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Ban On Louisiana Video Game Law Now Permanent

Posted by samzenpus on from the your-child-wants-to-blow-stuff-up dept.

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."

14 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Woot! by Kingrames · · Score: 5, Funny

    We win!

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    If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
    1. Re:Woot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And by "we", you of course mean the organization whose lawyers got the bill struck down, namely the Entertainment Software Association, whose members include Vivendi/Universal (hello RIAA), Microsoft (Who do you want to screw today?), Sony (this rootkit might sting a little), and Electronic Arts (nuff sed).

      Mmmmmm, ironyburger.

    2. Re:Woot! by Admiral+Frosty · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Its the parents responsibility, first and foremost. The idea of using the government as a crutch will only encourage people not to think on their own.

  2. Put down the hay-lo and pick up a real gun, son by Brill · · Score: 5, Funny

    Too young to buy a game, but old enough to join the army?

  3. Re:Maybe I'm missing something... by pluther · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...but isn't there already a system that makes it so that minors can't play some games?

    Yes. Here in the United States, parents have say over their children's disposable income, and are able to veto what they spend it on. Furthermore, they can limit their children's access to the television and to the gaming system, and have to power to check to see what games their kids are playing and to take it away, or even punish the child in other ways if they're playing a game that the parent doesn't approve of.

    Heehee. I'm kidding, of course. No, there's no system.

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    If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
  4. Forget the hurricanes and flooding..... by dt_aybabtu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Way to go for Louisiana yet again...why worry about protecting the state from flooding when you can "protect the kids" and pass bad legislation.

  5. Miller obscenity test?! by Five+Bucks! · · Score: 5, Informative
    Holy shit! What the fuck is that? Jesus...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test

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    52 52'23" W 47 32'07" N
  6. Re:So... by aaza · · Score: 5, Informative
    drink when they go to war (18), etc

    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...

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    In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
    In practice, however, there is.
  7. Accept Responsibility! by wolf_lord2002 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yet another attempt to stop young people from buying violent video games. And why? Because it is making them violent... What a load of garbage, GAMES are for entertainment purposes and granted some take them too seriously... like my Neverwinter Nights addiction. BUT the point is that you can't keep blaming violence in society on games, and if a child buys a game that their parents deem 'too violent' why don't the parents take it away from them?? There are too many violent influences, but in the end it is the responsibility of the individual to decide if they are going to shoot someone in real life or not. So, let's stop passing the buck and take responsibility for our own actions. Next thing we will hear is someone wanting control of games such as 'World Poker Tournament' because it MADE them have a gambling problem.

  8. Scapegoats? by vivin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Causative Link? Bullshit!

    People want to find a damn scapegoat for everything. First it was "Violence on TV", then there's "Heavy Metal Music"! Oh my god! Will someone please think of the children! Seriously... you can get more violence in some religious texts than on TV, or Music. Computer Games, TV, or Music don't make people want to commit violence. This was used as an excuse for Columbine.

    The fact is that we can owe it to either bad parenting, or maybe a more obvious fact. Homo sapiens is a territorial, aggressive, war-like species. For all our intelligence, we still like to beat the crap out of each other. This is obvious perhaps in more individuals than others.

    So stop trying to find things to blame. Making laws are not going to make us less violent.

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    Vivin Suresh Paliath
    http://vivin.net

    I like
    1. Re:Scapegoats? by alphafoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I never put much faith in the idea that voilent video games help make kids into killers until I read Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's book On Killing, which discusses in a systematic and well-referenced manner exactly what the armed forces have done since the Civil War to increase the firing rate of their infantrymen.

      Firing rate? Contrary to what you may think of the typical Civil War battlefield, most soldiers did not fire their weapons. On a big field running with blood, cannons booming and everyone screaming, most soldiers would not fire a single shot. Battles would end with literally thousands upon thousands of loaded muskets on the ground. Fast forward to WWII, where we have the image of brave American soliders firing automatic weapons under terrible conditions. The nonfiring rate among infantrymen was 80-85%. Further, only 1% of airmen accounted for over 40% of all downed enemy aircraft. Most pilots did not shoot anyone down or even try to.

