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.

Comments

Where do we draw the line for the CDC?

[eldavojohn]

When I first read this article, I thought that the CDC had no right to deciding what is and what is not mentally healthy for raising my children.

As mission statement says:

To promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability. The CDC seeks to accomplish its mission by working with partners throughout the nation and the world to

• monitor health,
• detect and investigate health problems,
• conduct research to enhance prevention,
• develop and advocate sound public health policies,
• implement prevention strategies,
• promote healthy behaviors,
• foster safe and healthful environments,
• provide leadership and training.

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:

The early years of a child's life are crucial for cognitive, social and emotional development. Therefore, it is important that we take every step necessary to ensure that children grow up in environments where their social, emotional and educational needs are met.

Cost to society of less than optimal development are enormous and far-reaching. Children who grow up in environments where their developmental needs are not met are at an increased risk for compromised health and safety, and learning and developmental delays. Failure to invest time and resources during children's early years may have long term effects on the foster care, health care, and education systems. Therefore, it is in the public's interest to ensure that children develop in safe, loving, and secure environments.

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?

Re:Where do we draw the line for the CDC?

[gfxguy]

Of course, Hillary believes it takes a community to raise a child. I, on the other hand, believe it takes parents.

Re:Where do we draw the line for the CDC?

[Vaystrem]

"Of course, Hillary believes it takes a community to raise a child. I, on the other hand, believe it takes parents."

Your absolutely right, and your absolutely wrong. Yes it takes parents to raise a child, assuming you have parents which hundreds of thousands of orphans from the AIDS crisis and other crises around the world do not.

The point that was being made by the author was that the role of the community in its own development, and the development of its members, is important and significant. How that community is structured, is it inclusive? is it a positive environment? is it safe? does it have the resources necessary to promote growth? (economic environmental and social)

There are so many factors that are beyond the control of parents. You want to look at drug abuse, violence, exclusion, poverty, whatever, all of them are incredibly linked to the community. The individual, and certainly not the parents, do not control the context in which they live their lives. If our communities degenerate, or continue to degenerate as many authors have suggested, it won't matter what kind of parent you are - you can only teach your child so much and shield them from so much. Beyond that the responsibility lies with your child, and the environment they interact within, namely 'the community' on whatever plan you choose to identify it (municipality -> nation -> nation-state -> continent, etc)

Re:Where do we draw the line for the CDC?

[gfxguy]

I don't need teachers, police officers, firefighters, librarians, neighbors, or anyone else to tell me wether or not my kids play too many video games.

And, in fact, throughout history children have been raised quite successfully without teachers, police officers, firefighters, neighbors, a healthy local economy, grocers, farmers (except what they grew themselves), extended family or friends...

I didn't say it didn't help, or that some things the community provides aren't beneficial, I said it doesn't take a community to raise a child, it takes parents.

And more than what you mention, what Hillary MEANT was a child should be raised by the community's standards and not the parents. Wait, scratch that... what Hillary REALLY meant was that a child shouldn't be raised by the parent's standards, they should be raised by HER standards.

Re:Where do we draw the line for the CDC?

[steve buttgereit]

I must take issue with some of your positions.

"Hillary is not a socialist." I think if you look back at the early '90s, you'll find that the health care reforms she was spearheading on behalf of her husband in essence was a de facto nationalization of the health care system in the U.S. By using high degrees of government regulation or ownership to rectify perceived unfairness in the distribution of health care by definition is a socialist policy position. Your other characterizations I agree with. Look, even my side of the political spectrum has its own whack jobs: think Pat Robertson. Nonetheless, is some key ways Pat Robertson and I do agree and I can't disavow that to make me look more correct. I have to take it for what it is and take faith that even whack jobs may get some things right; anything else is artificial and hypocrisy.

