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Oklahoma Game Law Permanently Enjoined
The poorly-written game law passed in Oklahoma - and subsequently found unconstitutional by the courts - has now been permanently enjoined from existing. This has been a pet project of Governor Brad Henry, and this enjoinment will stop the law from rearing its head again. "The law sought to ban the dissemination to minors of any computer or video game that contains any depiction of "inappropriate violence," which was defined by depictions that fall into any one of nine broad categories. Violators would also have been subject to fines of up to $1,000 ...It also seems in some way that the law singled out the game industry, since according to the court decision, the law was found to be underinclusive - meaning that a minor might be prevented from buying a video game with 'inappropriate violence' but may still legally buy or rent the book or movie on which the game was based." GamePolitics has reaction to this decision.
As an okie (person who lives in oklahoma), i'm always happy to see shit like this.
No state is perfect, and there are always morons and imbeciles, especially here in the bible belt, but oklahoma has always been a relatively common sense area of the union in this fucked up little world.
I'd almost say part of it is because we're on the edge of the bible belt. People around here are smart enough to know not to be morons with their religions, but also old fashioned enough to realize that PARENTING is done by the PARENT. And people who bitch otherwise are usually just lazy.
Good job OK!
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
It means that not only was the law struck down by the court, the state assembly cannot attempt to revive the law or a (IIRC) similar law
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Thanks for the explanation, indeed excellent news :)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
That is one of the most poorly assembled group of words I have ever seen put together.
You obviously haven't read The Davinci Code
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Slashdot "editors" do not "edit" submissions. This makes Slashdot "more real", according to CmdrTaco.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174297&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=14502339#14502484
"No state is perfect"
I think Buddhists may disagree.
Every time these stories about videogame laws come up someone asks what is wrong with having laws like this.
Here are the problems:
The first amendment guarantees freedom of expression. That freedom applies to all media. To override the First Amendment would take a lot of evidence.
In the USA no other medium has its ratings enforced by the government. Not the music industry, not the comic book industry, not the internet, not tv, and not the film industry. The MPAA ratings are self-enforced. If someone under 17 isn't allowed into an R-rated movie without an adult it is because the movie industry is inforcing those rules, not the government.
Therefore, if the videogame industry were to be singled out as the only medium to have its ratings enforced by the government there would have to be a mountain of evidence suggesting that violent videogames were harmful to minors. No such mountain exists. As such, these laws are misguided at best and hollow attempts on the part of politicians to appear "pro-family" at worst.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
IAALBNYL (ATINLA)*-- In civil rights cases that challenge the legitimacy of a statute, courts often apply an overinclusive/underinclusive analysis to determine whether the State's claimed reason for a statute is legitimate (whether it's legitimate and whether the reason is sufficient depends on the kind of right involved). In this case, the purpose of the law was to prevent minors from being exposed to "inappropriate violence." What the court is saying by calling the law underinclusive is "if you want to protect kids from 'inappropriate violence,' the method you've chosen is completely inadequate, because they can be exposed to it from other media such as books and movies. Therefore, your law doesn't pass muster." Realize, that this analysis depends largely on the stated purposes of a statute, and the specific analysis followed by the court will usually be more complex than "your law doesn't pass muster." --AC