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Video Game Labeling Law Passed In New York
chareverie writes "A law just passed in New York now requires labels for violent content in video games that are already rated, as well as having parent-controlled lockout features installed in consoles by 2010. The law has caused an uproar with civil rights groups who claim that such a law is unconstitutional. A legal challenge is already in the works by the New York Civil Liberties Union who cite that similar laws that have been brought to courts in California, Illinois, Minessota, and Washington state have been deemed as unconstitutional. NYCLU legislative director Robert Perry also says that the 'new law is a "back door" way of regulating video game content.'"
Good morning folks, your friendly neighborhood anarcho-capitalist here.
Is it confusing to anyone why such a law would be deemed unconstitutional? It makes no sense to me. If they're crying "1st Amendment violation!" we should note instantly that this is not the U.S. Congress passing a law infringing on the freedom of expression. This is a State-level body declaring their right, via the 9th and 10th Amendments, to regulate speech.
Now some of you are saying "Whoa, Mr. Anarchy says it's OK for States to regulate speech!" According to the U.S. Constitution, they can. If their own State Constitution has a declaration of what they can't do, and I hope many States do, then they should be bound by that. But if the People of a State decide that they want their speech regulated and restricted, nothing in the U.S. Constitution should prevent them from deciding it's OK to be nannied to death by their State governments.
I'm all for dismantling the State, piece by piece, top-down, but in this case, I don't see what the issue is. As long as the U.S. Congress does not try this tactic, as far as I know, it's constitutional, and people will get what they deserve at the State level.
Go read your Fourteenth Amendment.
The Bill of Rights applies to state governments as well. New York State is not allowed to abridge the freedom of speech of New York citizens.
Unfamiliar with the 14th Amendment or just last 100 years of Constitutional precedent? Its pretty black letter law, and certainly applies to New York.
Lock your door.
Heh. Dude, you do realize that it costs bugger all to implement, right? I mean, it's essentially a
Where getGamesMinimumAge() would involve simply reading a value from the boot sector, or whatever other sector, or even an ini file on the disk. They already have the libraries to do that.
And getting a value from the flash memory, they already have the functions for that too, or you couldn't actually have any such settings.
What remains as teh uber-challenge is printing a warning screen, which can be as easy as clearing the screen and displaying a string. Again, they have the functions to display stuff.
Basically the whole thing is going to cost the poor consumers, what? If you ended up paying a whole 1000$ for someone to code that, by the time you sold your first million consoles (which is actually very very few for a console), it comes down to 0.001 dollars, or 0.1 cents per console sold.
Mind you, I'm not opposed to your picking at other details of this law, but, let's get serious with the "Oh noes, it's at the consumer's cost!" arguments.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
My parents took away my 2400 baud modem when I was a kid, so I spent my allowance on a 9600 baud modem without telling them and only used it when they were asleep or out of the house. Kids are a lot smarter than legislators give them credit for.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Because the state of California specifically granted that right by the Federal Clean Air Act. Which is, incidentally, why other states can't do it--the law doesn't give other states that right. Since there's no Federal law on the matter of videogames, no state has the ability to do this. This is going to get thrown out so hard it'll bounce twice.
Hah, funniest thing about that is proper way to dispose of an American flag IS to burn it.