Slashdot Mirror
Video Games, the First Amendment, and Obscenity
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from an article about how obscenity laws and the first amendment relate to modern games:
"This question is a tough one, for the very good reason that no video game developer or publisher has ever been prosecuted for obscenity related to video games. As we have seen, if the medium of video games are held to the same standard as literature and film then, presumably, they can also be held to be obscene. One of the reasons for the lack of obscenity prosecution against video game developers and publishers is that the courts have limited obscenity to sexual content only. In fact, the courts have gone so far as to specifically reject calls to alter the definition of 'obscenity' to include violent content in video games. The other major reason is the vast majority of video games sold in the United States have only small amounts of sexual content thanks to the Electronic Software Rating Board."
That would be Miller v. California and is know as the Miller test. For something to be considered obscene, it needs to meet 3 criteria.
1. The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.
2. the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law.
3. the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
If anything, the strategy of hiding sex in the US media during the last 2 decades did backfire: teenage pregancy rates are the highest among the "developed" countries. Spain for example is second lowest, I lived there during my teens, and the TV program there was very, let's say, educating (after 10pm).
I guess that openess and explanation works better than obfuscation, as always.