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Louisiana Passes Violent Games Bill
GameDaily is reporting that the Louisiana House has passed a violent games bill, aping similar legislation from across the country. From the article: "The bill would allow a judge to determine if a video game is 'patently offensive to prevailing standards' and if it's appealing 'to the minor's morbid interest in violence.' If the title meets these "criteria" the game could be ordered to be pulled from store shelves. Furthermore, someone found guilty of selling one of these games would face fines of between $100 and $2,000, and a prison term of up to one year. According to the Associated Press, even though several members of the House questioned whether the bill would be in violation of the First Amendment, none felt they should vote against the measure."
You just made a big chunk of the population criminals, let me know how that turns out.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Video games = Bad! Cockfighting = Good!
so you can have a real gun... just not a virtual one.. at least they have their constitutional priorities in line.
mod me down Im use to it.
The state with the most amount of daughter-rape has outlawed GTA III! OH TEH PONIES!!!!!11
Bah, TFA not wanting to load for me. What I get from this, though, is that a retailer can be taken to court AFTER a sale for selling a game to a minor and then if the judge decides that the game is indecent and trying to appeal to minors, the store will be punished and the game pulled from shelves? How is the store to know this before selling the game to be able to be taken to court for it? Is the lousiana state government going to review all games themselves before allowing them to be sold in the state? I've got to figure out how to get in on this. You guys do something, after you do it I'll tell you if it was legal or not and sue you and throw you in jail if it wasn't. Sound like a good deal?
"Even though several members of the House questioned whether the bill would be in violation of the First Amendment, none felt they should vote against the measure."
"These decisions should be left to the legislature, the representatives of the people, not the courts."
Legislators: "I'm not touching that. Let the courts decide."
We all know why no one voted against this bill. They have seen the bans in other states thrown out on first ammendment grounds. They understand this will have no real effect (aside from forcing the game industry to pay some legal bills). They do this because they do not want to be the guy in November with ads running against him saying "John Smith wants kids to kill hookers like they do in the game he supports Grand Theft Auto."
I am sick of legislatures playing lip service to what the lattest fad is. I wish Americans (and I am sure it happens in the rest of the world too) would grow a brain and quit letting rhetoric dictacte their life.
Ok, got it to load. Is the rating on the packaging going to be taken into account in the same way other similar laws that have been attempted were or is this based purely on the judges discretion of if the game is violent or not, meaning that (careful, slippery slope, watch your step) potentially a store could be fined, people thrown in jail, etc for selling an E game to a minor if the judge felt it was violent (obviously not likely)?
how is the interest morbid? if anything, it should be called 'natural', in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word. i think that it is much better to be a "hardcore" "pro" halo gamer (with all the negative connotations that it entails) rather than a typical mellowed-out PC loser. I guess, the Man still can't give up His dreams to fully "Baden-Powell all the boys and Betty Crocker all the girls"... Anyway, long live violent videogames - the new underground.
Jesus said to his disciples: "If you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one" - Luke 22:36
Meanwhile, these legislators get to shout about how they've 'taken a stand' and are 'protecting your kids'.
Don't you asshats have a city to rebuild? Why the fuck are you wasting your constituent's money on this?
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
It just means that if you don't have a drivers license that states you're over 18, you don't get to buy the game. If you're a minor and you have the game, it's because mommy and daddy bought the game for you. What's wrong with making parent's take more of an interest in what their children experience?
What's that? Your kid brought a gun to school and executed his classmates? You say that his violent video games made him do it*? Well then, who bought him the video game?
* - I find this notion laughable, by the way
So, then, anything rated Mature should be exempt from this part. Right? Oh wait, I forgot, only children play video games so any game made with any violence or sex must be marketed entirely at ten-year-olds.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Now if only we could outlaw thinking then the next elections should be a steal for the republicans.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I thought laws just like this one, passed in other states, has already been deemed entirely unconstitutional.
Just what the hell are these people doing, anyways?
even though several members of the House questioned whether the bill would be in violation of the First Amendment, none felt they should vote against the measure
In summation:
-they know a law already prohibits this
-they decided to approve it anyway
Therefore, every member of the legislature that voted for this bill has committed a crime. I assume the courts will be as swift in getting the wheels of justice spinning as they are for the local meth dealer or pot farmer.
They ripped off Nintendo! The PS3 is overpriced! Remember the rootkit! Bluray is Betamax!
...oops - sorry, wrong stationery. Wait - this Slashdot games, right?
