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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."
The video game censorship law is just a symptom of a larger problem; the resurgence of social conservatism in the U.S. Whether in the form of media censorship, gay marraige bans, partial-birth abortion bans, flag-burning ban, etc., it appears that social conservativism has taken hold at the state level as well as the federal. I can only hope that dissatisfaction with the current administration impacts the midterm elections.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
The shops should have their business license removed for selling clearly Mature/Adult only materuial to minors.
Here in the UK shops are fined large amounts, and even risk prison for breaking age based laws.
Here is an overview from the trading standards:
Video cassette tapes/DVDs/computer games
You must not sell, rent or supply a video cassette or DVD unless the British Board of Film Classification has classified it.
You must not supply (including hiring out) a video cassette tape or DVD to a person who is under the age marked on the video cassette tape/DVD.
Most computer games are exempt from classification but if the game is classified then it must not be supplied to a person who is under the age marked on the game.
The age restrictions are 12,15 and 18 .
The maximum fine for selling or renting an age restricted cassette/DVD to a child under the specified age is £5000 and/or up to 6 months imprisonment.
Restricted 18 video cassettes and DVDs can be supplied only in licensed sex shops to persons 18 years of age and older.
liqbase
And I still don't know any popular video game that "teaches," you to have sex (outside of some weird homebrew games that I'm sure exist, or sex ed game maybe??). Either way I thought the beating the prostitute thing was only in the original GTA3 and not in any of the later versions? Am I wrong?
It would have fined youths under age 17 $25 for renting or buying video games designed for adults - those rated "M" for mature or "AO" for adults only. The law also would have required stores to post warning signs about the fines.
I'm wondering how they were planning to enforce this. Obviously they can't rely on store clerks to ask for ID, since they were considering putting this law into effect in the first place. So what then? Have a cop watch the checkout lines? Oh, I know.....search warrants for all residences with children 17 or younger!
I'm thinking this is just another scare tactic. Another "this could happen to you!" situation to worry about, in the hopes that it'll stop kids from trying to buy/rent games that they shouldn't be.
Personally, I think a better solution would be to fine the store when this happens.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
I'm a bit torn about this ruling. Part of it may be that I don't fully understand this bill, nor the implications thereof. As I understand it, this bill would have prohibited minors from renting/buying adult oriented games (M/AO) under threat of a fine. Is that it? I thought the objective here was to prevent retailers from selling these games to minors under threat of fines to the retailer.
I don't necessarily agree that video games are harmful to all children. However, I would agree that they can, somewhat, de-sensitize them. And, I would agree that certain children may be negatively influenced by some games. Granted, those children generally have a host of other behavioural issues that should have been red flagged long before video games really get into the picture.
Regardless of whether or not the games will "hurt" the children, however, they have been rated for adults. Because of this, I personally believe that retailers should be encouraged to prevent the sale of these games to minors unless an adult is present. Encouraged as in the guidelines given to them by the ESRB, not fines and laws. These guidelines are, of course, a deterant, and not something that will prevent a child from ever getting their hands on the game. That part is up to the parent.
As a parent, (yes, I'm a geek AND I got the girl.. I'm still trying to figure out how the hell that happened myself) I know what limits my children have. I pay attention to what they watch, read, play, and even who they hang out with. I'm not a dictator by any means, but I do attempt to influence what my children say and do without forcing my opinions on them. They are free to make their own decisions, within reasonable limits. I do not allow my children to play games such as GTA. I do, however, allow my older son (12) to play games such as Unreal Tournament, 007, and some of the M-rated racing games. Of course, I checked them out beforehand. And I have yet to see him driving down the street, with a BFG, taking out the neighbors.
I find it disheartening that our society seems so hell bent on not only allowing, but encouraging the government to set forth laws to regulate how I raise my children. I'm aware that there are parents out there who are completely useless and should never have been allowed to reproduce, but laws like this infringe on my rights as a parent. I should be able to raise my child as I see fit.
I think laws like this should be beaten down, but I think reasonable guidelines should be put in place. And I definitely don't like the free speach flag being waved around as an excuse for stuff like this.
XenoPhage
Technological Musings
The problem is, they CANT prove that violent/graphic video games are harmful to minors, because they're not. According to this site, violent crime rates for children is at an all-time low.
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NOTE TO SELF: Don't wait until userids are near 1M to join a website after reading it for 7 years.
"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."
Ie, Minnesota lawmakers decided to target minors with their unconstitutional law because minors (ie, their parents) have a harder time fighting back. It's times like this I wish lawmakers could be brought up on treason charges for intentionally (and in this case, repeatedly) making unconstitutional laws. It's stupid that they can literally modify a few words in an overturned law which have no real effect on the original claim against it (in this case, freedom of speech) and then make it a new law.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
In the USA, NO ratings are government enforced.
All ratings from videogames to TV shows to movies are self-imposed.
There is NO law that prevents minors from enterting R rated movies.
Even things like "XXX" movies are not government rated. If someone is arrested for selling pornography to a minor, they first have to establish that the item in question is indeed pornography (sure in many cases this is trivial, but there have been several cases where comic books containing sexual material have been seized and the court cases have basically revolved around proving they were pornographic).
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
If legislation like this were to be put into place, how would online retailers/distributors like Amazon or Valve (Steam) be held accountable, if at all?
You mean like the way no one has proven the harm of pornography to minors?
As a society (in the US anyway) we almost 'instinctively' assume that sexually explicit material is unsuitable for children to view. No one ever asks why or asks for proof of its danger.
And here we have another form of entertainment that many intuitively feel is a danger to children, and now a judge is asking for proof?
I hold that depictions of sex are not harmful to children any more than graphical violence is. Why are the two treated so differently? Is it our religious social core?
I can't help but feel that the video game publishers lucked-out on who heard their case. James Rosenbaum isn't inclined to assume that technology invalidates common sense application of the law. To this end, he has written several "thought articles" about search and seizure involving data. His article "In defense of the DELETE key" attempts to set some rational restrictions of mining a hard drive for incriminating evidence. He has expanded on this with several other "In defense of ..." articles:
In Defense of the Delete Key
In Defense of the Hard Drive
In Defense Of The Sugar Bowl