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Ban On Louisiana Video Game Law Now Permanent
Carl Carlson writes "A Louisiana judge has issued a permanent injunction against a Louisiana law banning the sale of violent video games to minors. The law was crafted by video game dilettante Jack Thompson and took a slightly different approach to the issue of regulating video game sales. Rep. Roy Burrell (R) and Jack Thompson had research that purported to show a causative link between playing violent video games and real-world violence entered into the legislative record in an attempt to buttress the legislation's shaky credentials. In addition, the law adapted the Miller obscenity test to the realm of violent video games."
For our international readers, no the USA has no enforcement of the ESRB ratings system. Some stores on their own have an ID checking policy, and some stores that market to kids just altogether refuse to sell M-rated or AO-rated games, but there is no uniform standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
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Back when Australia had a war-draft, and the drinking age was 21, a number of people complained. The complaint was that young men could be asked by their country to go to a different country, and be shot at, yet when they got home, they couldn't go and have a beer with their mates. The proposition was to raise the draft age to 21, or lower the drinking age to 18.
Young men in Australia have been drinking in pubs from age 18 for a good long while now...
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, however, there is.
There looks like there could be a link between what we see on media and our actions, and the mirroring of the behaviour we see may not necessarily even be conscious. Tell me this effect would be lessened during the playing of an actual game. I want to believe it doesn't have an effect, but...
(From edge.org, http://edge.org/q2006/q06_print.html )
MARCO IACOBONI
Neuroscientist; Director, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Lab, UCLA
Media Violence Induces Imitative Violence: The Problem With Super Mirrors
Media violence induces imitative violence. If true, this idea is dangerous for at least two main reasons. First, because its implications are highly relevant to the issue of freedom of speech. Second, because it suggests that our rational autonomy is much more limited than we like to think. This idea is especially dangerous now, because we have discovered a plausible neural mechanism that can explain why observing violence induces imitative violence. Moreover, the properties of this neural mechanism -- the human mirror neuron system -- suggest that imitative violence may not always be a consciously mediated process. The argument for protecting even harmful speech (intended in a broad sense, including movies and videogames) has typically been that the effects of speech are always under the mental intermediation of the listener/viewer. If there is a plausible neurobiological mechanism that suggests that such intermediate step can be by-passed, this argument is no longer valid.
For more than 50 years behavioral data have suggested that media violence induces violent behavior in the observers. Meta-data show that the effect size of media violence is much larger than the effect size of calcium intake on bone mass, or of asbestos exposure to cancer. Still, the behavioral data have been criticized. How is that possible? Two main types of data have been invoked. Controlled laboratory experiments and correlational studies assessing types of media consumed and violent behavior. The lab data have been criticized on the account of not having enough ecological validity, whereas the correlational data have been criticized on the account that they have no explanatory power. Here, as a neuroscientist who is studying the human mirror neuron system and its relations to imitation, I want to focus on a recent neuroscience discovery that may explain why the strong imitative tendencies that humans have may lead them to imitative violence when exposed to media violence.
Mirror neurons are cells located in the premotor cortex, the part of the brain relevant to the planning, selection and execution of actions. In the ventral sector of the premotor cortex there are cells that fire in relation to specific goal-related motor acts, such as grasping, holding, tearing, and bringing to the mouth. Surprisingly, a subset of these cells -- what we call mirror neurons -- also fire when we observe somebody else performing the same action. The behavior of these cells seems to suggest that the observer is looking at her/his own actions reflected by a mirror, while watching somebody else's actions. My group has also shown in several studies that human mirror neuron areas are critical to imitation. There is also evidence that the activation of this neural system is fairly automatic, thus suggesting that it may by-pass conscious mediation. Moreover, mirror neurons also code the intention associated with observed actions, even though there is not a one-to-one mapping between actions and intentions (I can grasp a cup because I want to drink or because I want to put it in the dishwasher). This suggests that this system can indeed code sequences of action (i.e., what happens after I grasp the cup), even though only one action in the sequence has been observed.
Some years ago, when we still were a very small group of neuroscientists studying mirror neurons and we were just starting investigating the role of mirror neurons in intention understanding, we discussed the possi
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Actually the exact same thing happened in most US states in the 60's and 70's. The problem was in the 80's our Greatest President Ever and the wonderful fascists over at MADD decided that alcohol was a terrible, terrible thing. They then proceeded to push a hideous, horrible, and all around despicable law that blackmailed states into accepting a 21 year old drinking age (and also conveniently skirted around that whole Constitution thing). This was of course accompanied by talk of "blood borders" between states with different drinking ages and many cries of "think of the children."
Its the parents responsibility, first and foremost.
Right! This law would require that parents (or some other adult) purchase the game if they think their kid should be allowed to play it. With this law, the parents had just a little bit more control of what kind of sludge gets fed into their kid's mind. Now that control has been handed over to a minimum wage, zit-faced 18-yr old at EB Games who could not care less about you or your children.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The "Zomg nakid peeple r scary" way of thought is pretty much american, here in Denmark we can see naked people in movies and series on public tv in the primetime quite often and no one complains, we save the hardcore stuff for after midnight but the rest is shown at all times of day. I think you can thank the religious crowd for removing all things involving naked people from your tv. Again here in denmark religion is not widely practiced, it is mostly older people (as in around 70 years old or more) and Muslims that actually care about religion the rest are Atheist or have some sort of personal belief that dosnt follow christianity.