A state legislature passes a bill, knowing full well that it won't survive a court challenge. They wasted your tax dollars coming up with the thing. They wasted your tax dollars getting it passed. And they'll waste your tax dollars defending it in court. If I lived in Louisana I'd be pretty pissed off about that. Maybe you guys should get a voter referendum going to take all the money wasted on such laws out of the salaries of the legislators instead of out of the general funds of the state. Isn't Louisana pretty cash-strapped anyway? I seem to recall some whining about them not having enough money recently...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The bill would allow a judge to determine if a video game is 'patently offensive to prevailing standards' and if it's appealing 'to the minor's morbid interest in violence.'
I'm not sure if they could be any more vague. I mean, given the right conditions, you could argue this about just about any game. I recall many an hour in wholesome puzzle games like Lemmings and The Incredible Machine inventing horrible things to do to the creatures under my control. Does that count as morbid violence?
One would hope that their representatives are not only representing their constituents' views but also strongly protecting their guaranteed constitutional rights! It shouldn't matter if the bill is 100% aligned with how your constituents feel, if that bill infringes upon their rights then it is the rep's JOB to vote against it and protect the people's rights even if it's against their will. Too often the government tries to save us from ourselves but in the wrong way. In this case I think voting against a bill that infringes/removes rights is the proper thing to do even if people are requesting otherwise. If they really want the bill passed then pen it in such a way as it does NOT conflict with constitutional rights!
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
We need states to enact this kind of thing. The states, not the federal government. When one state does this, consumers on the borders will flee to adjoining states to buy video games. If it's a truly horrible piece of legislation, the market will bear this out and the retail outlets will raise hell. The feedback loop between a free market and a democracy will show itself one way or another. It could be that the residents of Louisiana overall want exactly this kind of thing, they should have it. This is not a clear violation of free speech, but it's a worthy law to challenge it. What we want now, is a legal challenge to this law. A case will be decided using this law by the lower courts, and we'll get an appelate court decision. At this point, we'll know what this law really means. Don't worry, gamers and liberterians. The passage of these kinds of laws is vital to ensuring that rights are preserved in a common law judisdiction.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
If anyone's interested in the "logic" behind this bill, you should read the coverage at GamePolitics or watch the entire hearing linked therein.
In summary, Jack Thompson was the star witness for the hearing, so one could imagine the mountain of crap he spewed about games. Perhaps even more fantastic than Thompson's testimony was the list of "racist games" Representative Burrell used to terrify the House with (a list no doubt provided by Thompson). Burrell spent about five minutes naming off a bunch of racist Flash games one can find on the internets. However, instead of telling the House these "games" are only available online and wouldn't be affected by the bill, he made it sound like the game industry was making millions from selling them in stores directly to kids.
Worst of all (or best, if you can appreciate the irony), he told the House about how the suspect in the rape/murder of a ten year old in Oklahoma "trained" on a "video game" called Kingdom of Loathing. Yep, that's right, a non-sensical, browser-based RPG, where stick figures with classes like "Pastamancer" and "Accordian Thief" do battle with saber-tooted limes, somehow trained a 26 year old to rape and murder. And a law about carding minors in retail stores would have somehow stopped an adult from playing a browser game? Oooookay.
Normally, it would be a silly idea to tell anyone to vote based soley on a candidate's position on video games. But if anyone from Louisiana is reading this, please, vote these bastards out of office for their stupidity alone!
From a different article
http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=4888522
Thompson tells 9 News he hopes retailers do end up in court so often, they will choose to stop selling violent games altogether.
Great idea, lets just harass people until they do what we want.
The interesting thing is that the use the excuse of protecting minors to push these laws, while the real goal is to prevent the games from existing at all.
Humans are innately violent. Video games provides a civilized environment in which everyone can please their intrinsic desire to kill, rape, mutilate, maim, torture, and destroy things. Hide it as you will, you know in that virtual world you want to take that spiked baseball bat to your nextdoor neighbor's skull, ravish his underage daughter, and blow them all away with the twelve gauge, burning all the evidence down in a convenient house fire.
Okay, that was a little extreme...
Point is, what they think will happen is this -- in the virtual world, you think, "This makes my pants tight." Then some idiot goes out and does it in the real world. If the accused has ever watched a movie or played a videogame, guess where the finger gets pointed?
Instead, we need to examine our lifestyles. Our empty, worthless existence. -LN
Violent video games even permeate the highest levels of government: http://americasarmy.com/
$8.95/mo web hosting
GREAT! I am a louisiana resident (unfortunatly). I guess I am going to have to order my games off of amazon now. =( (or I could FIREBOMB the state gov't, right? oh that would be terrorism, nevermind,)
Fascism is the greatest political ideology ever conceived. Sorry.
...that violent video games can be used as a scapegoat for bad parenting
"You know I don't have enough time to talk to my kids the difference between a violent video game and reality, so I'll just preasure congress to remove all violent video games from our stores."
