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Judge Blocks Louisiana Violent Games Law
kukyfrope writes "A Baton Rouge federal judge has today issued a temporary injunction against Louisiana's violent games law that Governor Kathleen Blanco just signed last week. According to local newspaper The Advocate, U.S. District Judge James Brady issued the injunction just hours after the Entertainment Software Association and Entertainment Merchants Association filed the lawsuit in Louisiana. "How would a person assess whether a particular video game appeals to a minor's 'morbid interest in violence'? And what constitutes a 'patently offensive' depiction of violence? Persons of ordinary intelligence are forced to guess at the meaning and scope of the act," said New Orleans attorney James A. Brown"
At least someone has their head screwed on tight enough to realize that this is bullshit legislation. I'm glad we're not te only ones here at /.
I am Spartacus
Who didn't see that coming? And why is cash-strapped Louisiana wasting its tax dollars passing and then having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend blatantly unconstitutional laws that have no chance of holding up in court in the first place? It doesn't seem to be financially responsible to the state's taxpayers, if you ask me.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
At least we know the US judicial system isn't completely buggered yet. I can't imagine what the world would be like if any more of those fuzzy terms were introduced into law; It would make everything subjective, people could eventually be arrested for anything at all. Why this and other such stuff even got and continues to get passed is beyond me. I guess the courts and patent offices have a lineup at their door, so they have to rush things along. It's the only thing that makes sense, beyond bribery and blackmail, which I'm sure had a hand in it as well.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
No state has the right to bypass Federal constitutional freedoms.
I would be bullshit if as a US citizen my -federal- rights were limited in any state I visited.
Given that, sadly, it seems lately nothing stops the federal government from stepping on my rights.
At least its even.
In any case, the judgement is right on.
In unrelated news, the state of Alaska has today signed the following bills into state law:
- All state elementary, middle school, high school, colleges and universities are now considered faith-based organizations, and can only be attended by white male catholics
- Black people can no longer vote, and only count as 3/5 of a person in the state census
- Slavery is now legal
- All media or speech of any type is subject to arbitrary censorship from by the state government
Looks like that wacky Ted Stevens is at it again!
Chums up, let's do this!
technically, the constitution only affects the federal government from doing the bad stuff to you. it was through what is probably best called a loophole that prescedents which affect all the states have been made. its really an argument of semantics and how one views the US's federal system (top down or bottom up)
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
Aside from the legal meddling of state social workers, there are fewer problems that parents face today than they did before. Parents actually have the ability to extend their standards to places where they would normally have no control, like the television when they're working late. The V-Chip allows a parent who actually has to work late, rather than just to buy that new beamer, to control the content that is accessible. All media today is rated down to minute details to allow the rushed parent a fine-grained survey of all possibly objectionable content within ten seconds, literally. Anyone out of high school with a literacy rate above the fifth grade should be able to grok a ESRB rating in ten seconds or less.
We actually have lawsuits brought by parents who seriously think that others should do more of their job for them!. This is a generation of parents that is so self-indulgent that it wants to legislate its personal preferences onto content providers because it cannot even be bothered to buy the content it enjoys!
The irony of it is that most the people really pushing these laws are left of center! The very people who whine, piss and moan about "puritans" on the right! Last I checked, a puritan is someone who forces their views on someone else at gun point when they're not harming anyone or anyone's property. It's nice to see that the political social conservatives have competition, albeit in a dark sort of way.
I plan to be a full-time father, including sacrificing my material possessions for my kids. Someone once commented to the effect that it's not wise to try to gain the whole world at the expense of your spiritual life. I believe he also commented before some self-righteous liberals and conservatives of his day killed him for defying them, that there would come a day when parents would see their children so throughly abandon the right path that they would curse themselves for being fertile.
The Constitution affects whatever body or bodies is stated in each section. Many sections are worded to effect all levels of government, such as the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc, amendments. Some prevent or authorize the Federal specifically to do/not do something such as most of the original body of the document.
IOW, no, the Constitution says things that the Federal can and can't do, and things that the States can't do. Precedents do exist to enforce powers across all States through loopholes such as the commerce clause. Direct wording of the Constitution also exists to enforce powers across all States. Everything else shakes out under the 9th and 10th. You shouldn't be so overly bold with such statements, because as written, you are wrong.
Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
right, and since the bill o' rights doesn't mention the states, they aren't binding on the states. I don't have my references handy (at work) but the rights enumerated in the bill of rights have had to be challenged in court before the states were forced to respect them.
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
Why don't you use that?
Go file a suit against the next chess club for giving minors access to this violent game. Don't forget to inform the press.
How long do you think a bs law like this survives if the press gets involved? Especially if there's nothing really going on and they NEED a story?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do they take volunteers? Because in 7 years as a registered voter I've never been called. Google searching gives all sorts of suggestions for how to get out of jury duty, but nothing for how to get it.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
People only pass laws to prevent behaviors that they can imagine themselves desiring to do. There is, of course, a far far smaller class of laws that exist not to indulge the repressive instinct by proxy, but rather to maintain the social order (do not kill, rape, maim, or steal), but in that category there truly is nothing new under the sun. For everything else, there is the moral crusader.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
As if Louisiana or the South are the only places where there's goofy legislation!
How about Chicago banning fois gras?
There are stupid politicians who pander to fringe PACs all over the place, especially in Washington D.C.
The constitution says "speech". An interactive simulation isn't speech
...as you call it... "interactive". Are you suggesting that a pure English text magically loses it's "speech"-ness when a computer is capable of reading and following those pure English sentences? In fact any software can be described in detail in pure English (there exist tools to automatically generate pure English descriptions of programs), and a computer can execute that English text (there exists interpreters to directly read and execute appropriately written English descriptions).
This law is prohibiting the distribution of text speech.
I am a programmer, a software author. I write software - I write nothing but text. Whetehr it is English language or French language or Chinese language Pascal language or Cobol Language or 6502 opcode language or Pentium opcode language, it is all nothing but pure text. I sell copies of that pure text, and retail stores resell those copies of pure text. Just because you do not happen to be fluent in reading Chinese or reading Pentium opcodesdoes not make a difference. The fact that I can read the contents of a software CD better that you can does not change the fact that it is text and speech.
Your point is already legally dead. Courts have explicitly ruled numerous times that software is indeed "speech" covered under the 1st Amendment.
It just happens to be specially stylized text that some computers are able to read and follow. Text that, if you choose to do so, you can stick into your home computer and get an interesting result. You can "interact" with your own computer after sticking this text into it. So what?
The trying to divide software from "speech" is entirely nonsensical. Computers can read and carry out (some) pure English sentence texts. That pure English is
you have no right to shout FIRE in a crowded theater
That is one of the worst and most missleading cliches about free speech. It is in fact NOT illegal to shout fire in a movie theater. It's not even illegal for me to say I'll give you $10,000 to kill my wife. You know what, I'll give you $10,000 to kill my wife.
There are however entirely non-speech laws making it criminal to do things like deliberately causing the death or injury of people.
If you are in a movie theater with a script and film crew, it is as I said perfectly legal to shout fire in that movie theater because you have no intent or expectation that anyone will be injured. It is impossible to pass a law against the speech itself. It is only nonspeech crimes, or the intent to cause non-speech crimes to occur, which can be criminal.
Here's a link to an excellent report commissined by the US Senate from the DOJ stating that Congress does not have the power to establish any law prohibiting distribution of bomb making instructions. The report explains in detail why no such law can ever be created. It explains that distributing bomb making instructings is itself Constitutionally protected, and that the most congress can do is make laws against the non-speech crime of intending to cause a real non-speech crime by means of that delivering that bomb making information, and law against giving that information to some particular person with actual knowledge that that person intends to use it to commit an actual non-speech crime. (The latter is aiding and abetting the commission of a crime.) I can post (and often *have* posted) the recipie for Nitroglicerine right here on Slashdot, and no law can ever be created to prohibit it.
P.S.
I don't have a wife. I had no intent or expectation to cause the death of anyone when I said I'd give you $10,000 to kill my wife, therefore there was no crime. The speech itself was perfectly legal. And even if I did have a wife, I fully expect that you and everyone else was aware that I was making a point and that there was no intent or expectation to actually cause any death or injury to anyone.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.