Oklahoma 'Games As Porn' Bill Now Law

simoniker writes "Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry has signed into law the State-specific Bill HB30004. The bill redefines a list of items, such as hardcore pornography, deemed harmful to minors to include videogames which use 'inappropriate violence'. The new Oklahoma law is due to come into effect from November 1st. The story notes: 'Despite being one of the more draconian anti-games bills put before a State senate, HB30004 has faced limited opposition, with apparently little concern being given to the consistent problems other similar bills have faced from legal challenges.'"

Comments

"Games As Porn" = FUD

[nahdude812]

Look, all they're saying is that minors should have adult supervision when acquiring material that could be damaging to young minds.

Whether you like it or not, and whether or not you agree with the specific cutoffs or punnishments present in this bill, young minds are impressionable.

I'm not saying that every kid who plays Grand Theft Auto is going to go out and relive those experiences on the street, but I assert there are some kids who have not yet developed a sense of right and wrong, and for whom, exposure to this sort of material may establish certain Antisocial (in the psychological sense, follow the link before disagreeing with me) patterns in the developing mind.

I don't agree that this should be a felony offense (as this law seems to make it? This article says so, but I can't cooberate since the article doesn't include any text from the bill, nor a link to the bill). But there are kids for whom this stuff would be damaging until they have a better sense of the world established. I know; my wife works with them, and she also works with the kids who got access to violent and/or highly pornographic content at the wrong stage of their psychological development.

All this law is saying (and those proposed which are like it), is that kids need adult oversight to get access to this material.

Re:"Games As Porn" = FUD

[Red Flayer]

"all they're saying is that minors should have adult supervision when acquiring material that could be damaging to young minds." (emphasis mine)

No, that's not what they're saying. They are saying that minors MUST have supervision when acquiring material that some people find objectionable.

You're missing two key points:

1. The definition of objectionable material is arbitrary but universally enforced in OK

2. This is government legislating what material they feel is appropriate for children in a specific media. Blatant censorship -- and will be struck down as such.

Sorry to get riled up, but please do not spout that apologist BS -- censorship runs counter to every ideal this nation was founded on, and still boils down to the fact that some people want to control what everyone can see.

Re:"Games As Porn" = FUD

[nahdude812]

Then we're debating semantics.

If you wish to use this overly broad definition of censorship, a definition which somehow, contrary to the meaning of the word, doesn't deny access, only requires adult supervision for kids, then yes, it meets your definition. And I believe it is appropriate. Whether the punnishments for noncompliance set forth in the law are appropriate, and whether the law itself is overly vague, I'm not really debating at the moment, only that such laws, if crafted carefully, are a good thing. And since noone can seem to cough up the actual text of the law, it's hard to know beyond the fud being spread by this article how vague the definitions are or how tough the punnishments are.

It is a tool for parents to help control what content their kids have access to. If you don't believe that developing minds are influenced by their environment, then I sincerely hope that child services takes an interest in how you raise your children should you currently or ever have any.

Wrong Amendment and Miller v. California.

[Valdrax]

Before the Civil War, there was strong arguments for the idea that the limitations on the federal government (as noted in the 1st Amendment "Congress shall make no law") did not apply to the state governments. The state governments could theoretically pass laws abridging the freedoms of its citizens that the federal government could not. The 10th Amendment is in fact the strongest source of support for that idea. A restriction barring the federal government from doing something is not "power delegated to" it -- it's the opposite.

After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was passed specifically to prevent Southern states from passing laws that discriminated against blacks in the way that the federal government could not. This is known as the Equal Protection Clause (and has sadly been used to defend the rights of corporations far more than it has been used to defend the rights of minorities). It reads like this:

"Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

This is the clause that extends limitations on the powers of the federal government to the state governments and prevents the abridgement of free speech by them.

However, pornography and obscenity have long been ruled by the Supreme Court as having lesser protection that political speech. The case Miller v. California set forth a test to determine pornography that has been used ever since. Justice Burger in his opinion wrote the following:

The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Change "sexual conduct" in part (b) to "violence to people" and you've probably got a bill that would survive a Supreme Court decision. Whether or not the list of barred things is overly broad and violates the second test is where it's most likely to stand or fall. The third test is where a lot people think that works will escape, but as Burger says in the sentence immediately following this test, "We do not adopt as a constitutional standard the 'utterly without redeeming social value" test of Memoirs v. Massachusetts.'" You can read more about obscenity and the 1st Amendment here.

Re:Meh.

[computechnica]

I'm stationed in Oklahoma and the adult video stores can only sell the "Cable Version"(X-rated) versions of XXX movies. When I was stationed in New Jersey and Mississippi the local video stores had backrooms for the XXX rentals.

Oklahoma also outlaws Tattos, that is why the first few exits after the state line in Texas has Tatto and XXX Adult video stores.