      The Army decided to look into this. What they found out is that people generally don't want to kill anybody, and would often rather die themselves, even in battle when they are scared to death, than shoot someone. Not that the soldiers were cowards. On the contrary, the same soldiers that would not fire a shot would repeatedly take terrible risks to rescue a wounded comrad. But the Army wanted them to pull the trigger and hit something, and they figured out how. The only way someone that scared would be able to do anything in that situation is if they had been subject to operant conditioning. They would need to program the soldier's midbrain to fire the weapon, since the forebrain is no longer in use under that much stress. They began to make training as realistic as possible in terms of exposure to violence, and make the thought/action of killing part of a soldier's reflex, so that when the bullets started flying, the American soldier would respond.

      It worked. During Korea the nonfiring rate among infantrymen dropped to 45%, and by Vietnam it was an amazing 5-10%, meaning that nearly every infantryman fired his weapon. The American infantryman had become a killer on the battlefield, and only later did the Army realize that fully 98% of soldiers who experience close combat and pull the trigger would be psychiatric casualties. The 2% that weren't mentally crippled are people who, outside the military, would be locked up.

      The author makes an excellent study of how this sort of operant conditioning for violence exists outside the military, in movies and video games. Before you knee-jerk and say that violent video games have no impact on the children who play them hours and hours a day, and who then go watch violent movies and television on top of that, you should check out this book. It's hard to dismiss the data out of hand.

      And as for religious texts such as the Bible or the Qur'an, the violence preached in them does condition people to behave violently, if these people read the words over and over and internalize them as fundamental truths. This is just what video games might be doing according to this author.

    2. Re:Scapegoats? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But none of that relates to people being violent.

      Video games, movies, martial arts, and the military have made me a well oiled machine and a very efficient killer, but the cold hard fact is that my psychological profile gives me a 2(50 being normal) on my violent indicator score.

      It isn't possible for someone to have had a longer experience to violent first person shooters than me besides people that actually work at ID software testing the original wolfenstein.

      Working in a team to efficient kill was trained in me over 2400 baud modems in Cyberstrike on GEnie.

      If video games and the military make people violent why am I not violent? Why have I never hurt anyone since the 4th grade? When I was 6 I bit a kid that tried to take my ball.. When I was 9 I was attacked by 2 bullies on the bus who were 2 grades above me and I fought them off but didn't chase when they ran.. Since then I have managed to defend myself from every other engagement with another human without causing them any harm whatsoever. People that have attacked me have been injured, but its usually from breaking their fist trying to punch me in the back of the head or missing me and hitting a wall.

      The Army is my job, sometimes we engage and fire on the enemy.. but it isn't like my blood is pulsing and i'm out of control. Your average football player is more psyched up and out of control than the men in my platoon. It is just a job and we are good at it, we don't go around smashing heads because we like to or even want to.. Calm and control is something the video game generation exhibit better than the generations before.

      When you are calm and in control you are able to think and use your frontal lobes when faced with a possibly violent situation, you know the harm you can cause by pulling the trigger or stabbing with a knife. You know the person has families and people that care about them, untrained killers don't have time to think about this because they are under control of primitive fight or flight instincts.

      I think people like Jack Thompson and their views are more responsible for violence than anything else. When someone does something violent, Mr Thompson doesn't blame them for their actions and would instead blame TV, rap, rock, video games, or even Satan or something silly. People need to be taught cause and effect and understand consequence for their actions. If you kill someone they die and you go to jail, is it worth whatever reason you wanted to kill them for.. when you THINK about it the answer is almost always no.

  9. Make love, not war by swell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Am I the only one who thinks it odd that children can enjoy all the murder and mayhem that the entertainment industry can dump on them, but god forbid they should see a bare breast!

    Is this part of a military conspiracy that wants them for cannon fodder, and fears that a healthy sex drive might make children avoid the latest Republican adventures overseas?

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    ...omphaloskepsis often...
  10. Re:Nobody every "wins". by Kingrames · · Score: 5, Funny

    You mean, like at the end of Return of the Jedi, when the rebels and ewoks were all celebrating and dancing and whatnot while the wreckage of the Death Star II was burning up in the atmosphere, destroying the entire supply of breathable air? ...crap.

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