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Illinois Ban On Explicit Video Games Is Unconstitutional
An anonymous reader writes, "A federal court has struck down an Illinois law that criminalized the sale of 'sexually explicit' video games to minors. In reaching this decision, the court held that the Illinois law was too broad, because it could be read to encompass any game which displayed a female breast, even for a brief second. Interestingly, the court chose the game God of War as the model of gaming art which must be protected. As the court explained, 'Because the SEVGL potentially criminalize the sale of any game that features exposed breasts, without concern for the game considered in its entirety or for the game's social value for minors, distribution of God of War is potentially illegal, in spite of the fact that the game tracks the Homeric epics in content and theme. As we have suggested in the past, there is serious reason to believe that a statute sweeps too broadly when it prohibits a game that is essentially an interactive, digital version of the Odyssey.'"
Kratos is a spartan? Where the hell did homer come into this? Am I missing something? Did I not read one of those things right?
You mad
Are we saying that Greek social values are trumping modern day ones?
I see more parades on the horizon...
How stunningly...sane.
Every now and again, something happens to help convince me that all hope is not, in fact, lost.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
They don't want their kids going greek.
What about Hindi ones?
Or Aztec?
Or Celtic?
That said, good ruling.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"the catcher in the rye", a very bloody fps
"death of a salesman", the graphic language mmorpg
"to kill a mockingbird", with an orgy scene
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I can't really figure out where the new news is in this, seeing as we're already on the "Illinois ain't paying squat" part of this saga.
Blagojevich hasn't paid for video lawsuit as judge ordered (Chicago Tribune, reg. required, subscription-free Sun Times here.)
Chalk up another horrible idea to good ol' Rod, (illegally importing drugs from Canada, buying $2.5 million of non-FDA approved flu shots). But all's well - we voted him in another 4 years too.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
It implies that any sales of such games would be prohibited. In reality, it would prohibit minors from purchasing them, like the way they are prohibited from purchasing cigarettes.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I would expect nothing stricter for computer games.
Does anyone have a link to the actual opinion and ruling?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Not yours.
I fully agree with the ruling. It's laws like this which would have prevented me from buying the game "Civilization II" because there's an exposed breast in the background of the games 'desktop' (behind the windows if you move them)
1) I'm assuming the members of the court have either not played God of War, not read the Odyssey, or both
2) I find the idea of considering one brief scene of polygonal breasts to be the most damaging aspect of God of War with regards to children... shocking, quite frankly.
"to kill a mockingbird", with an orgy scene
Wait, what?
Atticus better not find out about that or Scout and Jem are going to be in TROUBLE!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
A breast is weapon of mass destruction...and must be stopped.
You know, what ever happened to Parenting? I hate all these "Oh will someone think of all the poor children!" laws. I understand that we need these laws to a certain extent, but come on. Seriously, if I was concerned that my children would be exposed to extremely violent games, or overtly sexual games, then I would monitor what I got them. Isn't that also why have ESRB ratings?
Increasingly, people are looking for scapegoats for violent or antisocial behaviour in children. Honestly, you can either chalk it up to bad parenting, or just the innate propensity of our species to violence.
So like I said, it's all bullshit. I'm glad this was struck down.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Ah, Holden Caulfield, the precursor to today's emo kids...that game should be a hit!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Anyway, does the game show a shot of a *real* breast, or one drawn by an artist?? If drawn breasts are as bad as the real thing, a lot of famous artworks are going to be banned too...
Okay, now lets see the rest of that:
In August 2005, the Illinois State Legislature enacted the Sexually Explicit Video Game Law
The point of the article is the new ruling, and not the legislation itself, so I'd say the submitter reads just fine.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Here's a copy of the ruling: ESA v. Illinois
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
See also 'Related Stories'.
How exactly did Americans get so completely uptight about boobs and yet graphic violence and games about killing cops are just fine. It's completely insane.
Must be a fundamentalist involved in there somewhere, the quesiton is only which religion?
.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
I know nobody will ever read this post but I still gotta point out, we already have a weird modern rendition of Dante's Inferno on our hands.
...why the sight of a bare female breast is forbidden while depictions of horrific violence are fine.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
If I understand it correctly, this isn't even about sex, it's about a part of body (a breast in this case). I believe that children should know how human body looks like. Don't you have biology classes in the US? Do you use textbooks with pictures?
I gazed above
as often I do
the clouds had parted
the light shone through
I thought to myself
as often I do
"Teh boobies r safe!"
I cried. "Woohoo!"
