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Judge Blocks Ban on Violent Video Game Sales
dada21 writes "SFGate is reporting that a federal judge recently blocked a new California law that would have banned the sale of violent video games to minors. From the article: 'Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had signed the bill by Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to ban the sale or rental of especially violent video games to children under 18 years old unless there is parental approval. The law was to take effect Jan. 1.'"
" From the article: 'Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had signed the bill by Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to ban the sale or rental of especially violent video games to children under 18 years old unless there is parental approval. The law was to take effect Jan. 1.'""
In other words. Parents should be responsable for their kids. So were's the problem again?
But sales of Arnie movies to minors will never be contested. Everyone should be able to watch Predator.
ender-iii
And we know those laws are working effectively.
Well,If 'kids' are'nt allowed to buy a particular game due to age restrictions,what stops them from downloading from p2p/bittorrent?
Why does yahoo do this
Why are we trying to regulate the sale of video games through law? If a kid is too young to buy a game, his PARENTS should be the one stopping him. If the parents don't notice a kid coming home and gleefully killing virtual hookers in his free time, then there's a bigger problem than "The store didn't enforce the age limit on this awfully violent videogame!"
Vandemar.org
I'm going to try expanding what I meant.
I don't think the federal government should get involved with this at all as it's not defined in the Constitution (lest they make it for the 10 mile federal district). Done at the state level.
Hypothetically, let us say the government says any material rated for Mature/Adults cannot be sold to minors. This means it simply cannot be sold to a minor. An adult can still buy it for a minor, but a store cannot sell it to the minor. Whether this be video games, literature, pornography, whatever, if it's rated for Mature/Adults, it wouldn't be legal to sell it to a minor. However, the government has NO right to mandate any rating systems upon our media, literature, video games, etc. It would be completely voluntary if a manufacturers of video games to label a game.
I don't know whether violent video games can cause violence in youth, even if it's an increase statistically speaking. It is totally up to the parents to raise their children right. Other things such as poverty need to be addressed by the government. Poverty needs to be stamped out. Better educational funding and health care needs to be provided. If anything, if those three things, elimination of poverty, better education, and health care, are met, that will most likely stop a lot of crime in America.
This law really is going about things the wrong way. If the sale of video games to minors is going to get restricted the ESRB needs to be given an actual meaning in law or as a regulatory agency.
An ESRB with teeth is not what is needed though. Restricting sales to minors won't stop them from getting what they want, it will just reduce the official sales numbers while the kids who do get their parents to get the game copy the game for their less fortunate freinds. The net effect wont be increased parently responsibility so much as it will be a rise in piracy. As the games become more unobtainable, they become more desireable to minors, and then even kids who would not have wanted the game on its merits alone will want it because they cannot have it. Situation sound like some other heavily legislated 'goods'? This is definitely not a new situation we have on our hands.
Of course the proper solution is increased parental responsibility. If the state or nation were to mandate, say, a class on parental responsibilty, parenting, licenses, or anything like that there would be riots in the streets.
It would be nice if people started noticing a pattern about social legislation. It is ineffective and nobody likes it. The only way this issue will be solved is if parents start thinking about the problem for themselves and maybe pay attention to their kids once and a while; but I don't see that happening anytime soon, do you?
"We don't allow kids to buy cigarettes or alcohol or look at pornography," he said. "There are already situations in which we as society have said we have to protect kids by limiting what they can do."
Cigarettes and alcohol don't involve speech or expression.
And as far as pornography, it may be true that Mr. Yee doesn't let his kids look at it. But that's not the constitutinal standard. The Supreme Court has already overruled the Communications Decency Act, which required adult websites to verify age before displaying any "pornographic" content.
Typical legislative mentality. Ignore the constitution... just do what makes you look good and let the courts sort it out.
Gee, what would California, the home of the current movie/music industry, have against the new-coming rapidly expanding gaming industry?
Every time I see an ad campaign that is clearly and obviously (to anyone with half a brain cell or more) going to have the exact opposite effect to the one intended, I seriously wonder how mankind managed to get so far yet remain so woefully and obnoxiously stupid.
I do believe that laws that restrict smoking, porn, violent games, etc, can be made to work, work well, and work in a way that can near-universally be agreed upon as good, sensible and mature, even by the most anti-legislative, pure-blooded libertarians out there. I also believe such laws won't come from backroom deals, religious viewpoints and righteous rage. They are far more likely to come from rational and open discussions.
