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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.'"
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious. It may be redundant but I don't see how it's censoring anything. Unless of course it's been decided that controlling what your kids have access to is limiting free speech...
I'd prefer this than straight up banning. And I'd consider putting the power *and responsibility* back in the hands of the parents a good thing. All this is in my opinion is a tool to facilitate that.
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.
It requires that the nature of the game be clearly posted - not restricted. Although with some games, I think a 'WARNING: MAY CAUSE VIOLENT BEHAVIOR - difficulty due to poor control/interface design rather than actual challanging gameplay' would be ideal. But that's getting off topic.
It requires that parental lockouts be put in place. The thing about those is, they are optional by the user. Nobody is /forced/ to turn these on when the game is used in their consoles. It's simply required as an option.
I guess the point is that they are requiring information to be given. It's like a nutritional label on food, or the MPG rating with a car (though I don't think the latter is required). In this case, it's the content nature of a game. It's not like they are saying "Don't sell violent games".
I really wish some game maker like Take Two would actually utilize all the wording of these asinine warnings about violent content and incorporate them directly into the marketing of the game.
Death By Gruesome Disembowelment II: Now with more Splatter! More Bowels! and More Realistic Vivisections! Also: New Exciting "Cat Mode"!
"A law just passed in New York now requires labels for violent content in video games"
This doesn't censor anybody or anything.
"as well as having parent-controlled lockout features installed in consoles by 2010"
So a VChip for consoles. No more censorship than the TV VChip and will be uses about as much.
I can see complaining about the cost of this law, the effectiveness of it, or even if it is redundant but censorship? Just what liberties are being taken away by labeling?
And please no "slippery slope arguments". I want to know how providing the consumer more information is a bad thing? Now the vchip in the console I can see problems with cost but outside of that what is the problem. It will not effect any adult unless they are dumb and turn it on and forget the password.
I can see how it may be unconstitutional but only because it could be seen as the state interfering with interstate commerce. But that has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
So you take a game like "Grand Theft Auto", which is named after a felony, and comes with subtitles like "Vice City", and which has a back cover talking about guns and gangsters, and if that's not enough for you, comes with an M rating with a clear label of "Blood and Gore Violence". Apparently after seeing all that, some people's first thought is that it's a game about rainbow-colored horses galloping across fields where the trees blossom lollipops.
Parents should have more than enough information already about what games are violent or not. If they're still buying them, then that's their fault, not the gaming industry.
Not a typewriter
It seems to me that this sort of legislation is a necessary precondition of the solution that you propose. I've heard it mentioned before, "Why not enforce the existing ratings?"
Here's the problem: Video game ratings are applied by a voluntary, industry initiative. If a law were passed to enforce those ratings, it would be placing the executive power to evaluate the content into the hands of a non-governmental entity.
In order for the government to enforce any ratings, the government has to legislate to itself the authority to create ratings. In the case under discussion, that's approximately what the government has done -- they have mandated 'labelling' (similar to rating, IMO) of certain kinds of content in video games.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
People want the future in Wall-E. We want the government (or some company) to do everything for us.
Parenting? Nah let the schools do it. If they screw it up, we'll bitch about it.
Health Care, Insurance, Food, Fuel, Houses. I want the government to do it.
Opinions, TV, Media. Just let the government tell me what I think, as long as I can see Jamye Lynn Spears' retarded baby.
Lock your door.
As I said in a previous comment, the text of the Fourteenth Amendment does not incorporate the Bill of Rights into State Constitutions.
Where in the Fourteenth Amendment do you even see the word "rights"? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Red Flayer?
Do this, my socialist friend: go and read on the Slaughterhouse Cases. The Supreme Court, in 1873, decided that the Fourteenth Amendment did NOT cover "rights" but exactly what it was written to cover: privileges and immunities, such as citizenship. It was not to guard against State dismantling of the Bill of Rights, but to protect some second level "rights" which are considered ones of privilege and not inherent.
Your interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment is flawed, because you have not read it, nor studied it. Yes, the Supreme Court has taken a pro-Incorporation view on this Amendment, but it has not been fully implemented, so we just don't know how SCOTUS can interpret some State laws as violations but not others. Without a full implementation of Incorporation, there is no Incorporation.
How is this different then the requirements on food packaging? Why isn't there an uproar over adding new requirements on food packaging?
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.