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
I live in Illinois. We just re-elected Rod Blagojevich, the governor who endorsed this crappy law. The guy's a schmuck.
That aside I'm pretty frustrated with the Judges deciding which laws to enforce these days. Interpret.
Christianity.
It's no surprise that this has been struck down as unconstitutional. Unconstitutional anti-video games bills seem to have become a hobby for legislators recently. But it works for us.
We now have an argument backing games as freedom of speech from a respected independent organisation, and not only that, it uses a highly respected literary work to make its point. I'd say the Illionois legislature did the games industry a serious favour here.
I hope there actually is some killing of mockingbirds in the game version. I, like Homer Simpson, was sorely disappointed with the original book on this matter.
K.
Did anyone read this?
It was a law that outlawed the sale of sexually explicit video games to _MINORS_.
Now if the law was really extremely vague and open to abuse then it was rightly struck down. The premise of the law, I think, was in the right direction.
Think about it, little 8 year old Timmy should not be able to by a copy of Leisure Suit Larry. This is not censorship.
Seriously, come on everyone.
Now the cons are going to yell about the "liberal courts" when in reality the courts did exactly what the cons wanted, found on the side of big business.
From the no shit serlock department: you can't censor in the US! I smell a constitutional amendment to prohibit boobies from being seen! It doesn't matter how many "enemies" spew virtual blood on your screen, boobies are 100% worse!
Why can't all these people just chill out? If you don't want to see the game, then don't buy it. If you don't want your kids to see it, tell them not to buy it. Simple as that.
I'm sorry, but you're underestimating the impact this filth will have on our youth. Imagine the impact of polygons on children too young to handle geometry! Imagine further that these demonic planar paths are imposed on the image of the first source of sustenance that the child can remember!! We should be promoting video games with round breasts only; polygonal breasts should never be viewed by children under the age of 18 (or 16 if they've taken an AP geometry class).
You'll be disappointed, sounds like. After the brutal asskicking our Gropenator received in 2005 from the voters (zero for 8 on his precious referenda) Governor Gangbang had to come crawling back to the Legislature and kiss Dem ass. And he'll keep doing so if he wants to get anything done; the Dems OWN this state (California governors have virtually no real power of their own save for the veto pen - the legislature calls the tune). You should come watch - watching a neutered Arnold crawling and begging for votes is great fun. I hope he stays governor for a long, long time.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
More likely, the judge is taking the position that the First Amendment does not allow banning material on the basis of "obscenity" unless the three prongs of the Miller test are satisfied, particularly the third prong: "the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
As defined by whom? Why would something like God of War fall under that categorization, while something like Pirates (the porn film; don't worry, the link is to the wiki article about it) would not? Both are set in pseudo-historical or pseudo-mythological settings, and both are primarily interesting for their violent and sexual content, respectively, with the setting being just that - an interesting setting for the violence or sexuality to take place in. Yet the latter is very clearly considered (my those whose opinion matters in court) "obscene", and the former is apparently some sort of work of art. What's the difference - and more importantly, to whom are we entrusting the power to determine what it culturally valuable or not? Doesn't the fact that someone wants to acquire such works mean that they have value to someone? Just what is "literary" or "artistic" value, beyond simply being a piece of media that someone finds interesting and worth experiencing?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Did he just call God of War an interactive version of the Odyssey?!!
Stamping out censorship is good, but at what cost? Dear god, what terrible cost!
Last I checked, God of War was about ancient Greece, which has nothing to do with Biblical accounts. Of course, I haven't played it, so for all I know they let you kill some early Christians in the name of Mars.
Also, while there certainly are accounts of shocking behavior in the Bible, it's not like it came with graphic illustrations. In most instances, the writers were rather more oblique when they could be--as you may remember, Adam "knew" Eve.
I recommend we stay with the soft curved sort to avoid them getting caught by an edge.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I'm pretty sure that the Biblical accounts aren't "graphic" in any normal sense of the term. They stick to the bare facts of what happened, contain no pictures or illustrations of such scenes (while it's possible that some monk illustrated those scenes and there's later Renaissance artwork, none of that is part of the Bible proper). In Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon), it does talk about marital bliss, but it still is indirect by couching the entire affair in metaphor. You know, the hair that looks like goats and the breasts that look like towers, etc.
There's a huge difference between saying "Lot's daughters got him drunk and committed incest" and providing an explicit videotape or reenactment of it, after all. I'm reasonably sure that you wouldn't find the people who supported this ban also supporting an explicit reenactment after all, even if they were the Bible-toting sort. Yes, they might get by just fine if it showed three people going into a cave or tent and then the lights go out, but "explicit" here means that you'd actually watch them have sex in the video. I say this because otherwise someone will point me to the former and equivocate it with the latter...
