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Illinois Videogame Law Struck Down
Big_Al_B writes "CNN reports that a federal judge ruled against the state of Illinois law that banned the sale of some games to minors." From the article: "The Illinois law, which also was to go into effect January 1, would have barred stores from selling or renting extremely violent or sexual games to minors, and allowed $1,000 fines for violators. Kennelly said the law would interfere with the First Amendment and there wasn't a compelling enough reason, such as preventing imminent violence, to allow that." Triumphantly, GamePolitics offers up the ESA's reaction to the decision. The Governor has vowed to appeal, so this isn't over yet.
Pick a standard and stick with it - kids should either be allowed to purchase sexual images or they shouldn't. Just because one particular format sells more than others isn't a valid reason to allow it but exclude everything else.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Does this mean that it's unconstitutional to ban the sale of Playboys to minors?
Honestly, I'm confused here. I'm all for freedom of speech and all that, but this was a ban on selling "extremely violent or sexual games" to minors. I'm guessing this is AO rated stuff, which could be comparable to nudie mags (Playboy Mansion?). What's the big deal?
... then the kids should'nt be protected from scenes of "extreme violence"?
Protected how, and by who? You, me, the government, some political party, the army, our new children-protecting overlords...? The problem is that everything can be passed in the name of some Greater Good, in this case children's protection, but it soon turns out to be either ineffective, prone to abuse or tyrannical.
And there is nothing strange with that: we all want power, and given a certain situation we will exploit what's available to gain more/lose less of it. That's why it's quite stupid to fight these and other problems with regulation: you will certainly change the situation, but the only effect will be that people will adapt and keep doing the thing you don't like, while at the same time my freedom will be eroded more and more.
Also, on this specific topic... I guess you have no problem taking these children away from their families if the parents are irresponsible enough, right? They need to be protected, after all. First it will be because the parents beat them while doing coke, then it will be because they abuse them psycologically, then because they don't provide adequate <something> (adequate... to what?), and you see where this leads.
I don't need to remind you of soldiers drowning Chinese new-borns because their family already had one. Luckily this doesn't happen anymore, but...
Global warming is a cube.
Where can anyone now draw the line? The judge ruled that there wasn't a compelling enough reason, such as preventing imminent violence The Illinois law, would have barred stores from selling or renting extremely violent or sexual games to minors.
Deeper into the ruling the judge makes an interesting statement:
"The First Amendment embodies a principle that is at the core of our political system and our national ethos: "each person should decide for himself or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence." A law that restricts speech because of its message "contravenes this essential right. For this reason, content-based regulations are presumptively invalid."
Couldn't the same argument be made for anything? Movies? Porn? If you get specific about what constitutes imminent violence even guns qualify. In essence, you cannot stop someone from selling anything to anyone because you cannot prove it creates or produces an immanent threat to anyone.
If I were the porn industry, the focus would change to video games. Why not, since I can now sell to anyone, regardless of age. They cannot do that with magazines and online.
For the posters who said - it is up to parents. I agree to a point. I watch my children, however I still expect the police to arrest drug dealers, child molesters, etc. While I can watch mine, who knows if you are watching yours. Sure, you buy them Super Mario Brothers XXVIII, but they took the birthday money from grandma and bought Leisure Suit Larry does Las Vegas. It is also a contiguous fight with game manufactures to really explain what is going on in the game. While I would have passed on GTA for the violence, I must have missed the "Contains explicit sexual acts" statement on the game - oh wait, it wasn't on the game.
Japanese media is full of sex, violence and swearing and it isn't kept away from children, yet the violence rate there is far lower than the US or the UK where I live which suggests to me that there's something else wrong with our culture than media excess. I personally wouldn't want my nephews playing realistically violent video games but on the other hand I doubt it would affect them unless they have psychological problems already.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Very true. I live in a country where alcoholism is negligible, yet we can drink since we're 16. We can also smoke when we are 16, and we DO have a problem with smoke addiction. This goes to show how such limits are not really related to the problems being discussed.
Global warming is a cube.
You'll get no argument here. I still find it strange that at the age of 18 here in Ontario one is allowed to vote or sign up for the armed forces but not allowed to smoke, drink, or peruse sexual materials. At the age of 16 you're allowed to operate a motor vehicle but insurance rates make it prohibitive to do so (indicating the frequency of collisions and infractions by 16-18 year old drivers).
The problem being, how do you determine when an individual is 'ready' for responsibility? Individual testing for age of majority status would be tedious, costly, and entirely ineffective. Ages are set at an arbitrary number decided by the government of the day at a point they believe is reasonable. You say the age when people graduate high school - that's probably not a coincidence. One would suppose by that point in a person's life they've had exposure to enough education and general life experience that they should(!) be capable of making decisions while understanding the consequences. Whether that's always the case is suspect, but hey, it's an imperfect world we live in.
I know a lot of people who believed themselves to be ready to party, have sex, and nine months later the consequences became very real. Sure enough, they drop out of school, live on their parents' (or the tax payers') dime and eventually find themselves grossly unqualified to do anything that pays more than minimum wage. But at the age of 14 here in Ontario boys and girls are considered mature enough to have sex.
What we need is some form of mandatory training on personal responsibility in the modern world. But hey, that's just my opinion.
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