages. And apparently school libraries are still covered under the CIPA provisions.
The two parties just announced that they will work out their differences over a cup of hot coffee
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)!
There is no law preventing minors from going to see or buy R rated movies, and there's no rating on books either. That's part of the point of objecting to this law.
Schwab
California Resident
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
..... 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.
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."
Seems to me that the bill in question would have been a lot easier to police (and would make a lot more sense) if it had banned the sale of ALL video games to minors. I'm not suggesting that kids shouldn't be allowed to play Super Julio Bro's, but that little Timmy should have to take "Dad" to the store with him if he wants the new release of "Patricide II - Daddy's Back".
I'm not a proponent of censorship in general. I just happen to think that there's nothing wrong with preventing children from having access to gruesome violent content *on demand*.
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.
Parents, not all, but enough of a count to be represented, believe that child care consists of televisions and/or video games. No one is saying that games shouldn't have the content that they do, so put your flag waving ideals back in your pocket, first of all.
If more parents were involved in there children's life in more than a cursory fashion, this would largely be a non-issue. Since it is obvious that some parents just do not care what their children do, however, it is the responsibility of the government to protect them. This is done through laws. Having a subjective law that is widely open to interpretation does nothing except extend the debate to another group of people.
Would you sell a child porn, or a copy of Faces of Death? Even if you wanted to, chances are that you couldn't. Content is protected through a ratings system which is enforcable by fines and/or jail time. How is this different that what they are doing in California? Instead of having a "review board" determine what is write and wrong, it is left to individual judicial review. Twenty different cases, twenty different judges, twenty different opinions on what constitutes "values".
If you honestly think that nothing should be done to protect the innocent victims, then you are the one that is denying reality. The reason that age restrictions exist is because there is a collective group as a whole that understand you don't give a copy of Playboy to an eight year old and an NWA CD to a preschooler. Maybe you see nothing wrong with those examples, which would make you part of the problem.
I could honestly care less if you work in the video game industry. Did you want a cookie? Just because someone stabs people on the subway doesn't mean that we need to turn it into a form of entertainment that young people can desensitize reality with.
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
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 people" are very often wrong.
... 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();
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 . .
I'm agreeing with the Dad in this case.
1. It's none of your business what he buys for his son.
2. It's not your job, nor anyone else's to declare what's "generally out of bounds for what most younger children can digest with complete comprehension". That's his job.
3. There is absolutely no direct coorelation between playing violent video games and real crime. As a matter of fact, it's been shown that over the past 20 years, violent crimes performed by minors has gone significantly down.
4. He's probably sick and tired of everyone else in the country trying to be the parent for his child, including you.
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.
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.
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.
Hahahah, looks like yet another gullible person who doesn't know that MAVAV is a hoax. Nice try though.
FC Closer
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 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.
#3 could not be more wrong. Alot of people on Slashdot seem to like to believe that there is no link, but most research indicates otherwise. Exposure to violent video games increases agressive behavior (r=.18), agressive cognition (r=.27), and agressive affect (r=.18). And this is not a single study, this is from a meta analysis on a large body of research that has been conducted in the area. Both correlation studies (non-directional) AND experimental (CAN infer causality) support the link. If someone can cite a few articles not showing the link, I'd love to read them, the overall juvenile crime rate is not a remotely good justiification.
Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: A meta-analytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12, 353-359
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?
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...
ESRB is a voluntary system. You can release a game without putting a rating on it if you want. Of course, few retailers will put your product on their shelves, but that is completely at their discretion. They choose to do this because consumers demand that additional level of information regarding what they are purchasing. Heck, I am a professional game developer and I can't even tell you whether half the games on the shelf are appropriate for children without the aid of a rating system.
Big retailers like Walmart have their own criteria for what makes it on the shelf and what doesn't. Game developers specifically cater their content to get a desired rating. This is not censorship, simply a business decision on how to maximize profits from a product.
Rating systems that are not on-the-box are practically worthless too, as few people have time to research games before they buy them. I know I go to the store and simply look at the boxes on the shelf, decide what I think my kids might like and buy it. And it is absurd for every game to have a different rating system on the package. The retailers and game developers got together and agreed on a common system to use.
What you advocate would either be worthless or only serve to confuse the situation further. You're just bitter than retailers, publishers, and developers choose to make money rather than exercise their free speech rights.