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Clinton Would Crack Down On Game Content
thefickler sends us word that Hilary Clinton has taken a public stand in favor of shielding children from game and other animation content that she deems inappropriate. Quote: "When I am president, I will work to protect children from inappropriate video game content." Politically, this puts her in company with Republican Mitt Romney on the subject of game censorship. Her fellow Democrats are content to let the industry self-regulate.
Who's yo daddy now? Hillary Clinton, that's who.
Now parent can focus on what's most important to them... consuming propaganda.
This single issue is so important that I will vote for Gulianni. His policies may include 1984 type directives, but at least he will not make GTA V illegal.
And when I'm president, I'll work to protect children from Hilary Clinton.
Democrats _love_ Hollywood, the RIAA, MPAA, DMCA and anything that gives media more money and control. Who's the little cheapskate when it comes to greasing politician's palms? You are, gaming industry, yes you are!
Is "protecting children from game content" the equivalent to "game censorship"? I have no problem with game designers putting any content whatsoever into their games, but I don't necessarily want my children playing those games.
Didn't you pay attention to the last election? Those things don't matter. What matters is "family values."
The movie studios have a clear self-regulating policy in place (through the MPAA ratings scheme) and no-one complains about minors getting into R rated movies (or buying/hiring them on home video formats).
Why cant the politicians and the industry come together and set up a system thats just like the MPAA ratings system and policed the same way? Oh wait, they did, its called the ESRB.
I guess the problem is the small number of highly publicized incidents (Hot Coffee, various games where the clothes and human body are seperate meshes and therefore you can "remove" the clothes and get a "naked body" and others) where the ESRB has been forced to change the rating given to a game.
What the video game industry needs is a lobby group as powerful as the MPAA is (they have a lobby group but it doesn't have much influence in the halls of power). They should try and get the retail stores on side (perhaps get the big retailers to push arguments like "we do everything we can to check that people are legally allowed to buy these games" or something)
A few examples:
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. A store selling 18+ games to twelve-year-olds should be punished.
Good idea, honestly. Sorry, but I found Hot Coffee pretty stupid.
Again, I approve of that idea, greatly.
After all, this legislation is going to affect underage people, unlike Jack Thompson's ideas of banning such games for everyone.
Government needs to stop playing parent and stick to what their real job is (if anyone in government even knows what their job is!). I'll be damned if I'm going to let government tell me how to raise my kids.
PGA
I've really been trying to figure out how I was going to vote for in the primaries. Since I'm registered Democrat in Florida, I can only vote to Democrats in the primary. I like Kucinich, but know he is terribly unlikely to win the primaries let alone the general election. That left Obama and Clinton as reasonable choices for me since I'm not a fan of Edwards. I've been leaning toward Obama because Clinton just seems to be too populist, almost as if her stance on issues is determined by the changing winds of public opinion. Despite his lack of experience, I think I'm going to have to vote for Obama because this sort of thing goes directly against my belief that government should be getting up into this type of thing.
*emo sigh* I'm such a tortured mix of liberal and conservative. No one gets me.
Socializing healthcare does not make you a socialist. Putting healthcare in line with Police, Military, Fire Departments will not make a socialized State. (but hey, lets privatize those!!!). You can still have a large and profitable private sector along side - think of it as the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Think about that next time one of your family members needs a liver transplant and is told by the Insurance Company that its too 'experimental' and decline to pay, just cos their profits are down for the quarter and someone has a monthly target to meet.
/rant. wget Coffee.
And before someone goes into a rant about the cost, don't you think spending money on fixing your broken and wounded is better than spending billions on killing others?
I've seen people around here saying "oh but its too hard for parents to monitor games 'cos they'd have to play them".. well there are plenty of review sites (and room for new websites that rates games suitability for kids) that comment in more detail about what's in the game than the ESRB rating.
_I_ have to pay higher taxes because you can't control what video games your kids are buying? Take some freaking responsibility here god dammit. And yes it's all about me, because I don't give a damn about your kids. They're not my responsibility, They're YOURS.
Oh Crap, I'm an optimist.....
Fixed that for you.
Honestly, I doubt that H. Clinton gives one whit about games. But her focus groups tell her it'll get her a couple points with the "Think Of The Children" voting segment, so she'll say she's "against violent video games." She'll say whatever'll get the voters off to get elected (the same can be said of many politicians).
On a somewhat related note, Ms. Clinton has always struck me as the kind of person who, if presented with a pistol and a note from that stated if she killed the people on the attached list, she'd be out the door, gun in hand, before checking that the thing was even loaded.
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"
Every time laws about videogames come up someone says that it would be good because it would make them like film ratings. This is incorrect.
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. There is no law against selling a ticket to an R rated or unrated film to anyone. If someone under 17 isn't allowed into an R-rated movie without an adult it is because the movie industry is enforcing those rules, not the government.
There are state and local laws against pornography but to the best of my knowledge there are no state or national laws regulating the sale of violent forms of entertainment.
