Slashdot Mirror
Common Sense Beats Out MN Games Law
superdan2k writes "A federal court judge dropped the bomb on Minnesota's pending gaming law that would have fined minors for purchasing games with the mature or adults-only ratings. The lawsuit against the legislation was brought by video game manufacturers who claimed that it infringed on free speech. The judge agreed, and the ruling said that the state had failed to prove that graphic video games were harmful to children."
I don't understand why the minors would get fined anyway. Like cigarettes, the fine should go to the retailer - if a fine should exist at all.
"One of the most popular games in America teaches a little boy how to have sex with a prostitute and then beat her to death, and then rewards that," said Rep. Jeff Johnson, who sponsored the bill in the House. "I think some small restriction on that is reasonable."
Let's rewind about 30 minutes to where little boy's mother bought the game for little boy despite game retailer's warning that the game might not be appropriate for him.
How can you fine somone under the age of 18? They are not a legal adult.
"Minnesota lawmakers hoped their approach - penalizing the minors who got the games, instead of the retailers who sold or rented them - would have fared better in court than overturned state laws that went after retailers in Illinois, California, Michigan and elsewhere."
That's real good, fine your customers. Who these lawyers talk to the RIAA?
The retailers should definitely do a better job of not selling to minors. Can they ask for ID?
Parents need to just step up and pay more attention to what their children are doing, until the become an adult, and do what they want.
Actually if you fined the parent then the parent might actually pay attention to what johnny bought.
What is the point of having ratings if they aren't enforced? If the game says M, only those only over 17 should be able to buy it.
Rating games strictly provides information on the content. If retailers want to voluntarily restrict sale of certain kinds of games to minors, well and good. It is a free country. If the government, however, wants to pass a law forcing retailers to restrict sale, well that is a different story. It is called "censorship" and their needs to be a real and compelling public interest. Until the reason for the restriction is a fairly well documented scientific event with clear causality the government has no business trying to enforce censorship.
Did you miss where very popular liberal democrats are also behind this sort of thing? Don't mix gay marriage bans with this.. these are totally unrelated issues. The only similarity is the general practice of legislators knowingly passing or trying to pass bills that they well know are unconstitutional. Usually its just trying to make themselves look good to their voters...
Movies have ratings and kids cannot enter the theatre to see them, but nobody complains about censorship in that regard, the kid can just wait until he is old enough.
There is no law that says a movie must be rated (there are many unrated) and no law that says theaters cannot let minors see R or X-rated films. Certain states and localities have passed laws that say that, but they have always been overturned when challenged.
How about fairgrounds, are they censoring the rides because they have a height chart and restrict kids from their freedom to ride on them?
Again, this is voluntary on the part of the fairground operators, not mandated by law in most cases. There are certain restrictions on heavy equipment and safety, but that is for a clear danger to the safety of the operators and mostly covers providing machinery known to be dangerous and not informing the user.
Its not censorship, its common sense.
The government restricting what citizens can see and hear is censorship. If you think in this case they should do so, well great for you. That doesn't make it legal and it does not demonstrate a danger to children.
While your comment has all the codewords folks on /. like to see when modding people up, your premise is your opinion. You flatly state that "The video game censorship law is just a symptom of a larger problem; the resurgence of social conservatism in the U.S." I'm sorry to say that whether you like it or not, you do have in the neighborhood of 300 million neighbors who all get a say in this representative republic. Historically, the US has had a great deal of ebb and flow when it comes to social behavior. To call the popular view of social standards today a "problem" is every bit as wrong as conservatives calling the free-love dope smoking hippies of the 60's a problem.
:)
You also make the mistake of connecting your dissatisfaction of "the current administration" to the resurgence of social conservatism. Growing social conservatism isn't something that GW Bush introduced. This has been happening since Regan was voted in. The 80's marked the end of 20 or so years of very liberal social behavior. In my opinion, the country started to reel conservatism back in again and voted for President Clinton. Who knows how his behavior as President may have affected the social feelings of the population at large.
I'm very much a conservative. Regarding your list of "social issues" I'm: against media censorship, against gay marraige (but not against civil unions and gay couples having all "married couple" benefits), against the government setting any abortion laws (the issue of abortions being right or wrong is a very separate issue from the government setting the laws), and I'm okay with people having the right to burn the flag.
Lastly, regarding your remark that "social conservativism has taken hold at the state level", I should point out that Minnesota (I'm a resident of this state) has been a solid blue state (Democrat - DFL if you're from here) for as long as I can remember. Remember that one state that didn't vote for Regan in his 1984 landslide? That was Minnesota. That being said, this state probably does have the most socialy conservative liberals in the US