"Socialists do not love big or powerful government" First, socialist policies require extensive legislative power in order to enforce the key proposition that distinguishes it from the opposing conservative ideology: namely that wealth and power should be distributed in some sort of 'fair' arrangement. Without extensive legislative power, and the government bureaucracy to enforce it, people would not be forced to comply with the taxation, the social policy, the powersharing or anything else and largely socialist policy would be little more than banter on Slashdot. So when you say, "Socialists are concerned with balancing all the ill effects of capitalism (as it has many of them, regardless of its positive ones) with some sort of communal social conscience," I would contend you can do none of those things without big government. Whether you love it or not is up to you, but you need it to have your desire.

You go on to add from the point of the last paragraph, "(on the contrary, it seems that neo-cons do [love big government], just look at the size and deficits of that thing now!) This is just political sophistry aimed at painting the Bush administration with the dirty phrase 'neo-con' much the same way conservatives turned 'liberal' into an undesirable label (thereby causing the American Left to search for more palatable monikers such as 'progressive'). Couple things we should get straight... my understanding of neo-conservatism (speaking now as one that hold many of these ideologies) is primarily focused on the foreign policy of the country not so much the domestic agenda. Admittly I may be wrong on the formal definition (I don't get too caught up with trendy labels), but if we broaden your statement to be 'conservative' ideology your argument couldn't be more flawed. I would suggest that the Bush Administration is not conservative at all nor representative of conservative thought. I think the recent Cato Institute conference generally got it right; Bush and his administration are Christian Socialists. Congress, too, has largely been made up of RINOs (republicans in name only) since the fall of Gingrich. The ideas of small government conservativism died at about the same time as their greatest champion, Ronald Reagan, did.

But be a Socialist after Marx or be one after Christ, the two have a few things in common. The notion that they have been appointed (one by God the other by ???) to determine what is right and wrong for the rest of us is proof of their kinship. Economic inequalities between me and my fellow man? So what. Many more poor than rich? So long as the rule of law is paramount and that law establishes nothing more than a level playing field in terms of opportunity, let the poor be poor and the rich be rich. Within the nation so long as there are the minimal constraints to prevent monopoly amongst competitors be they companies or ethnic/religious groups there should be no one to make such decisions as, "you are too rich," or, "you are too powerful". Only if you can make the argument that by force (exercised throug

Forget the CDC and games..

[Rob T Firefly]

What I want to know is, when will the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms figure out what to do with the Space Program while the Federal Aviation Administration revitalizes our nation's public school system?

Aaugh!

[Golias]

Please, Senator Lieberman. You're one of the only active Democrats in power which I don't desperately want to punch in the throat. I was even a fan of your ill-fated White House bid.

Please, disconnect yourself from that shrill harpy of an ex-First Lady, and come back to sanity.

Re:Aaugh!

[jonnythan]

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."

Re:Aaugh!

[nmb3000]

Please, Senator Lieberman. You're one of the only active Democrats in power which I don't desperately want to punch in the throat.

Please, disconnect yourself from that shrill harpy of an ex-First Lady, and come back to sanity.

He's not going to drop this issue or the harpy. The issue is a "hot" one that will get his name spread around the news and the harpy is (unfortunately) supposed to be the "Next Big Thing" (s/Thing/Flop ?)

So now you feel like punching all those Democrats in the throat. Welcome to the club.

Is gaming a disease?

[slashbob22]

Why do we need the CDC to investigate? I think it would be better handled by an addictions group. The ONLY plausible reason to get the CDC involved is to have access to those bio-containment suits while they visit the homes of some of the most entranced gamers.

Stupid, but...

[d34thm0nk3y]

Lieberman's bill, called CAMRA, would provide funding to investigate the cognitive, physical, and sociobehavioral impact of electronic media on child and adolescent development--everything from physical coordination, diet, and sleeping habits to attention span, peer relationships, and aggression levels. Television, motion pictures, DVDs, interactive video games, the Internet, and cell phones would all be fair game.

At least they are treating games on the same level as movies etc for a change instead of pretending there is some magical difference.

Damn Republicans!

