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.

Comments

In your face parents

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Who's yo daddy now? Hillary Clinton, that's who.

Now parent can focus on what's most important to them... consuming propaganda.

Well, Screw Democrats then

[modmans2ndcoming]

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.

Re:Well, Screw Democrats then

[Donniedarkness]

No, it is just a shrubbery.

Re:Well, Screw Democrats then

[vertinox]

Why on earth should all kids be allowed to go and buy GTA IV, Soldier of Fortune or any similar game?

Why not if the parents approve?

If your legal guardian feels that you are old enough and responsible to enjoy said entertainment then it should be their right. It should also be their right to prevent their child from playing such things if they so desire by not giving the money to their kids in the first place and/or monitoring their internet activities.

If you bring up tobacco and alcohol, those things are of course dangerous and have been scientifically proven to cause harm. That said, once you are 18 then I believe you should be able to put whatever into your body you feel like, but a parent giving his kids cigarettes is about as negligent as giving them some mercury or cyanide to play with.

Video games and even content of pornographic nature has never been conclusively shown to cause physical or mental harm to the average human. Yes, there are cases where people play a video game and flip out (like kids jumping out of windows because they thought they could fly like in Pokemon), but the same thing could be said about a psycho who reads the Bible or Koran and kills someone because he claims god told him to do it.

Again, if a parent feels their child can handle it or just don't care, they'll buy it for them anyways. Its kind of just stupid to have more laws on an issue that in reality is a moot point.

Yup

[Pogdranaut]

And when I'm president, I'll work to protect children from Hilary Clinton.

The gaming industry is obviously young and naive

[smchris]

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!

Something of a Stretch

[BlabberMouth]

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.

Re:Think of the children!

[KillerCow]

Sure lets her avoid all the major problems too. healthcare, social security, the wars on various stupid shit, the national debt, china, the middle east, big giant corporations raping the world for profit. And all the other problems someone in power SHOULD be doing something about.

Didn't you pay attention to the last election? Those things don't matter. What matters is "family values."

Why cant they be treated like the movie studios?

[jonwil]

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)

Hrm!

[F-3582]

Did anyone even bother reading the actual article? If nt, the do it now!

A few examples:

On-site store managers would be subject to a fine of $1,000 or 100 hours of community service for the first offense and $5,000 or 500 hours of community service for each subsequent offense.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. A store selling 18+ games to twelve-year-olds should be punished.

The bill would also require an annual, independent analysis of game ratings and require the FTC to conduct an investigation to determine whether hidden sexual content like what was in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a pervasive problem and to take appropriate action

Good idea, honestly. Sorry, but I found Hot Coffee pretty stupid.

Finally, the bill would authorize the FTC to conduct an annual, random audit of retailers to monitor enforcement and report the findings to Congress.

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.

Re:Hrm!

[betterunixthanunix]

This is just another reason why I am going to vote third party -- for all the things Democrats have going for them, they pull something like this.

Fining a video game store for selling certain games to minors? Who decides what games are appropriate for minors? When I was 12, a friend of mine and I played Doom II on his Sega Saturn, and neither of us was harmed by it, even when we decided to have fun and run around with the chainsaw, spewing blood all over the place. When I was 14, I got a hold of a copy of GTA 3, and my friends and I thought it was great fun to run around shooting cops with a rocket launcher, and again, nobody was harmed by it.

What counts as a harmful game? "Hidden sexual content?" I wasn't aware that 12 year olds were harmed by sex as depicted in the GTA games. It is a stretch to claim that after playing a game like San Andreas, teenagers were running around, joining gangs, picking up hoes, and killing cops. If a teenager has emotional problems to begin with, or has trouble distinguishing the fantasy presented in a video game from reality, then they need professional psychological help.

Just how far do we take the "harmful" label, anyway? Is it more harmful to be in a game where your character is a gang member shooting cops, or a game where your character is a pilot dropping bombs over Vietnam and Iraq? Are both games harmful? What about a game where you are a wizard, who throws bolts of lighting at your enemies and electrocutes them? What if the Ender's Game novels were made into a video game; would that be harmful to youth? For that matter, why hasn't Ender's Game been taken off the shelves, or subjected to an age requirement: Ender murders a few of his classmates, with his bare hands, and then leads an army to commit genocide. Why isn't Mrs. Clinton calling for a crack down on violent novels as well, which describe violence in quite a bit of detail, far more than a video game can (video games can only provide a visual and audio reference; a written work can describe all the senses in a single passage)?

Of course, video games are an easy target, just like music was an easy target in the 80s and 90s, or hippies were an easy target in the 60s and 70s, or Jazz singers in the 20s. A candidate who wants to say they are protecting our youth only needs to find an easy target, and they are good to go: Lieberman chose Marilyn Manson, Al Gore chose Twisted Sister, and Hillary Clinton chose San Andreas. I doubt that any of them actually care about our kids, except to try and get our votes.

Re:Hrm!

[bigbigbison]

Germany has different laws than the USA. In the USA such laws have repeatedly been found to be unconstitutional.

Subject needs fixing.

[Lord of Hyphens]

Clinton Will Pander To Whomever Her Focus Groups Tell Her
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.

Poster is incorrect...

[daemonenwind]

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.