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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."
Many countries, even in the English-speaking world, still have official censorship bodies which won't let you publish content without state approval. That's general content, not particular content niches like pornography. Games have been effectively banned in Europe or Australia from being sold for being too violent or "mature." By comparison, the United States has no effective apparatus of censorship. The most that can happen is that a prosecutor brings you up on charges of violating local obscenities laws, but then the prosecutor has to show that your sexual content is gratuitous and has no independent (artistic, literary, etc.) merit. If you had a map where a character walks through a realistic strip club, and gets into a shoot out, that content is likely to be protected under the same precedents that protect R-rated movies with similar content.
Now, if you create a sex simulator, even one like Hot Coffee, well, you're up shit creek. That aside, our system is significantly freer and more in line with "let adults be adults and let parents be responsible" than the majority of the industrial world on content in general.
You Americans need to relax a little bit concerning sex. I think violence is a lot worse than sex.
It's OK for kids to see people being machinegunned into pieces, blood and flesh everywhere, but a boobie is simply too outrageous. WTF!?!
Here in Europe, most movies have nudity in them but in a Hollywood movie, if you see some boobs for a fraction of a second, it's outrageous. The leg-crossing of Sharon Stone in Fatal Instinct was deemed as the sexiest thing on cinema, but truly, it's pretty standard in European movies. Of course, in American movies and series, violence is rampant, even in family-rated stuff.
On American TV, I've seen boobs blurred out in movies, music videos, etc. I've even seen something incredible, Naomi Watts was masturbating in Mulholland Drive, but she was only filmed from the waist up, so you could only see her arm going up and down, suggesting what she was doing. They fucking blurred her arm! How stupid is this?
Skinnerian radical behaviorism has all but been completely thrown out the window in modern psychology. These days, cognitive psychology is all the rage. Even more modern post-Skinnerian behaviorists like Tolman had began thinking along more cognitive lines.
Thing is that I, along with many others, including my wife who self-identifies as a bevaviorist, believe that Skinnerian radical behaviorism is far too simplistic a view and that with advances in modern technology we have to look beyond simple operant conditioning as causes of human behavior, because at this point, quite frankly, we can.
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2. the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law.
I've always found it kind of amusing that it's basically all about sex and pooping. Of all the forms of speech that can be censored due to being offensive, of all the activities which we can't tolerate because they're too objectionable, we've picked out sex and pooping.
It is interesting that we are ok with Violence, but fret over sex (At least in the US). To me though, I prefer it that way. My wife and I, we watched Watchmen last night. It is now funny to look back at our reactions, all the gory parts we said "WHOA!" and the sexy parts we'd blush and look at each other (You know what they are doing?!?). I'm ok with sex being Taboo, because I like sex. For example, you're watching some love story, they start getting hot and heavy, you start thinking (they are gonna do it) and then the Camera pans off. Same is is in Mass Effect, and some people think (DANG I wanted to see that). But it's the question that has people interested. If we saw sex, and it was ok, all the time, we wouldn't be so curious about it anymore. Why do you think old married couples don't have sex as often? It's not just because they are busy. It's because they have lost the curiosity.
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
I agree that we are too concerned about nudity. It's bizarre that the 70's were more open and accepting of nudity in film, for instance, that the 2000's are.
However, you can't directly compare it to violence. Explicit sex is media is frowned upon for entirely different reasons than violence. I'm not worried about my son, my daughter, or 99.9% of anybody else's kids wanting to go out and commit murder because they see it in a game. However, sex is a temptation. The kids would be weird if they DIDN'T want to go out and have sex... or lock themselves up in their bedroom and watch sex all day.
Yeah, I think it's too restrictive. I don't see anything wrong with a child seeing a breast. But in fairness, the current stigma is not because sex is considered WORSE than violence. It's considered more SEDUCTIVE than violence.