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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"
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.
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.