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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?
Maybe they should stop trying to censor what children can purchase and just create a law banning the sale of video games, marked rated M or Adult, from being sold.
More importantly, parents need to know what kind of games their children are playing, and there is nothing the government can legislate to do about it. (I'm in my 20s, and I can say, there are some games I see on t.v. that are so sickening, and am I correct to say that the U.S. army actually helped make it or am I mistaken?
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
Well, they're actually supposed to interpret the constitution as it is. A federal judge interprets the federal constitution, and a state judge does the same for the state constitution. In this case, the judge found the law to be unconstitutional. Is it really that simple? Judges can block laws all they want. If their only job was to 'uphold the law' then there would all of a sudden be no debate about the patriot act etc. etc. ad nauseam. The judiciary would become little more than a rubber stamp for congress and the president.
This is about deterring the production of said games. If they can't be bought by minors, then they will be pirated. This destroys the revenue stream, making it unprofitable to make such games.
Evil, huh? This is the premise of much of the censorship we see today, controlling speech through the 'think about the children!' impulse.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
...allowing the sale of violent games, Arnold decided to have a few words with the judge
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 know everyone around here is probably feeling elated and self-righteous, but I think it's more than we can expect, really, in this situation with video games. Think of the culture of the past and backlash there - Booze, Jazz, Rock & Roll, etc... We're getting it pretty good.
To put another spin on it, arnold would be accepting a ban on something that he personally profits for. From a business standpoint, the ban doesn't make sense for him either. I don't mean to imply that this is his guiding reason, or even a factor, but it's one way to look at it.
~Ruff_ilb
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
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.
The judge offerred his retort.
Gee, what would California, the home of the current movie/music industry, have against the new-coming rapidly expanding gaming industry?
What sorts of fines are retailers currently assessed for sale of rated R movies, CDs with "explicit lyrics", pornography, and other adult material to minors?
The bottom line is that parents should be the ones regulating what their children are doing. If you don't know what games your child is playing, what music they are listening to, or magazines they are buying, then you need to get more involved with their lives.
Stop blaming retailers, game companies, cable tv, and generally everyone else. Do you job as a parent, discuss with your children why the material is unsuitable for them. Heck, buy it and interact with them.
"The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right?" -Offspring
...no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the United States --U.S. Constitution amendment XIV
;)
The states cannot take away rights that originate from citizenship.
Now I'm about to be corrected by someone who really knows what they're talking about
Shh.
Wow, these activist judges sure are . . . er . . . active.
The very same judge made a very similar ruling only two days ago!
[Ramones]Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe & roll highschool[/Ramones]
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
... otherwise, this law would have burst into hellish flames of contradiction when signed by the lead in Conan, Commando, Eraser, Predator, Red Heat, Running Man, Terminator 1/2/3, Total Recall, True Lies and (Not) The Last Action Hero.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
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)
Actually, many people think this, but they are mistaken because they're leaving out an important part of the legal system.
Judges need to pay attention not only to the constitution, but also need to carefully consider precendent. This is the part that most people don't realize, and why they get confused when rulings happen that seem contray to how they understand the Constitution or particular laws. The Constitution and the laws of the land are only the beginning of the US legal system, it's the judges that interpret the laws and establish precedents which, later, are followed by other judges in other interpretations and rulings down the road.
This is why Chief Justice Roberts, for example, says he personally doesn't think that abortion should be legal (or some variety on "Roe vs Wade was decided wrong), but considers it to be settled law, and he would need some sort of extraordinary circumstance to occur for him to vote to overturn RvW. It's the principle of "stare decisis", and you can read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stare_decisis
There are, indeed, people who don't believe that stare decisis should be as predominant as it is, but they seem to be in the minority. Stare decisis isn't a new legal concept dreamt up in the last decade or two, though. It's been around a long time.
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.
Now I think the MPAA system is technically voluntary, but it would seem to have pretty much the same effect as European rating systems which are mostly enshrined in the law.
If this was a general ban or censorship, I would completely agree. However I really don't get the problem with restricting the 'rights' of minors, this coming from a country where most states don't let you purchase alcohol until the very late age of 21 (which to a European seems _far_ more bizarre.)
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
I see a lot of people who continue to say that it's up to the parents to keep their children from playing games that arn't acceptable. These are the same people who either don't work, or who don't have children themselves.
Look at the cost of living these days. In many places, paying rent or a mortgage costs over $2000 per month. With phone bills, cable bills, electric bills, water bills, car payments, credit card payments, and so on, in order to afford all of this and have a parent able to stay at home to watch the kids, the parent that is working would need to be earning at least $80,000/year in order to stay on top of it all. Considering that most people are working in jobs that pay $45,000/year or under, it's no wonder that families need to have BOTH parents working in order to stay on top of costs. Oh, I forgot that with a child, it's idiotic not to have health insurance, and MOST jobs out there don't provide health insurance as a part of the job.
Until the overall cost of living is reduced, there will be NO chance for many families to have someone stay at home to watch what children are playing and doing. I don't see a push by government to help REDUCE costs. Gas prices are up which raises the prices on everything. Electric costs are going up and up with nothing being done to lower the prices. Preventing prices from going up isn't the same as lowering them.
The economy isn't in good shape right now. Consider that while prices arn't going up TOO fast(except for gas and the side effect of gas prices), people arn't getting paid much more each year. That's a problem. If you make $25,000/year, and prices go up by 5% across the board, but your paycheck only goes up by 3%, you have had life become much harder. If a family has a single income of $45,000/year, but rents and utility bills go up more per year than your income, you have less of a chance of doing well overall. Taxes are also going up in many places, so if you managed to buy a house and could BARELY afford the payments, the increase in taxes will force you to move out eventually because wages arn't increasing.
These are just some of the facts that involve the whole "parents should watch what their children are doing". If children get out of school three to four hours before a parent gets home from work, of COURSE there won't be anyone there to watch what they are doing, they are too busy trying to earn a living. Only the wealthy who don't work, or those who can work at home can possibly watch their children properly.
Clever signature text goes here.
Arnie signed that law knowing full well it would be struck down. It's a win-win for him.
Arnold gets to take credit for "protecting" minors. He also now has the opportunity to slam the judicial branch for being "liberal." (Whatever that means.)
However, the law was nothing more than restraint of trade.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
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.