[DAldredge]

Oh, never mind...

brain research

[Colonel Panic]

I'm not sure why there is such resistance here on /. (other than the fact that most /.'ers are possibly adolecent gamers) to the idea that activities you engage in for a large percentage of your time can have an impact on brain development and function. Those changes in brain structure can lead to changes in behavior - that's the emerging consensus from scientists who research the brain.

Free speech

[Kohath]

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.

It shouldn't matter if there's "harm". Games are free speech.

What a bunch of BS, BTW. "Harm." People have free will and control their own actions.

If games have the power to override free will by accident, then we have a bigger problem. Someone will eventually harness this power to create an army of servants and take over the world.

Come to think of it, that would make a fun game.

Ratings system?

[digitaldc]

Isn't the ratings system supposed to prevent kids from getting violent games? I know that it doesn't work, but still there are laws out there. Make buying these games by minors just as tough as buying alcohol or cigarettes.

Why is it always people that know little or nothing about video games are always the ones railing so hard against them? It's also interesting that neither Clinton nor Lieberman are saying anything about the TV & Movie industry constantly having violence in their shows/movies which may also harm children.
God forbid a naked breast showing up somewhere. That would be instantly banned and deemed harmful...strange world we live in.

Re:Ratings system?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Isn't the ratings system supposed to prevent kids from getting violent games? I know that it doesn't work

It does work. I've said this time and time again. I've witnessed young kids trying to buy violent games at EB and the EB employee would not sell them it. I've seen mothers ask the EB employees, "is this game violent?" and the EB employees would answer with honesty.

I was buying Mortal Kombat V, and a little kid and his mother were buying a WWF (WWE) game. She asked "Is this game too violent?" And the EB employee said "It has some violence, but its not very graphic. There is fighting of course but there is no death, blood or bad language" And then the EB employee looks over to me standing next to the mother and points at Mortal Kombat V and says "Now the game he is buying, is very violent" :) We grinned at each other haha

IT HAPPENS. The EB employees do their job... ESPECIALLY when the parents do their job and ask the right questions.

This is key. The rating systems work. The parents that use it, succeed at chosing games they find appropriate, and when in doubt, if they ask an EB employee, they will tell them in more detail!

The System works!!!!

The politicans are using this angle to win votes. They're trying to erode freedoms based on a non issue. We've solved this issue years ago with the rating systems. We solved this issue years ago in the 60s with music, with movies... we've been here time and time again...

ASK before buying... Use the rating system... USE your V-chip....

People need to stop blaiming the world for their lack of parenting... AND they need to stop letting politicians throw issues infront of us like peices of meat. These are non issues that have been solved time and time again.

I'm just affraid that this time we'll go the other way and completely ruin our free country.

If Only...

[Dr. Eggman]

If only they'd find that it turns out games are good for a child's development like/for...

Biligualism:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/12/ 0733237

Staving off Dementia:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/06/ 1543201

Bridge the gap between law enforcement and youths:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/20/ 031257

Good Values like trust:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/27/ 1851235

Showing that actions have concequences:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/26/ 225240


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.

It's a philosophical problem

[John Miles]

I'm not sure why there is such resistance here on /. (other than the fact that most /.'ers are possibly adolecent gamers) to the idea that activities you engage in for a large percentage of your time can have an impact on brain development and function. Those changes in brain structure can lead to changes in behavior - that's the emerging consensus from scientists who research the brain.

The resistance comes from the implications of your proposition with respect to what it means to be a human being.

To the extent that books, movies, and computer games actually have a deleterious effect on adolescents' brain development, they are effectively the same as executable content. It's not much of a leap from there to conclude that people, or at least children, are nothing more than sophisticated programmable devices -- machines that have no free will to choose their own influences in life. It's an argument that rests on determinism, which bothers freethinking geeks the same way evolution frightens protestant Christians.

More specifically: if it turns out to be true that children can be "programmed" by media exposure alone, then everything Hilary Clinton has ever said about child-rearing being a collective responsibility suddently gains a lot of scientific weight. Any conservative who's tempted to jump onto this particular bandwagon had better think carefully about its direction and speed of travel. The bandwagon's next stop will be in the far-flung territories mapped by Huxley.

