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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."
Back to focusing on trivial things, while important problems go un-addressed.
Unless I'm really misreading this, he isn't targeting the violent games at all. What he's targeting is the sale of violent games to minors, in the manner of R-rated movies.
I expect that sort of misleading headline from the mainstream press, but Slashdot should really have fixed it.
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Maybe I'm missing the big picture, but what's the problem with preventing minors from buying games specifically market for adults? I know legally there's been no teeth in it up until now (and parents should really be watching out for their kids) but what's the objection to this? The only group I would think could possibly object is minors.
Lets ban children from watching, listening to, or reading the news. There are all kinds of accounts of anti-social behaviors contained in the news. Shouldn't we be "protecting the children" from that too?
Besides, are social problems like school related shootings really being encouraged by video games, or is it possible that massive news coverage plays a larger role? I mean, I take what I see on TV to be a lot more "real" and "possible" than anything I see on a video game.
Actually, no. Attack the consumers with a vengeance. Which consumers am I referring to? The parents who buy GTA San Andreas for their 10 year old son.
Make it illegal for retailers to provide the game to kids. That way, when the kid gets it from his inept, irresponsible, moronic parents, and actually *does* do something he saw in the game (probability dictates some retarded insane person is going to do it eventually, and you *know* what the media is going to focus on instead of them being retarded and/or insane), then the game companies and the publishers and the retailers can all say "look, the game says Adults Only, but that kids' parents got it for him, so they are obviously to blame." It will all be on mommy and daddy's shoulders then, and they won't have a leg to stand on.
That wont' stop the media from blaming video games entirely, of course, but it still weakens their argument.
Interesting that the supreme court(?) has just struck down this very same bill, in Louisiana. The Judge berated the state for trying to undermine the constitution, as well as not seeing what has happened to very similar bills in other states. They also made the state pay out the 94,000$ in lawyer fees that the gaming industry had to pay in order to fight this.
Apparently there was a quote from the group responsible for the bill saying that they would try again. Millions of dollars wasted in 'thinking of the children', when most stores do that anyway.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
So he wants to make sure that certain violent games, let's presume for the moment he means M rated for the sake of argument and then deal with T, cannot be bought by people younger than 17...does New York not already have this law? I know for a fact that in Arizona selling an M rated game to a minor is illegal and actually punishable by some law, I had to show my driver's license to buy Counter Strike.
The only thing I can see about this bill that might concern people is the definition of violent. If, by that, the bill means M rated then who cares. M rated is supposed to be sold to 17 year olds or older, so now it'll be enforced by law, that's nice. Now then, if by violent the bill intends for all games with violence, with no care to the rating, to be sold to 17 or older then we have a problem, especially since every game has violence except the most absolutely boring arcade games.
That's all I'm concerned about, how is a violent video game defined? I'd presume by the movie part as well that it means M rated but hey, it's politics, they could very well mean to ban all games in one fell swoop.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
I'm all for a law like the one mentioned but it won't work at all anyway since Grandma will buy Junior any game wants for Christmas. They need to teach clerks at stores to ask people who the game is intended for so they know what they're buying.
I know a ten year old who was playing GTA San Andreas and thought that the dildo he found in the police station was a purple balloon. He's running around beating people up with it when I walk in and ask him where he found that weapon. Well, I'm still laughing. His much older sister felt compelled to explain it to him. Later he was asking me why the women were approaching his car asking if he wanted a good time. So he's way too young to be playing this and any reasonable store clerk wouldn't sell it to him, but he borrowed from a friend.
Parents have been basically regulated into the ground by governments like this one. They can't punish their kids without social services show up, can't buy their kid a handgun and let them carry it in their own car to a range, even if the kid is a 100% balanced eagle scout, can't let them drink, can't let them do that. All the while the parents shoulder most of the blame if their kid does anything wrong.
That's why I say fuck the "community." The only person raised by a village was a feral, tribalist, not a civilized human being.