...if kids were exposed to MORE nudity and LESS violence?
We combine blue-collar conservatism with white-collar leftism. The result is a mish-mash of totalitarian social views and socialist economics; it's sort of a new-wave domestic USSR. (We have the dubious distinction of having the first "universal" healthcare for children. OMG, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!! We also have U.N.-condemned police torture in Chicago. And then there's our world-famous political corruption; even third-world nations in Africa are familiar.)
We do still manage to get by with a flat 3% income tax rate, due to high property taxes and idiotic consumption taxes in Chicago (an "amusement tax"? a tax on sodas (including diet)? a tax on hot-dog vendors? Get bent.), although state and other municipal sales taxes are no worse here than elsewhere in the nation. We do this the same way President Bush does -- by having a budget deficit as red as the national flag of China.
Oh, and we ignore the hell out of East St. Louis, often proclaimed "a third-world city in a first-world nation".
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Yes, Rod Blagejovich is a Democrat. There's no fundamentalist frosties here, folks, just a good Ol' Democrat trying to force his morality on the rest of the state.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Couldn't we solve the whole issue with a voluntary rating system? Seriously, if you think your game contains material too explicit (sexually or violently) for children, either provide an in-game mechanism to lock it out, or provide your own voluntary rating and ask stores not to sell it to minors. By doing that, you're not preventing anyone from playing it, but you're forcing the parents to get involved. I'd imagine there are at least a few game developers out there with the decency to admit: "Enemies can be decapitated and dismembered, and their realistic-looking blood spews all over the screen. Not recommended for children." Or maybe "Will teach stupid, impressionable people to be a gangster. Not recommended for children of any age." You get the idea. Or better: Abolish ratings altogether, and don't allow children to buy games. This might force the parents to actually read some reviews, so they have no excuse to act so fucking surprised when they learn that you can take a hooker to a quiet place, make the car bounce as you regain health, then beat her to death -- and then some -- and eventually get your money back. You'd think they'd show a little discretion when the game is called "Grand Theft Auto" -- what, do we have to call it "Breaking and Entering" before they'll get it? Oh wait, "Breaking and Entering" might actually sell. Shit.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Second time I've done this recently. I keep forgetting whether I'm using HTML or not.
Couldn't we solve the whole issue with a voluntary rating system? Seriously, if you think your game contains material too explicit (sexually or violently) for children, either provide an in-game mechanism to lock it out, or provide your own voluntary rating and ask stores not to sell it to minors. By doing that, you're not preventing anyone from playing it, but you're forcing the parents to get involved.
I'd imagine there are at least a few game developers out there with the decency to admit: "Enemies can be decapitated and dismembered, and their realistic-looking blood spews all over the screen. Not recommended for children." Or maybe "Will teach stupid, impressionable people to be a gangster. Not recommended for children of any age." You get the idea.
Or better: Abolish ratings altogether, and don't allow children to buy games. This might force the parents to actually read some reviews, so they have no excuse to act so fucking surprised when they learn that you can take a hooker to a quiet place, make the car bounce as you regain health, then beat her to death -- and then some -- and eventually get your money back. You'd think they'd show a little discretion when the game is called "Grand Theft Auto" -- what, do we have to call it "Breaking and Entering" before they'll get it?
Oh wait, "Breaking and Entering" might actually sell. Shit.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
when we re-elected that idiot Blagovich. Why didn't one of the independent candidates win?? We're sorry, it was a total accident...
Blago is corrupt, and as we can see from this pointless law, a total moron.
Just what is "literary" or "artistic" value, beyond simply being a piece of media that someone finds interesting and worth experiencing?
Well, there is transient literary and artistic value - what i experience in the moment when viewing a work of art. This neither has to be plesant or enlightening. The stable artistic value would be what we as a collective experienced in the moment and then internalized and/or shared. Yin and yang.
Then, lasting literary value would be capturing in essence the Divine in a moment, here, for others to see, or in a tale to be journeyed, or in a paradox. Able to be felt, if preserved, generation after generation.
Of course, when the human race dies out or is so transformed not to be able to resonate with the pieces, the patterns will be lost. Unless we happen to transcend.
j
Boob Radley?
I can't tell if you're being ironic or not (this is Slashdot, you can never be sure), but just in case you're not...
All that you just said sounds, to me, in plainer English, about like this:
Something of transient literary or artistic value = something that I find interesting at the moment.
