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Congress Sets Sights on Videogames
boarder8925 writes "According to CNET, Congress has set its sights on 'the purported problem of violent and sexually explicit video games.... A U.S. House of Representatives committee on consumer protection says it will hold a hearing on the topic later this month, with a focus on 'informing parents and protecting children' from the alleged dangers of those types of games.' " The article goes on to describe seven bills under consideration that either attach fines to the sales of Mature titles to children, or study "the effect of electronic media on youths." Five of them are sponsored by Democrats.
It's my, and only my, responsibility to raise my kids. Not that of government, not that of special interest groups, not that of any political party. Mine!
I, and I alone, decide which values to give my kids.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's an election year. There's really not much else to say; the President is posturing for an anti gay marriage amendment (again) even though there's no chance it will ever pass. He's doing so in order to appeal to the radical right. Democrats are posturing to the moderate center by trying not to look like "the godless party." It's all a bunch of he said she said ape-style beating on your chest.
God, sometimes I hate this town.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Ridiculous. Cant we let the parents do the parenting? It's really their responsibility for watching what their kids are doing, not the governments.
Recently, watching the Da Vinci Code movie, I marveled at how we have movies that allow PG-13 to contain "disturbing violent images" but only mild sex. There's a lot of sex not in that movie that's in the book. But the violence that was only passing in the book is really graphic in the movie. My conclusion was that the government cares only about limiting sex and not violence. p>
Now I read here that the government cares about violence in video games. Why not in movies?
It's the random way in which the government incoherently stabs us with little points of pain rather than ever creating any notion of consistent policy that troubles me way more than just whether they want ratings on video games or not.
I wouldn't care if they rated all video games heavily for sex and violence, and then left it to the market what to buy. But when they rate some but not all, regulate some but not all, what's the point? The only obvious result I see is the eventual strangulation of all US business by litigation.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
This is where you find out that the Democrats are the other political party and not "liberal" by definition.
They're just following the most basic of political teachings: It's easier to get people to vote if they're "protecting" their "children" from the "bad people".
You don't hate the children, do you?
You don't support the bad people, do you?
The only way to prevent this from happening is by writing letter to your Congress Critters and telling them exactly how you feel about the issues and that they will lose your vote (and the votes of anyone you can convince) if they do not vote against those bills.
Then you just have to convince enough of your friends/family to become an active voting bloc with you.
Freedom is not free. At the minimum, it takes time and effort.
It makes no sense to differentiate between the two anymore.
It never did. If you're voting for a party, you're a moron. Vote for people, not parties. There are good ones and awful ones in all of them.
Does it seem odd to anyone else that additional laws are typically enacted to make previously criminal offenses even more criminal-y instead of enforcing those laws already enacted (or perhaps punishing the non-enforcement of said laws)? For instance: killing someone is already a crime - does it really need to be extra crime-y if the victim is somehow different from the perp?
Normally when a blurb like this comes up about 95% of slashdot freaks out and starts screaming "It's the bible beating republicans". Now that the blurb actually points out it's the democrats the posts are suddenly "the problem is both parties!"
This kind of double standards piss me off. Come on fuckers! Vote em out! Vote em all out! or was the rest of that just bullshit talk because you keep your fucking blinders on when it comes to the democrats? Do you vote on ideals or do you vote on the party line? I think the answer is apparent.
Products are not speech. ... A game or a product has no status of any kind under the Bill of Rights.
No products? So books don't count... Whoops, thanks for playing.
Please re-read the text of the First Amendment, it doesn't have a 'unless it's for sale' clause in there.
As far as I know the video games that include violence and sex are rated for not so young people. People that could find the same stuff on tv without any problem anyways.
This witch hunt against video games is as stupid as it can get. I for one do not think that violence in video games causes violence in the real world (else I would be a serial killer) I actually think that it is the opposite, violence in the real world is the cause of violence in video games
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"