Same thing every generation of kids

[PCM2]

In the 1950s, comic books were the great evil corrupting our youth. One glance at the covers was enough to tell you that these things were leading to the downfall of Western civilization. They actually held Congressional hearings to decide what to do about the "comic book problem."

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!

Fear and Wingnuttery

[SewersOfRivendell]

This is going to be slightly off-topic. Fair warning, mods.

You're one of the only active Democrats in power which I don't desperately want to punch in the throat

1. That's because he's actually a Republican, and he's going to be replaced this year by the fed-up netroots. Lieberman was one reason Gore failed to get enough votes to overcome the fraud in 2000. And what power? The Republicans control congress, the judiciary, and the executive branch. What power do Democrats have at all?

2. Fear is what motivates wingnuts. You also like Lieberman because, like yourself, he's a coward. He's afraid of the terrorists, and so, like the Republicans who control the Congress at the moment, he's willing to give away our civil rights to the terrorists in exchange for some perception -- any perception, however false -- of safety. This is really important to understand, everyone. The wingnuts are AFRAID. The Shrub administration runs on fear.

A successful Democratic candidate in 2008 will be one who stands up and says "we are the heirs of Patrick Henry; we will never stand down in the face of a threat to our domestic tranquility. To the terrorists, I say: we will find you and root you out; we will never submit to your tyranny-by-proxy and to your threats. We will not surrender our civil rights."

3. Why do Republicans always resort to violence as the first response to anything? If Karl Rove was a Democrat, some demented wingnut such as yourself would have long since assassinated him. Bush's approval rating is now far below Clinton's approval rating at any time during the Clinton presidency, and yet you don't see anyone firing bullets at the white house.

If there's anyone you should want to "punch in the throat," it should be Osama bin Laden. Where's your enthusiasm for that, where's your passion for finding and killing the real enemies of the state? Why is it all aimlessly pointed at harmless centrist targets like Hillary? Why not Laura Bush, who actually did kill someone (accidentally, mind you, according to the police record)?

4. I don't understand why Hillary sends all you wingnuts into incoherent rage. Discounting the tinfoil hat fairytales Limbaugh spews, she's a great match for the right wing: she has your sense of professional ethics and morality. Loves to pander to the rich and powerful. Loves to be right-wing. Will give away civil rights at the drop of a hat. Loves Iraq as a US colony. About the only thing you shouldn't like about her is her stand on healthcare, but she's flexible like her husband, so I don't think you have anything to worry about. She's hardly the moral beacon that this country will really need after eight years of the corrosive Shrub and his Halliburton-fellating cronies.

Re:Jesus fucking christ

[InsaneGeek]

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.

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/t heater_owner_pr_id_check.html
3) Called for regulation of video games http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/14/news_61290 40.html
4) Today's stuff
5) Past history with Tipper Gore

Re:prejudging the data

[illspirit]

Sorta like how Fredric Wertham's research "proved" comic books were evil to the Senate in the 50's? Or maybe something like the McCarthy hearings? Don't be silly, the government has obviously learned from its mistakes and would never go on such a witch hunt of a fishing expedition agai.... Or, umm, wait, who am I kidding.

But, yea, I wouldn't argue that violent games aren't bad for kids. However I will argue that research into any number of other things could be proven just as bad. Like, say, the institutionalized violence known as American high school football. But if one questioned the wholesomeness of that, and suggested it be researched, they'd be labeled a terr'ist or something.

Re:Do this study on the Bible

[Dunbal]

The Bible is full of horrible violence.

      I think history books should also be banned. Almost all of recorded history describes how unscrupulous individuals murdered their kinsmen to obtain power. These same individuals abused their power exercising their "royal perrogative" whenever they saw fit, and history is full of warmongerers who thought nothing of killing people to obtain more material wealth.

      I think this sets a bad example to children so all history should be re-written as "everyone used to go home after work and watch tv, every day, and when they got bored they went to the mall and maxxed out their credit card, since the beginning of time."