Gamestop's new policy seems to be working, I'm 23, about 6'2'' 210lbs...and definatley look older than 16...and I got IDed at gamestop buying F.E.A.R. and I don't carded for cigarettes or alcohol.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
So when "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." Either Spitzer is ignorant about the law, he is lying just to get headlines, or just possibly he knows there aren't any such laws and so it would be technically correct to say that there will be regulations "similar" to film regulations.
Either way he is an ass.
There are no laws in the USA regulating the sale of any entertainment medium. There are regulations on things like porn, but those are a genre and they are notoriously vague in that at least once a year a comic book store gets busted for selling comic books with drawings of boobs.
If videogames were to be singled out there would have to be a mountain of evidence that shows that they are dangerous to children. No such mountain exists. Therefore, it is just singling out videogames because it is an easy way to look like you are "looking out for families."
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
As the saying goes, "you can't legislate stupidity." Parents are increasingly irresponsible and clueless when it comes to what their children say and do. We're having trouble with my 10-year-old stepson because he feels we're being unfair because we won't let him have games rated T-for-Teen, or have his own cell phone. He rails at us because we won't simply let him go where he wants, when he wants, and we won't continuously feed his bad habits. He constantly tells us how "other kids' parents don't do this," to which my standard reply is "I don't care what other parents do." And I don't, because I see how other parents let their children push them around, guilt them into buying them things, browbeat them when they don't get what they want. And these people cave in!
But again, that's what they decide to do. Parents will do stupid things and while you can make those things illegal, you can't make people not do them. Parents have to decide for themselves that buying these games for their children are a bad idea.
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Wouldn't it be novel if, instead of telling us how the poor children need to be protected from violent video games or movies or comic books or sinful negro music, a politician who claims to be concerned about our children's welfare has a major campaign to get them better medical care and education?
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You're seperating the act of buying the game from the act of playing the game. The goal of laws like this are to stop a kid from playing the game, not from buying it per se. A parent definitely has the tools to take this game away and return it if they don't approve.
The majority of voters in America are seniors who still hate comic books for "destroying America's youth."
Don't tell them now, but comic books no longer carry those stupid "Comics Code Authority" labels advertising their safe-for-children content. Now they have ratings, just like everything else.
Gasp, shock, horror.
Like many slashdotters, I have an extremely low view of politcians but Spitzer is a good man.
When he was in New York District Attorney's office, he single-handedly ended the Gambino crime family. When he became New York's Attorney General, he showed a great zeal in going after biggest Wall Street firms like Goldman Scahs, JP Morgan that were inflating stock prices and giving biased investment advice to customers. He did it inspite of a great deal of pressure. Then, he went after music companies practising "payola" schemes to get their songs played on radio. He didnt even spare huge insurance companies like AIG and chip manufacturers practicing price-fixing and other fraud.
Even in the current case, he is NOT against violent video games. He is just against the SALE of mature-rated video games to minors. This is no different than preventing minors from purchasing tickets to R-rated movies
I'm sick of getting my butt kicked by teenage punks in Unreal Tournament.
But, this guy evidently has failed to look at what most corporations are doing such as Gamestop. If an employee sells to a minor a Mature game, he's fired. Truthfully, if the kid wants the game, he's going to get it. I wanted Mortal Kombat when I was a kid, and so I sat down with my dad, and we talked it over. He asked what it was, I explained to him that it was a combat game that involved blood, and beating up other players. I even mentioned the fatalities. My dad, simply asked if I realized the difference between reality and fiction (I was seven at the time), and so we had a discussion about it. Once he realized that I wasn't going to Back-Back-B my sister, it was agreed that I could get the game. The only stipulation was that if friends came over, they couldn't play the game unless their parents allowed them to (who were called by either my dad or mom). I turned out fine, right? =P
It depends where you are. Every Canadian province has laws regarding film and video classification, with penalties for non-compliance (including exhibition, sale or rental of "unclassified" materials.)
I think we were talking about the U.S. here. On the whole, Canadians seem to accept a much higher degree of government interference than I think would be acceptable in the U.S. (This may or may not be due to a greater degree of trust in their government, but I'd argue anyone who trusts any government is a fool, since all governments are corrupt, some are just lacking in subtlety.)