(Interesting doesn't mean pleasant or enlightening, just worthy of my attention, worth sampling an experience of).
Something of stable literary or artistic value = something that many people (given some context, presumably) find interesting at the moment.
Something of lasting literary or artistic value = something that many people throughout time find interesting or worth experiencing.
Given that sex and violence have been of great, perhaps even the greatest interest to many people for pretty much all of human history, and that the definition of "literary or artistic value" is supposed to exclude pornography from the category of things predicated thus, they who use such terms as a means of demarcating art from non-art must mean something other than what you have said.
Though my original question was purely rhetorical. I'm pretty sure that their definition is something along the lines of "being of interest for reasons other than violence or sexuality", which is a nice self-serving way of defining the problem in their favor - a nice easy way of saying "we don't like porn, but we'll allow it if it's not just porn". It still leaves unanswered the question "what's wrong with porn? Why should we ban it?"
And frankly, the whole "this category of things is banned unless it's useful to society" angle strikes me as a slippery slope toward a command society, where you're forbidden from doing anything other than what you are told to do, which is whatever the authorities deem useful; and anathema to freedom, wherein all things are permitted unless they are harmful to others.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Don't forget Tom Clancy's new PC strategy title "Black Like Me". An elite team must infiltrate enemy territory to collect intelligence and defeat a tyrannical ruling clan.
If someone wrote a new, modern-day epic like the Odyssey, what are the odds that the "explicit" content would be viewed as acceptable for minors? No, guess again. Lower. Lower. Right, zero.
Just sayin'. I'm glad it was overturned, and in fact I oppose all sexual/violent content bans of any sort on any kind of media, for adults or kids. I'm not outright encouraging its consumption, but I've yet to hear anyone explain why kids would be harmed by, say, pornography. It seems like an assumption everyone takes for granted, even social liberals.
Uh, but I forgot my point. Oh, right... The Mainstream doesn't allow video games to be viewed as art. Some day this will change.
Property is theft.
Apparently, Google properly understands "184594917 in base 16". Damn, that's cool.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
When i was a kid i watched breasts all the time: in the beach, many beautiful blond women do topless; in TV, here in Europe we see see a lot more skin in TV during the day, is not uncommon to see total naked people in the news for example.
I kept wondering where the judge would get the idea that God of War is like The Odyssey... then it hit me:
r _review.html?id=364862
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/godofwar/playe
Gamespot! And look at the very first comment. Sounds like a game we need to keep!
>In this case, America is sexually repressed. That is why
...
/. is tad lacking in perspective.
;) "Oh, go ahead, hang 'em out in public, no big deal, won't get us excited at all ..."
>sex appeal can sell practically anything, and why an
>unclothed breast gets all the Normals so excited.
I've been poring over some musty old documents, and it looks like folks as un-American as the ancient Israelites:
1. Covered their breasts (women).
2. Found breasts erotic (men).
BTW, Solomon had lots of wives, and therefore saw lots of breasts. Yet judging from Song of Songs, he still found them exciting
Therefore, I conclude that this periodic anti-US diatribe on
>Contrast this situation to Europe, in which sensual
>breast exposures are ubiquitous and so European men
>get no thrill out of getting the same from their mates.
I must say, that's a clever scam they have going there, getting their women to believe this
People can't have it both ways.. women want to breast feed in public
That's an unrelated issue though - it's not to do with sex as in f*cking so much as it's to do with sex as in gender, even though it involves some of the same body parts. No one breastfeeds in order to try to titillate you, so to speak.
Just as the simpsons isn't meant for a 5 year old, not all video games are for little tikes.
Yes, I think this is more likely the problem. Just as some old fashioned people think that animation must be for children, then laugh nervously when they see blood or nudity in anime, some old fashioned people also think that computer games must be for children, and therefore also shouldn't contain these things.
I'm sure all this will cease to be an issue in another ten or twenty years, as more and more of the population will have grown up with computer games all their lives and see it as a valid medium of entertainment and artistic expression.
About cunting time someone mentioned this. /sulks
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
People can't have it both ways.. women want to breast feed in public. Women like to wear practically nothing at the beach. Sears likes to send underwear ads in the sunday newspaper. Then video games are immoral for showing the same thing in an often ANIMATED way.
In Texas women can go topless except for one county, (my old one) Brazoria. In Texas basically women can go topless until someone complains. The police come and ask for the women to put something on....that is it. As of 2004 in Brazoria county, it is illegal to be topless.
There is an exemption for women breast feeding though....so Brazoria is trying to have it both ways....
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain