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US Supreme Court: Video Games Qualify For First Amendment
Wrath0fb0b writes "The United States Supreme Court threw out a California law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors. Notable in the opinion is a historical review of the condemnation of "unworthy" material that would tend to corrupt children, starting with penny-novels and up through comic books and music lyrics. The opinion is also notable for the odd lineup of Justices that defies normal ideological lines, with one conservative and one liberal jurist dissenting on entirely different grounds. In the process, they continue the broad rule that the First Amendment does not vary with the technological means used: 'Video games qualify for First Amendment protection. Like protected books, plays, and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium. And the basic principles of freedom of speech... do not vary with a new and different communication medium.'"
Very true ... in my lifetime, the most notable example of this was when Tipper Gore was trying to get a bunch of music banned. This, of course, led to Dee Schneider in the most ball-hugging jeans you could imagine testifying about why what she was proposing was just plain wrong.
Everyone wraps themselves in the flag, and talks about freedom, but often they only mean for people who they agree with. You can't have free speech if you don't support the right of people to say offensive things just because you'd rather not hear it (or because you think it's causing out moral decay).
It's amazing how vocal people can be about making sure that the rights of other people are limited so as not to offend their own sensibilities.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Breyer's dissent has a bit of nice reasoning in it, actually.
"But what sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting a sale to that 13 year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her? What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restrict- ing sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman—bound, gagged, tortured, and killed—is also topless? This anomaly is not compelled by the First Amendment. It disappears once one recognizes that extreme violence, where interactive, and without literary, artistic, or similar justification, can prove at least as, if not more, harmful to children as photographs of nudity. And the record here is more than adequate to support such a view. That is why I believe that Ginsberg controls the outcome here a fortiori. And it is why I believe California’s law is constitutional on its face. "
Basically, the court had previously ruled that it's ok to ban porn sales to children, and the court is generally bound to prior rulings unless overturned by new legislation. The logic used to ban pornography sales to kids still applies to this case. Not saying it's a good law, but Breyer's position makes a lot of sense.
Thomas' argument about how even in speech matters the parent is still the intermediary, I can say what I want, but the parent has control over what their children can here.
This was an interesting argument, but it kind of fell apart when I thought about the situation at hand.
Essentially: How can a child be at a game store, in position to buy a game, without the parent having relinquished (or be ineffective at) their roll as the intermediary?
If the parents want a store to drop their child off at confident that they will not be sold a violent game, it is a failing of the market to create such a store. Such stores could exist side by side with stores that do sell violent games to children (the situation we currently have). It is not the place of government to create that type of store at the cost of every store that would not follow the model.
Furthermore, legislation against the child buying that M-rated game isn't going to do anything to stop all the other forms of speech the child will potentially be subject to while in the store without supervision or on the way to/from the store.
As Scaila says in his opinion, such legislation does not enforce parental authority, but instead imposes government authority.