This law on violent games, for example, was brokered by politicians FOR politicians. The judge noted that no correlation between violence and games had been proven. Why could Californian legislators not wheel out neurologists with fMRI studies that could prove a unquestionable cause-and-effect on the mechanical level? Why could they not produce child psychologists who could produce solid, verifiable, repeatable evidence of a correlation on the behavioral level? If they'd done that, what objection could have been raised to there being some response?
They didn't, for an obvious reason. They never talked to any. They never had any data to work from, so had no data to present.
Ok, assuming we now have data that a response is required, we would now have to determine what kind of response is needed. The only people who can tell you what computers can do would be computer experts. The only people who can tell you what businesses can do would be business experts. For parents, you probably want to talk to a mix of parents and sociologists.
They didn't do any of that, either.
Once you've all that information to hand, you can distill it into a law that has a clear, firm, rational foundation that has unquestionable merit in dealing with a provable and proven problem, in a manner most likely to produce a verifiable and socially beneficial response.
Ah, well, rational legislation seems to be way beyond what we have come to expect from government. A pity, as they have no excuse whatsoever in producing anything else.
This assumes legislation is needed at all, of course. If the neurologists cannot show a mechanism AND the child psychologists cannot show that said mechanism produces an actual, verifiable response that is adverse and mentally toxic, and which cannot be avoided by changing some other parameter, then there's nothing for a law to do.
(You have to have both. Just showing a mechanism isn't enough, if the mechanism can be trivially ignored by most people. Even the response is not enough, if you cannot prove beyond all reasonable doubt what triggers it, OR if there were some other change - better education, for example - that could do the job better and more universally.)
The ONLY valid legislation would be IF the science justified legislation in the first place AND the legislation honored what the science defined as being the REAL problem, AND the legislation honored what the experts said society could reasonably respond to, AND the legislation honored what the Constitution defined as being the place of legislation, no matter what the data might say.
If all those conditions had been respected and met, I seriously doubt anybody would have had
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
So the judge doesn't think I have a right to decide what my child has access to?
Actually the judge does think you have a right to decide what your child has access to, the judge doesn't think you have a right to decide what MY child has access to.
Good to see that there are some people left with common sense around, it's the same thing with the internet. People complain about what their kids are going on, but no one ever questions why they freely let their children browse the web without supervision, or let them play games without supervision.
Business Voyeur
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You must live in California. Very few people make something like $80k a year. Average family income is around $40000/year. Family income, that mom + pap.
Here are some tips on how to get by on todays terrible economy:
*Too high mortage/rent -> move to smaller house
*Too high fuel -> change to smaller car or buy a bicycle
*Too high x -> change to smaller x or some using/buying x
Amazing isn't it. If you can't afford something, then you can't afford it. If you can't afford the quality of life you have, then you must settle for less. Oh and here's one for the holidays: if you don't have time for kid, don't get a kid.
Why is the parent post marked as flamebait? Here is a parent explaining their point of view, and this is flamebait?! Not that I agree with everything he says, but notheless I think the moderators really messed up on this one.
If anyone comes up with a study that proves that games, violent or otherwise, have any effect on youth other than encouraging them to sit on their slowly enlarging buttocks instead of playing outside, then I'll support restricting their access.
However, all that any study that I've seen has proven is that there are some correlations between violence and violent game play. Not causation relationships, but correlations -- ie. there is nothing to suggest that the games caused the violence. Indeed, a more likely explanation is that violent youths are more likely to be attracted to violent games, especially when you consider that they are such a tiny minority among gamers.
And yes, I have even read about the brainwave studies, but even there, the researchers themselves did not claim any kind of cause and effect relationship. Furthermore, to my knowledge, the brainwaves observed were not compared to the brainwaves of children doing similar fast-paced and competative but nonviolent activities, and there was no evidence to suggest that the games would produce anything other than a temporary mental response.
Basically, I'm very strongly against any kind of artistic censorship. Keeping known poisons out of the hands of children is very very different from blocking material that might be a bad influence, depending on your personal views, especially when there is no evidence that such material can do any measurable harm.
After all, if we ban games, what's next? I can think of a few books that actually HAVE been directly linked to billions of horrific murders, wars, and other such "antisocial behaviour" for thousands of years.
And one of them is the Bible.