However, Canada's political system can require to vote along party lines or receive retribution (i.e. be kicked out of the party, effectivly ending the political career.) I'm not sure if the American system is different, but you get the idea.
Nothing institutionalized -- if you don't toe the party line, they won't throw you out, and politicians do occasionally switch parties -- but a lot of politics runs on the "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" principle. If you don't go along with the party when someone else proposes legislation, you'll find it harder to get support for your own proposals.
That, I think, is one of the main reasons the big two parties dominate politics everywhere but the most local levels, and why so many politicians go along with the latest bandwagon.
In this case, I think it's important to remember that it's a mid-term election year. I don't know what Louisiana's election schedule is, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that a significant portion of their legislature is up for re-election in November. Anyone who voted against the bill could be easily portrayed by their opponent as being soft on violence, obscenity, etc. And anyone who raised constitutional concerns could be counting on the law being struck down, allowing them to avoid giving their opponents ammunition without actually helping put the law into force.
but isn't it kinda true that most games are just around to satisfy the morbid curiosity for violence? If you look at any other entertainment medium - books, television, film - video games would come out on top for violent content. The games where your objective isn't going around and killing something are pretty few and far between. Why is this? Is it just the easy road to take? "How do we make this level harder? Oh, just add a couple of monsters to kill." While I don't like the passing of this bill, I wish game developers would take more of a high road and actually make games where violence isn't the main point of the game.
I went to E3 this year and got pretty tired of going from booth to booth and seeing FMV videos of guys shooting other guys or guys running other guys through with a sword - even if the bad guys were cave trolls or other monsters.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
The problem here is not party lines, the problem here is that it is an election year and this is an easy way to look good to the public. The whole 'Look at me! I voted to keep your children safe from smut!' advertisment. They know darn well that the law will be overturned before it gets applied and that there is no real down side other than spending a couple hundred thousand tax dollars on litigation.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
The law will eventually get tossed out as being unconstitutional, if it ever gets enforced against a major chain, and possibly a small chain if they stand up for themselves.
The main thing here is that the law will have a chilling effect on all mature games being sold in LA. The problem is that it will be about impossible to repeal the law through the courts without being tried under the law, and noone really wants to be the martyr. I expect that stores just over the state border in TX, MS, and AR will do a healthy buisness.
What we really need is a constitutional admendment that says that any legislator or executive that passes a bill that is found to be unconstitutional gets an automatic fine and can be tried as a traitor tot he constitution. When you get sworn into office, you pledge to uphold the Constitution. If you knowingly allow an unconstitutional bill to pass, then you have committed a traitorous act.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
One where if you vote for too many bills that are unconstutional, you lose your seat in government and are forever barred from running again. Perhaps that would lead politicians to think more and pander less. Unfortunately, that is the kind of thing that the legslature has to pass and the chances of them passing a law restricting themselves is almost nil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
Adding violence to this definition of obscenity wouldn't be a bad idea, really. Of course, they forgot to add the most important part:
"Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
Most of the violent games I can think of at least have serious artistic value.
Rob
I voted for Kodos.
Send a letter to your congressman and ask them why they don't support our troops.
If it's dead, you killed it.
Pac-man promotes drug use!
I can see it now - hordes of gamers, struggling to make their way north to the land of the free. The GTA railroad.
Fuck Louisiana. If any state deserved everything they got - that's one of them. I hope they get 20 more hurricanes. Let-em enjoy their puritanical government regulations. Perhaps they'll re-institute Jim Crow laws next!
There's often discussion about "games as art", and some people question why it's important for games to be considered "art" instead of being just fun. This story shows one of the biggest reasons: it makes the medium of games more legitimate and less prone to attacks like this.
Do you think this bill would have passed unanimously if we were talking about violent books? What about violent paintings? Consider Goya's El Tres de Mayo . It's extremely violent, but we consider it art. I remember seeing this painting in my text books in school in history. We don't fret about kids seeing the blood and violence.
Of course, game developers also need to take some responsibility here and create more works that are worthy of the title "art". And, even if games are considered as having artistic merit, there will still be politicians that try to play politics with it, just as they do with music these days.
I discuss this a bit more in a essay and comments on my professional blog.
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/oddities/e306-the-awe some-game-173278.php
I'll be happy. I can't wait!
