NY Governor to Target Violent Video Games

NoMoreGuns writes to tell us that Governor Eliot Spitzer is planning to target violent movies and video games in a new bill. "Spitzer said he wants to restrict access to these videos and games by children, similar to motion picture regulations which prohibit youths under 17 from being admitted to R-rated movies without a parent or adult guardian. Under Spitzer's proposal, retailers who sell violent or degrading videos or video games to children contrary to the rating would be sanctioned."

Comments

FOOD LABELS

[bussdriver]

Parents are responsible but its not just solely them children are also raised by their environment. Unless your children are isolated from their society in a 'cave' they are also being raised by the society they live in (which includes their peers.)

WE NEED A REAL RATING SYSTEM so parents can realistically exercise their parental rights.

I should be able to set my TV, computer, and consoles with detailed instructions on exactly what I will allow shown. I don't care who applies ratings but I do think federal government is needed to define and require a smarter ratings scale.

A good detailed rating system in some centralized online database would probably work out quite well (probably work better than wikipedia.)

Unfortunately, the FCC didn't take the opportunity to make digital TV support a form of 'bleeping', frame-level blanking or even a standard detailed realistic rating scale for the whole show...

Broad ratings are as stupid as labeling fast food as "healthy","mildly unhealthy", "unhealthy..." There is NO VALID reason we can not label media in a similar way we label our FOOD. We should list the profanity used in an album on the album cover.

Sure, if you label it kids can read it out of context. Big Deal! Kids SEE written profanity and don't know its profane, later they still don't know the meaning, after that they know the profanity and the only point in limiting exposure is to try to prevent them from developing habitual use of it. You have to be an idiot parent to think your kid isn't exposed to written profanity before they can read it.

We don't know most the junk on our food labels but if we have to avoid something we look for it by name on the label.

Until the government imposed a labeling system on food we didn't really have one and it would have totally sucked if the industry was pushed into defining it, taking a never ending string of lawsuits to get each ingredient listed after it hurt some group of people.

Not flawless, but the same universal rating system could be used on film,movie,games and even webpages. Food labels are not perfect either.