ESRB ratings don't work because Grand Theft Auto IV is in the same damned category as Warcraft (The RTSes, I'm not familiar with the MMO game).
Somehow I doubt the government would do a better job at defining labels though.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Fine, then put the label on movies too. There's no reason video games and cds should be differentiated from any other form of entertainment.
It protects "life, liberty, and property" against arbitrary deprivation by the States. In my book -- and that of every Supreme Court to have addressed the issue -- most of the things in the Bill of Rights are pretty fundamental to "liberty" and thus included within the meaning of the word "liberty" in the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Certainly, the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment covers citizenship. Just as certainly, the Due Process Clause, Equal Protection Clause, Voting Rights Clause, and Privileges and Immunities clause, among others, of the 14th Amendment refer to things other than citizenship.
But the word "right" is in Section 2, and the word "liberty" is in the Due Process Clause of Section 1.
Actually, no, "privileges or immunities" does, despite the fact that the clause in which it appears is popularly labelled the "Privileges and Immunities" clause. If you are going to argue about which words and phrases are and are not used in the text of the Amendment, you should make sure you know which words and phrases are, in fact, used in the text of the Amendment.
No, they are terms with different meanings; the protection of "privileges or immunities" in one provision of an enactment does not exclude the protection of "rights" or "liberty" in some other provision of the same enactment. Note that incorporation is not a product of the "Privileges and Immunities" clause
No, its still you that needs to read the 14th Amendment.
And how truthful will the stickers be?
Quote:Connecticut State Senator Gayle Slossberg (D) is eager to do something about the rape scene in Grand Theft Auto IV, she told the New Haven Advocate.
Too bad there isn't a rape scene in the game, whoops?
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/06/25/connecticut-state-senator-alarmed-over-non-existent-rape-scene-gta-iv
This is the sig that says NI (again)
yes, this is true. the ESRB has had content labels on their products since 1994. The problem is, retails and retarded parents don't read the labels.
I'm a parent and a gamer. My kid isn't playing violent games any time soon. I read the labels.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I'm not sure how it is with VG retailers, but when I worked at Suncoast (video store) there was a company policy against carding people to prevent selling adult videos (think Playboy) to underage people. Forget about carding for the rated-R movies. The only time we could ask for ID was if they were paying by check.
End of line..
I was watching the documentary "Heavy: The History of Metal.". They were talking about how the PMRC made a big deal out of the fact there was explicit lyrics, and that the kids might actually hear this. There were senate hearings. They interview Dee Snyder(Twister Sister) , expecting him to be a blithering idoit. He wasn't. The PMRC was succesful in the 'WARNING; this album may contain....'. Tommy Lee of Motley Crue was ecstatic, they had the first label ever. When asked why, he said "this is the best advertisding ever. How many kids are going to buy this knowing that they had these lyrics in them." true enough! Many bands thanked the pmrc for the extra ash in there pocket. Wouldnt this be the same effect that the publishers would realise if this were to pass?? Not so much on the lockout stuff for the conolse just the labling.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I would go a step further. People really need to consider what they are getting into when they have children and I have a strong suspicion that most parents fail to do this. If you're struggling to maintain your lifestyle with children, chances are you probably couldn't afford that lifestyle with with a comfortable margin before children.
When you raise children you have the financial obligation to support them, the societal obligation to properly socialize them, and the personal obligation to nurture them and reach their full potential.
If you cannot fulfill all three of these obligations you should not be raising or having any children. If having additional children would call into question your ability to to carry out these obligations for your current offspring, then you should not have more kids!
Whether it be among my personal friends, acquaintances, or through the news, I am utterly dismayed at the lack of forethought people seem to show when having children. Some people want to have a child merely because it would be self fulfilling or "neat." Some people want to have children because their parents or some other family member is pushing them. Some people want to have kids because, well you're supposed to have kids. These reasons by themselves are all frankly, absurd and abhorrent.
No one should choose to have and raise a child for purely personal reasons. Raising a child is a selfless act. When you have a child you owe a fiduciary duty to it to look out for its best interests and put them above your own. If you do any less, you are not giving the child the proper upbringing it deserves. You should be prepaired for the physical, mental, financial, and emotional stress (and it is stress) of raising a child before you even think of having a child. You should especially be prepared for the financial burden, as it can compound the other three. If you are not capable of doing this, then by all means you should not be having kids.
Again, think before you breed. That's if for my rand.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
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