Attempting to codify the MPAA rating system into U.S. law, in a way that's similar to Canada's, would probably run into substantial (and not at all unreasonable) First Amendment objections. Nobody has ever really realistically suggested that the government should be involved in censoring movies and other media, at least not recently. The MPAA likes to use it as a bogeyman, a sort of implied threat -- "hey, you may not like us, but we're better than having those monkeys in Congress do it" -- but I'm not sure if there's really any serious risk of it happening.
At best, without substantially changing the U.S. legal framework, you'd have to redefine "obscenity" to include violence and sexuality (and anything else you wanted to restrict), in order to carve out an excuse for government regulation. Or you might be able to threaten stores who sell such materials to minors with prosecution under one of the vague "injurious to the morals of a minor" statues, in order to 'encourage' "voluntary" compliance. (That's probably the most realistic scenario, and it sounds close to what Spitzer is trying for.) I'm still not sure how far it would fly in court though.
This whole thing is just a political football; Spitzer is dragging it out in order to make himself seem more appealing to conservatives, because he has an election coming up in 2010 and he needs to have some resume lines for it. Since he can't 'protect the fetuses' (he is, after all, a Democrat), 'protecting the children' is a pretty safe alternative that ought to buy him some soccer-mom votes both in the downstate (liberal) and upstate (moderate to conservative in some places) districts.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Let's develop a game that shows the world that violence isn't the problem.
In this game, you should get points for:
humiliating and ostracizing people who are different from you,
evading taxes by exploiting questionable tax breaks,
using barely legal accounting practices,
manipulating other people's emotions for political objectives,
taking campaign contributions that create conflicts of interest,
and suing people under immoral circumstances for profit.
Personally, I'd rather kids pretend to shoot people.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
It's clear that it idiots involved here don't know anything about the video game industry. Reminds me of how Hillary Clinton went public with her anger that video games weren't under the same sort of scrutiny as movies were. Apparentally no one had told Hillary about the ESRB, or the fact that video games are under MORE scrutiny than movies, with requirements to put ratings on the front of boxes (do you see DVDs with ratings on the front?), as well as requiring stores to carry huge cardboard cut-outs of the ESRB ratings to be publically posted around the store, in addition to other flyers, post-its, etc. that are plastered on the shelves...
This is just another politician trying to do a popularity grab by decrying "Its for the children!"
Nowadays it's video games. Before it was D&D, comic books, Rock&Roll... You'd think the generation that went through having its music heavily criticized and outright banned in some places would have learend a thing or two.
Any enforcement of the ratings on movies (or games for that matter) is currently on a voluntary. While some theaters or stores may have policies to restrict kids from buying/renting R or M material, the vast majority of them DO NOT.
You're right about it being voluntary, but I think you're wrong in saying "the vast majority do not." I can't think of any major theater chain in the U.S. that doesn't enforce the MPAA ratings on movies. If you can find one that doesn't, it's just because the employees are looking the other way, not because of any official policy. I mean, the theater owners have representatives in the MPAA -- they sit on the appeals boards for rating movies. (Go see "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" if you want to know names; it's basically a who's-who of theater ownership.)
Movie rental and sales may be a little more lax, because they're more focused on making a buck. However, the big chains all at least pay lip service to the MPAA ratings, and any difference between policy-as-written and policy-as-enforced (like being lax about the "R" rating, because it would hurt sales too much) is just going to get blamed on the employees.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Here's a simple test. Would you have this regulation apply to books? Are there some books -- and I'm talking about the kind with just words in them, now, no pictures -- that are not only inappropriate for anyone under the age of 17, but that should be illegal to sell to those under 17?
Here's me, the pimple-faced kid with the cracking voice from The Simpsons, and I'm behind the counter at a bookstore. Lisa walks up with a copy of Tropic of Cancer and I ring her up. WOOP! WOOP! Alarms sound, red lights flash, and out come Chief Wiggum and the boys to throw me in cuffs.