Numerous laws from places like Indianapolis, St. Louis county, Oklahoma, and Illinois have all been ruled unconstitutional. To single out videogames for regulation would require a mountain of evidence that they are harmful to minors. No such mountain exists.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
That makes some sense - just like rating movies.
Ok, But that's what we have NOW. We have a voluntary ratings system that the industry standardizes on. Same as the movie industry.
The catch is they're trying to make it illegal to sell these games to minors, which, well, yeah. That's a bit beyond what they currently have going in the film industry. Yes, if you're 14 you'll been shooed out if you try to see a R rated movie, and most rental stores will stop you from renting "Faces of Death". But it's not outright illegal. And most retailers and rental stores will shoo you away if you're not old enough to buy a M rated game. But again, not illegal if the occasional kid slips through.
Proponents of "video game regulation" aren't really interested in the market, or even protecting kids. They know that 99% of people over the age of 30 think "Pong", "Pac-man", and "Space Invaders" when they think video games, and are exploiting them wanting to make sure the industry stays that way. It's a cheap political ploy, nothing more.
Removing accidents and homicides is actually a bad idea and distorts the health care picture.
Take the following scenario, you are in a car accident, or been shot. Would you want to be shot or in a car accident in say Mexico, or say Norway? This is important because the quality of emergency care you get is a result of the quality of health care. So if more people die in America due to accidents or gun shots then you have two reasons; bad drivers and lots of guns killing people, and health care that is not capable of dealing with those situations.
What you are doing by removing accidents and homicides is being selective in your statistics and focusing on those people that don't do dangerous sports, or do anything that might bring harm on them. Not a good idea...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
She was was a founding member of the PMRC, which actively focused on censoring music, especially getting rid of that evil, evil rap music.
Jory
Actually it is most appropriate. When you take something like accidents, Whether it be from cars the poor can actually afford and drive to recreational boats and watercraft that are more prevalent in one country compared to another, you easily see that the problem isn't the health care but the types of injuries. If the UK, Canada, Japan and so on had as many of the same types of injurt deaths, their numbers would be different too.
The entire point of stats aren't to give credit to your cause. While that is the popular thing to use them for, it is to see where the problems are or the trends. Lets put it this way, If more people are dieing from gunshot wounds in one country where guns are legal for everyone to own then in another country where only government officials, law enforcement or military people can have, the problem isn't the medical treatment, it is the presence of guns. When you do something like a comparison of countries, you have to look for places where things are severely different and find a way to normalize them. Poor people in the UK don't have cars, so normalizing the effect of motor vehicle accident makes sense. Average citizens in the UK and Japan don't carry guns, some can in the US, normalizing for this needs to happen.
So yes, it is entirely appropriate to make a fair comparison. Even when it doesn't agree with your world view.
From TFA:
"I was motivated to take action when I found out that there was embedded illicit sexual content in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The [ESRB] was unaware of the embedded content. I called on the FTC to investigate the source of the content and, as a result, the company issued a recall of the game."
Hillary takes full credit for getting GTA:SA off the shelves. That's not limiting who gets access, that's eliminating access.
Video games are already rated. Parents need to be aware of what their kids are buying, and the current ratings system allows this.
Also, her position in that bill was to create an oversight board to make sure the ESRA was giving "correct" ratings. If you'd like to see her full waffle on the issue (including the part where she shuts up in trade for campaign cash) check out Ars Technica's coverage of the dustup.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051212-5740.html
According to the Ars-ticle, even Jack Thompson knew the bill was a bad idea.
Think about what that means - Hillary is both more dumb and more rabid than Jack Thompson.
The best health care system in the world is worthless if no one can afford to get treated.
No one in the US goes without treatment. Hell, even illegal aliens get treated. It may bankrupt you, but if you are in need of treatment in the US, you will get treated.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I had clicked "reply" and was about to comment that no online post of this length on such a matter should fail to promote Ron Paul. I had not of course read the whole post at that time since this is Slashdot, but fortunately before I actually posted my witty reply I noticed that you promote Ron Paul at the end. Then I posted this reply anyway.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"No one in the US goes without treatment. Hell, even illegal aliens get treated. It may bankrupt you, but if you are in need of treatment in the US, you will get treated."
You must have been watching FOX news again, because you are full of shit. People are routinely refused treatment or medication because they cannot pay for it. I guess you are referring to the required MINIMUM treatment at certain emergency rooms. Such treatment options suck because A: If your symptoms do not meet the definition of immediately life threating or subject to causing severe permanent disability you will be refused treatment. B: The law requires a MINIMAL level of treatment only mostly focused on stabilization. C: They are horrendously expensive to us all since only the worst cases go through them, cases that could have been managed at much lower cost in a normal clinical setting. Quit spreading lies misinformation.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Go ahead people mod me down or ignore me yet again because I take an unpopular stand. I can take it because while I do care about how the spread of ignorance, misinformation or plain old FUD screws up our world, I don't care what idiots think about me personally.