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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"
The country would be a lot scarier if the law was up to the wims of normal folks on the street. Juries evaluate evidence. Jurors are the 'finders of fact'. Juries do not interpret the law; that is the judge's job and the reason why most judges have decades of experience practicing law. This is also the reason why instruction of the jury by the judge is so important and why many dismissals and appeals have hinged on improper jury instruction.
Please do yourself and your country a favior by educating yourself on your own judicial system, it is in your own democratic self-interest.
You reminded me of a very funny story about the Court that is in Woodward's book 'The Bretheren.' Basically, prior to the current obscenity standard being fixed, they tended to get a lot of cases on the subject. In the serious interest of being informed, they'd hold a big porn movie watching session, with all the films that were in cases before them. A joke among the clerks was that periodically J. Stewart would go "I see it, I see it!"
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Anyone with two neurons to rub together knew the legislation was BS.
Which tells you, in case you'd missed it, exactly whom this legislation was meant to appeal to: fearful idiots.
Now we'll get the next phase in the fearful idiot plan, in which those who passed the legislation tell us scary, black robed judges are dictating our society to us. Does any of this sound at all familiar?
All these social wedge issues are microcosms of the "Southern Strategy" that's been winning the Republican Party national elections since 1968. Don't scoff. It's like the old moment with Adlai Stevenson. Told he had the support of all thinking voters, Stevenson replied: "That's not enough, I need a majority." Fearful idiots have a narrow majority in this country. Hence: thinly-veiled "race cards," our latest attempt to make immigration a hot button issue, the supposed gay marriage crisis, and so on.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes." -- Abraham Lincoln
The beer industry does not seem to be suffering from the fact that it's illegal to supply liquor to minors; the porn industry does not seem to have been stifled by the fact that Walmart does not stock hardcore videos.
Actually, both of those industries have suffered terribly from crappy local and federal laws designed to "protect minors". Ask yourself why you can't purchase wine over the internet from small vineyards in California or France. Ask youself where all the local breweries have gone. The control of alcohol has severely limited the quality and choice you have when you want any. I'm no friend of the porn industry, but they too suffer from an amazing and contradictory raft of both specific and vague legislation. You can read about their complaints in xbiz.
The state of both of those industries show that specific laws can suck too. In the case of alcohol, the federal government ruled that brewers must respect each local law. This is not only contradicts former notions of state interference with interstate commerce, it's also unreasonably complex and expensive to comply with. Even if you could comply, good luck finding a shipper. See UPS shipping terms for an example. The porn industry suffers similarly, even online where federal laws are being written specifically to burden the industry.
These laws waste enforcement resources for little public good.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The MPAA ratings are not government-mandated, nor are there any laws requiring theaters to uphold them. If this is "censorship," then so is the ESRB itself.
The MPAA exists because the government was about to start stepping in and outright censoring. So Hollywood formed the MPAA in an attempt to self-regulate to stave off government stepping in. The same goes for the ESRB; the government was going to step in, they created ratings (hey, it 'worked' for hollywood). The problem is that the government still isn't happy, because there are still quite a few M rated games out there.
To be honest, if you think that something can't be entertaining without sex, violence, or profanity, maybe you're not the go-to guy for judging the quality of movies.
I think its really difficult to come out with something new and groundbreaking if you automatically rule out any possiblity of sex, violence or profanity.
First, the movie leaves the realm of the real world, since in the real world, there is sex, violance and profanity. Second, most G rated movies amount to the 'funny' scenes amounting to 'look at the squirell get hit over the head! HAHA AHAHA AHAH HAHA'. Please. You think THAT makes a quality movie? The EXACT same drivel over and over and over again? Yes, I'm sure that Over the Hedge is a truely groundbreaking movie, and Saving Private Ryan or the Green Mile or even T2 are just plain junk.
You may still be entertained by playing with Legos and Matchbox cars, but I just don't find them entertaining anymore.
the issue is not whether children should be allowed to play certain video games, that's up to the parents. The issue is whether stores should be allowed to sell them to children directly, as opposed to selling them only to the parents.
So to answer your question, the victim when a child plays a violent video game is the parents because their parental authority is usurped. Replace 'video game' with 'beer' or 'porn,' it's the same argument. Some things I just don't want my kids exposed to, and I don't think it's onerous in any way to ask game shops to not sell a copy of Blood Drinking Hell Monkeys to my 9 year old on his way home from school.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
When I served on jury duty over a year ago here in Philadelphia, the judge in the case brought up the important check against tyranny that jury nullification provides while he was briefing us during the selection process. There may be some controversy amongst the legal community, but the judge in the case I sat on as an alternate obviously had a positive attitude toward the concept of jury nullifcation. As a Philadelphian, this is of special interest to me, seeing as the founder of this city and of Pennsylvania, William Penn, was at the center of one of the cases in English law that set the precident for jury nullification, as seen in the article linked above.
False. People can argue the principal of jury nullification all they like, but jury nullification is a De Facto power of the jury and a De Facto result. Once done it can neither be undone, nor punished.
Our Constitution places the jury as the absolute, final, and unchallengable power in declaring 'not guilty'. Once twelve mostly-random citizens have unanimously chosen to vote 'not guilty' double jeopardy attaches, that verdict cannot be undone, and those jurists cannot be punished for that verdict. I invite you to cite any jurisdiction in the US where where a jury can be punished for deliberating and turning in a verdict of 'not guilty'.
As for prosecutors suggesting it, I think you meant the defense... chuckle. It would be rather self defeating for a prosecutor to suggest jury nullification. But yes, many jurisdictions... nearly all jurisdictions... prohibit raising jury nullification as a defense argument. Defendants are not allowed to ask for it, but juries have the De Facto legal power to preform it.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
That, in a nutshell, is why the Democratic Party can't make any headway in "red states". (Which, by the way, used to be blue states. Do you think the population of Texas changed in any measurable way when they swung from Democrat to Republican? No.)
It's all very well to talk about "education" as opposed to "condescension." I don't really even disagree with you putting my post in with the latter... It's the truth, this sort of bill is blatant demagoguery, but I could easily have said it with less political troll to it.
But, getting to Texas, if you don't think the "used to be blue state" part has anything to do with the Civil Rights movement, you are plain kidding yourself. That's what Nixon's "southern strategy," mentioned in my parent, is all about: playing to racial fears in the south so the Republicans could win all those formerly "Dixiecrat" states.
Take a good long look at Zell Miller and his speech at the Republican convention last time around. That's the old Democrat, fomenting about "agitators." Recognize that Carter and Clinton have been the only Dems to win national elections since 1968, and that John Edwards ran last time largely on his ability to win "talkin' like this."
I have Southern Baptist relations who live in Oklahoma. You don't know how hard the "educate them" part can be; these people think putting numeric digits on our coinage would be a sign of impending world government. No kidding.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.