Sounds funny, but this sort of thing regularly happens to comic book stores. Comic books aren't seen as "books," so there's not the same stigma attached to banning them. So in certain communities, you have people hanging around comic book stores waiting for some kid to buy a copy of Legend of the Overfiend. When the purchase is made, in come the undercover agents and they take the kid behind the counter to jail. He's charged with a crime and ends up having to pay fines.
And the funny thing is, there's no law on the books specifically prohibiting the sale of adult comics to minors. In fact, there isn't even a real ratings system. (Don't talk to me about the Comics Code -- it hasn't had any teeth since the early 80s.) These arrests are based on so-called community standards, which legal precedent says is the benchmark for determining "obscenity."
This is how censorship starts. "What? Who me? I didn't censor anything! I don't even have the power to censor these products. I'm not the government. I'm just a lowly citizen." No, but what you did was hang the risk of arrest over anyone who sells the products, so it becomes to prohibitive for retailers even to stock them. That cuts into sales, especially in such a low-profit segment as comic books. And sooner or later, the company that produced the material to begin with can't support the operation anymore, and the offending material disappears.
Back to books. You think they didn't try it with Tropic of Cancer? Oh hell yeah, they did. We've been fortunate that, over the years, the efforts of various individuals and groups -- not least of whom, Holocaust survivors -- have put an even bigger stigma on book-banning than the stigma around selling books full of naughty things.
The real shame of it is that it's so much easier to want to ban videogames and movies than books because, I suspect, most people figure kids today aren't going to read books anyway. It sickens me to think that people don't realize how totally fucking unacceptable that excuse is, on so many levels.
YES, there is material that is not appropriate for minors. Where you draw that line, however, is fairly arbitrary. Parents should be raising their kids, right on through the teenage years. My own folks took a fairly laissez-faire approach to my adolescence, and through my peer group I got exposed to lot of eyebrow-raising ideas and situations, but that doesn't mean I was raised by wolves. On the other hand, if the government would have stepped in and said, "This is for you, this is not for you" ... I can guarantee you that I would have struck back in some way. And, ironically, I would have done it while being a much more ignorant person, having had blinders put on by the government.
Bottom line, the idea that we're going to have a wooden cut-out of Chief Wiggum with his hand up and a sign that says "You must be at least THIS tall to watch this movie," while it may be comforting for a lot of scared parents, is not only silly, it's dangerous.
Breakfast served all day!
"Well, there's Death-Sex-Blood-and-Death, that's not got much Death in it".
Why do you need the government to do that? There's detailed reviews of most mainstream media, so you can figure out what's appropriate for your kids before buying it for them. If they're old enough/independent enough/rebellious enough to buy the game and play it in your living room without you noticing, then what else are they doing without you noticing? Probably things a lot worse than playing videogames. Go watch your kids. TV you might say is an issue since it's broadcast live into your house, but between TV on DVD, Tivo, and other media, your kids won't be traumatized without live TV. Computers? If you're posting on slashdot you should be able to figure out something, and if your kids get around that they're probably learning more than they're finding hardcore evil stuff. If you're really paranoid, disconnect from the internet. I know one family that didn't get internet access until their youngest was 16. The government can't tell you what's appropriate for your kids. You have to decide.
Media is different from food. Media is not a set of ingredients mixed in a bowl. If you eat a cookie, you're probably not going to be able to taste minor amounts of peanut in it, but if you watch a movie, you can hear if they use the word 'fuck'. Peanuts can also kill people, but hearing 'fuck' won't hurt any adult, and there's not even a consensus among parents that it even hurts kids. Also, while you can list profanity used, what about other situations in the game/movie/whatever that a parent might view as more inappropriate for their child? A literal "ingredients" list of a movie/game/whatever would be a play by play of every scene in it, so what would be more effective than trying to print that out on the box is for parents to either watch it/play it/whatever, or for them to get together with other parents on the internet or wherever and tell each other what in it (which they do). So what is government intervention needed for?
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.