I wasn't aware that there was anyone left here with any illusions at all about this one, simple fact - we're all goddamned morons, in our own way. The question is, does your way kill a lot of people slowly, or a few people over a long period of time, or somewhere inbetween?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
if we make a realistic 1st person (first chicken?) cockfighting game?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Well, the violent crime rate going up since fifty years ago (and down since twenty-five) probably has a lot more to do with motive than opportunity. People (well, a vast majority) don't risk armed robbery if they have a decent job. It's when the economy goes to shit, like mid-1970's till mid 1980's, when you get a rise in all that fun stuff.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Guess the people were caught napping on this one. I know from experience that violence among the young is not one of the top concerns among the populace in my home state. A healthy respect for weaponry, the ability to fight and take a punch and a strong urge to join the military were the traits one associated with the good ol' boy subspecies and these are the ones who are now in the process of procreating the next generation. Perhaps the Katrina disaster infused a greater appreciation for life and harmony than once existed. More likely, the legislation got pushed through during Happy Hour and no one noticed amongst the beer and pretzels...
"Do you think this bill would have passed unanimously if we were talking about violent books? What about violent paintings?"
Sad thing is, it already happened. Games are only the latest scapegoat. Before that it was (in no particular order) comics, music, board games, etc.
E.g., since you mention books or paintings, how about comic books? Seems to me like it fits both categories outstandingly. Well, long before computer games even existed, Congress was savaging comic books and presenting them as the great Satan that turns innocent children into mass murderers and rapists. And probably turning them into homosexuals (e.g., Batman and Robin were used as a prime example of that), BDSM deviants (e.g., Wonder Woman), and God knows what other kinds of monsters.
(Mind you, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with being gay or into BDSM from _my_ point of view. I couldn't care less what other people do between like-minded consenting adults. But I am saying that the anti-comics campaign _did_ present those as dangerous deviant behaviour that comics supposedly brainwash children into immitating. I'm guessing they counted on enough puritan voters for which those did count as an abhomination and danger to society.)
They didn't get deterred by such facts as that some of those comics were bloody _obviously_ not for children, _and_ that any parent was jolly well able to see that they're buying a horror comic featuring a chainsaw murder right on the cover for little Billy. They didn't even get deterred by the fact that, in spite of the endless hype, polls showed that the vast majority of people still didn't buy it that comics cause juvenile deliquency.
I.e., there's not even that much to speculate about that question. It already happened. It being art never stopped the sharks from using it as political capital.
Where it sorta differred, is that the comics industry didn't as much get executed by the legislators as allowed to honourably commit seppuku (a.k.a., harakiri, i.e., suicide). The industry bent over backwards to aggree to censor itself, just to be left alone already, and in the process turned from a major industry (at least as number of customers went) into a niche.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I like that idea alot actually...
As I was reading this article and considering why this type of thing keeps coming up, a thought occured to me.
Does anyone else think that maybe it's possible that the reason lawmakers keep trying to pass these bills and actually seem to think that it's a good idea is a result of their age and not their political affiliation? I mean think about it, the majority of these people are over 40, they may have played pacman or even owned an atari 2600 at some point but video games were not as prevalent in their lives as they were in later generations. Now I'm not saying that there aren't people of their generation who play or who have always been active in the video game community but those tend to be people in lines of work that are more adjacent to gaming than politics are. I think that it's highly possible that the problem is that due to their age they still see video games as a toy instead of a legitimate entertainment device like the television. Maybe that is why they are so concerned about a video games effect on children. I mean think about it. If a toy (say an action figure) was marketed so that the character that it portrayed was a psycho-pathic gun wielding maniac (GI Joe excluded for obvious reasons) then there would definitely be a lot of public outrage about it even if it weren't marketed to children since the general public perception of action figures is that they are FOR children. I just think that these lawmakers can't imagine anyone EXCEPT a child playing a video game and thus assume that the industries are lying when they say that the game is not meant for children.
Just a thought. Anybody agree? Disagree?...I'm open to suggestions here.
>
Unless that game had content the ESRB missed. Or, post-Hot Coffee, I would not be surprised if you could get in trouble if somebody found a way to edit in violent content after the sale.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
These legislators have no idea what video games are all about. Politicians are obviously not your "average joe" for the most part. They don't go home at night and hop on their PS2/Xbox/360 and play a few rounds of Burnout to trash their online buddies. They take no pleasure in the graceful stalking of a ninja in Tenchu, or the violent stealth kill which would decapitate/eviscerate the enemy.
While parents should have a say in what their children watch/play, it does not need to be a national issue discussed and dictated by idiots who know nothing of the subject.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
I even made one for everyone! http://www.petitiononline.com/vgvilpet/petition.ht ml
please, I know these things dont do much, but every bit helps.
That's inline with my observation: A politician or public servant will enforce alarmist measures of a scope that is directly proportional their ignorance. I call it the mySpace effect. They HAVE never played video games, so they will believe any old shit Jack Thompson tells them. Although, since they've been around the track, they probably know Thompson's kind.