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ESA Seeks Money For Legal Fees From CA
The Escapist is reporting that the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), frustrated with the costs incurred from their successful battle to overturn the state's violent videogame law, is now going after California for legal fees. "The ESA is claiming the legal battle, which led to the overturning of the "fundamentally flawed" law, cost a total of $324,840. If granted, it will bring the costs awarded to the industry in First Amendment defenses to nearly $1.9 million, spread across eight other jurisdictions that had attempted to pass similar laws." The site also reports that California Governor Schwarzenegger has followed through on his promise to appeal that overturn, seeking to restore the legislation championed by Leland Yee.
Maybe if they are able to recover more money, that the California taxpayers will eventually have to pay, the California voters will get pissed off and vote out the clowns that passed legislation they should have known would be doomed. It's bad enough to waste time and money passing blatantly unconstitutional laws, but even worse when similar laws have already been struck down by the courts in other jurisdictions. Were they hoping that every game publisher in the country would just let their law slide and not bother to challenge it, even though those same publishers had already successfully challenged similar laws?
I'm frustrated, and partly embarrassed, every time a politician goes on a witch hunt just to garner votes, mostly because our country needs people in office who think of their title as more than just a popularity contest. While its unfortunate Californians are the ones that have to foot the bill for Arnold's political stunt, more and more people will realize the true cost of politicians who pass legislation just for the positive boost it gives their image, and be wiser than to vote for candidates campaigning on moral crusades.
"Governor Rod Blagojevich spent nearly $1 million in a failed defense of an unconstitutional videogame law, which ultimately resulted in cash being drawn from public health and state welfare programs in order to cover the cost."
It's bad enough that they are passing these stupid laws in the first place, but wasting that much taxpayer money to defend them after the fact is just sad. Won't someone think of the poor and sick children?
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
There are thousands of children in foster homes waiting for adoption, but nobody wants them. 'Welfare' as you broadly paint all social assistance programs, pays the foster parents to cover costs.
You may want to rethink your unfunded mandate.
Blar.
Maybe if they are able to recover more money, that the California taxpayers will eventually have to pay, the California voters will get pissed off and vote out the clowns that passed legislation they should have known would be doomed.
Sorry, cause and effect are too distant. You're talking about (on the order of) $300K out of a $1.5 trillion (with a T) GDP, and an annual total revenue of $50 billion (with a B).
If you earn $100,000 a year, it would be equivalent to you losing a penny in the couch.
Mandated industry ratings boards are, at best, marketing tools, and worse, a mechanism for making an end run around the Constitution. Note here that the 'mandate' can come from the government, or as a result of threatened government action (as was the case with the ESRB, the MPAA, and, to a certain extent, the CCA)
The exmple of the MPAA rating system is the most instructive. The groups that applied the pressures which indirectly caused the creation of the MPAA ratings system were not interested in informed choice. They were interested in stamping out 'objectionable material'. Ratings allowed this to happen on a much greater scale than before. Where previously, a fundie/fascist/parents'/'children's' group would have had to picket, letter-write, or generally raise a stink about each title directly, now it was just a simple matter of applying pressure on the theaters to never show anything that carried an "X" ("X" is now "NC-17", apparently because someone neglected to trademark "X" in total ignorance of the market forces that move porn) As a result, "R" grew to encompass most of "X/NC-17" and the latter rating became a commercial kiss of death. Substitute "M" for "R" and "AO" for "X/NC-17" and you see the same thing happening again, just with games instead of movies and Wal-Mart in place of National Amusements (Sony, as always, plays itself) . The 'top' rating becomes tiny and de facto banned, and the 'second' rating covers everything that should have been in the 'top', because the 'top' becomes a convenient label for anything that will corrupt your children, grow hair in strange places and give you scoliosis.
It may not be just, but it is fair, and that is more important.
All the paperwork to prevent adoption by gay people, or 'sexual offenders' who peed in public, etc... is all reactionary shit designed to appeal the craven 'protect the children' demographic.
Maybe we should fix that before we start dismanteling the welfare system. That welfare system helped my mothers family in the 1960s. They got government housing and food for a couple when my grandfather was injured and lost his job, and that let them keep going until more work could be found for him.
Blar.
How did all those crazy rules and regulations come about, you wonder? The child-protection crusaders.
Blar.