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Clinton, Lieberman Propose CDC Investigate Games
Gamespot reports that Senators Clinton and Lieberman have asked the Centers for Disease control to investigate how games impact us poor deluded citizens. From the article: "Even though the legislation--called the Children and Media Research Advancement Act--does not include restrictions, it appears to be intended as a way to justify them. That's because a string of court decisions have been striking down antigaming laws because of a lack of hard evidence that minors are harmed by violence in video games. The original version of the bill earmarked $90 million for the study, but Lieberman press secretary Rob Sawicki said that the committee had approved the measure without any dollar figure and that such a figure would be added later during the appropriations process." Gamasutra has some background on the bill, which was originally proposed in 2003.
As mission statement says: I don't think any of those are really concentrating on developmental mental health of my child. However, after looking at the the CDC page on child development it looks like they do consider themselves watchdogs of how children should be raised to some extent: It then goes on to provide activity charts for the ranges of years for small children.
Where do we draw the line at what is considered "neglect" by a parent?
My work here is dung.
From Wikipedia:
"Political positions
Censorship
Lieberman has been criticized by many computer and video game players for his stance on video games; he is a strong supporter of video game censorship. He has also been vocal in the censorship of many controversial musical artists. In the late 1990s Lieberman was vocal in lobbying for censorship against shock rocker Marilyn Manson, calling his group "one of the sickest" he had ever seen. As a senator he inspired the advent of the Entertainment Software Rating Board. The Entertainment Software Association is against governmental regulation of or restriction on video games. Therefore, the organization opposes Lieberman. He has been known many times to denounce the violence contained in video games and has made attempts to regulate sales of violent video games to minors.
On November 29, 2005, Lieberman, together with Hillary Clinton and Evan Bayh introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act. The act is intended to protect children from inappropriate content found in video games."
If only they'd find that it turns out games are good for a child's development like/for...
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Biligualism:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/12
Staving off Dementia:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/06
Bridge the gap between law enforcement and youths:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/20
Good Values like trust:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/27
Showing that actions have concequences:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/26
But unfortunatly, I can't see this study being anything but biased against games. At least it just a political show, designed to make the proponents look more moderate and appear to care about your children.
Demented But Determined.
The result was that all the comic book publishers banded together and formed a voluntary rating system. In effect, they censored themselves. The new rules said that, since comic books were for kids, no comic books were allowed to include words like "teror," "horror," or "crime" in their titles; comics could not feature werewolves, vampires, or other elements of the supernatural; if any crime was depicted in a comic book, the criminals would have to come to justice for their crimes by the end of the story; and so on. The net effect was that an entire genre of horror and crime comic books went out of business. You know some of those comic books -- for example, Tales from the Crypt. There were many others, however. In its heyday, a comic book called Crime Does Not Pay outsold not just Tales from the Crypt but the entire output of that book's publisher (E.C. Comics) combined. It too went out of business, just months after Tales from the Crypt and the other E.C. horror comics, once the Comics Code took effect.
And so the world was safe. Kids stopped being juvenile delinquents, at least the ones who were able to stay away from that awful rock 'n roll music. It was a halcyon age, a veritable paradise, for the next 30 years or so.
But then in the 1980s, rap music came along, and heavy metal, and they were even worse than rock 'n roll. This aural poison proved to be all but irresistable to kids. So a brave group of moral citizens, led by the wife of future Democratic presidential hopeful Al Gore, banded together to slap labels on rap albums, warning parents about the horrors inside. Again we were safe.
But now the evil rears its ugly head again -- video games! We tried using a ratings system on them, but nobody went out of business (unlike the comic book publishers in the 50s). How long can we as citizens stand for this?? Clearly something must be done if this cycle of moral depravity is ever going to end!
Breakfast served all day!
I think you seem to have forgotten history about the Clinton administration (I'll have to do a little guilt-by-association to her husband as she wasn't in office for parts, but I think it's reasonable). It's not a voter ploy, she actually believes this crap.
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1) COPA http://www.epic.org/free_speech/copa/
2) Pushed the theater owners organization to be aggressive on people under 18 seeing "R" movies: http://www.libertarianrock.com/topics/censorship/
3) Called for regulation of video games http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/14/news_6129
4) Today's stuff
5) Past history with Tipper Gore
What I would like to know is why firearms is with tobacco and alcohol. Weapon, drug, drug. hmmm..
Because these products are subject to special taxes and special regulations, ATF was originally formed as a branch of the Treasury Department to handle this tax collection. In the post-9/11 govenment restructuring, the law enforcement side of ATF, which had by then become their main activity, moved over to the Justice Department, and the tax collection part remained with Treasury as the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.
No matter how many times I read this site, I am still shocked to find that people in America actually believe that there are laws governing video game sales. There are not. Every state that has tried to institute one has either failed to actually pass it, or had the law stricken down by the courts, because laws governing speech as if it were tobacco or alcohol are unconstitutional laws.
Same thing with movies. There is no law saying that a ten year old can't watch an R-rated movie unattended in a theater. The movie theaters (and some video stores) enforce those rules themselves as part of their business model. Just like the ESRB does for video games, and has been doing for years.
Most of the children who get their hands on T or M rated games have them bought by their parents. How would solidifying the ESRB ratings in law prevent this? It wouldn't, if for no other reason that that people believe the law already exists, and it is still happening.
"We're not happy until you're not happy."
Meaning: These clowns intend to waste MORE THAN $90,000,000 on this idiocy.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The APA is the American Psychological Association. Basically it's a scientific organization of psychologists worldwide. The DSM is a collaborative effort. While the DSM is not immune to political influence, the process is reasonably well designed to try to keep the DSM as scientific as possible. As one example, in spite of intense political pressure, when research proved that homosexuality was not a disease, it was successfully removed from the DSM (it was included as such in an early edition due to widespread assumption that had not yet been researched).
Here is the APA's website:
http://www.apa.org/
Here is the dsm-v website, which describes the research going into the next DSM.
http://www.dsm5.org/
From http://www.apa.org/about/
With 150,000 members, APA is the largest association of psychologists worldwide.
Gerald P. Koocher, PhD is the 2006 President of the American Psychological Association. He currently serves as editor of the journal Ethics and Behavior.
Dr. Koocher was elected a Fellow of twelve divisions of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Koocher has more than 25 years of APA governance experience--spanning from his service on APA's Ethics Committee as a 25-year-old to his completion in December of two five-year terms as APA treasurer, an office that includes membership on APA's Board of Directors. He has been president of the Massachusetts and New England Psychological Associations.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Please, Senator Lieberman. You're one of the only active Democrats in power which I don't desperately want to punch in the throat.
Really? I would have thought that someone even remotely familiar with Lieberman's record in office would not be surprised by this. He's always been of fan of this kind of big-government nanny program.
I don't think "liberal" means what you think it means. You have been too indoctrinated to think straight. "Liberal" in much of the rest of the world means "political centre" as there are far more "socialist" parties all around, like for example the NDP here in Canada. The word "liberal" in this context refers an attempt to "not interfere" in both social (allowing abortions, gay marriage etc) and economic matters (free market but with some minor constraints to palacate the leftists) - although of course there have been deviations from this definition, sometimes extreme. Also in many places "neo-liberal" means what in the US is called "neo-classical capitalist" and is characterized by a love affair with unrestricted "free" markets (thus abandoning any pretense of leftists alliances) and military interventionism to further that cause. Tony Blair in Britain, George's best buddy, is considered a "neo-liberal" by many.