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Court on Video Games: Less Cleavage, More Carnage
John Landis said, "R is when you bare a woman's breast, PG is when you cut it off." That is apparently now also the law of the land regarding video games, according to the Supreme Court's June 27th decision (PDF) overturning a California law that banned sales of violent video games to minors. I'm glad the Supreme Court struck down the law, but reading over the decision, I had the odd feeling that even though I agreed with the majority's conclusion, the actual arguments made by the dissenters made more sense, primarily because of the hypocrisy of the majority in treating sex as more taboo than violence.
The majority opinion, written by Scalia, has already been widely quoted as a ringing defense of free speech:
"Reading Dante is unquestionably more cultured and intellectually edifying than playing Mortal Kombat. But these cultural and intellectual differences are not constitutional ones. Crudely violent video games, tawdry TV shows, and cheap novels and magazines are no less forms of speech than The Divine Comedy, and restrictions upon them must survive strict scrutiny..."
But Scalia continues to believe that the government does have the right to ban the sale of nudity and sexuality to minors (as decided in the Supreme Court's 1968 Ginsberg v. New York decision), just not violence. So he kept qualifying statements like the one above by adding "except for pornography", like a judicial version of the fortune cookie "in bed" game:
"[A]s a general matter, . . . government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content... There are of course exceptions. These limited areas, such as obscenity... represent well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem."
...
"Speech that is neither obscene as to youths nor subject to some other legitimate proscription cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them."
So he's continuing the Supreme Court's tradition of carving out of a First Amendment exception for sex, but won't make one for gratuitous violence. I would be against banning either type of content, but if I were forced to ban one of the two, I would definitely pick violence. Wouldn't you?
As Steven Breyer wrote in his dissent:
"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 restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman -- bound, gagged, tortured, and killed -- is also topless?"
Well, he's right, isn't he? Except he misses the point that perhaps the remedy is not to ban violent video games, but to overturn the precedent that photos of topless women are harmful.
Alito seemed to agree with Breyer, when he wrote in a decision joined by Roberts:
"Victims by the dozens are killed with every imaginable implement, including machine guns, shotguns, clubs, hammers, axes, swords, and chainsaws. Victims are dismembered, decapitated, disemboweled, set on fire, and chopped into little pieces. They cry out in agony and beg for mercy... The objective of one game is to rape a mother and her daughters; in another, the goal is to rape Native American women."
(Alito was technically not dissenting, because he agreed that the current law was impermissibly vague, but filed a separate opinion because he was at pains to emphasize that he thought some future law against violent video games might be constitutional.) The implication seems clear: "If we can ban some things for minors — like pornography — then good God, can't we ban this stuff too?"
Scalia, in his majority opinion, responds to Alito's description of game violence: "Justice Alito recounts all these disgusting video games in order to disgust us — but disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression." But this is just hypocritical — because Scalia, throughout his own decision, kept deferring to the Ginsberg Supreme Court ruling, which said that the government could ban porn sales to minors if it depicted sex acts in way that the "average person" would consider "patently offensive with respect to what is suitable for minors" (along with some other criteria). In other words, if it causes disgust.
Breyer and Alito also made similar arguments to each other on another reasonable-sounding point — that industry self-regulation might not last long, now that the law has been struck down. As Alito wrote:
"The Court does not mention the fact that the industry adopted this system in response to the threat of federal regulation, Brief for Activision Blizzard, Inc., as Amicus Curiae 7-10, a threat that the Court's opinion may now be seen as largely eliminating. Nor does the Court acknowledge that compliance with this system at the time of the enactment of the California law left much to be desired — or that future enforcement may decline if the video-game industry perceives that any threat of government regulation has vanished."
Breyer agreed:
"And the industry could easily revert back to the substantial noncompliance that existed in 2004, particularly after today's broad ruling reduces the industry's incentive to police itself."
This sounds more realistic than Scalia's recitation of the video game industry party line:
"The video-game industry has in place a voluntary rating system designed to inform consumers about the content of games... This system does much to ensure that minors cannot purchase seriously violent games on their own, and that parents who care about the matter can readily evaluate the games their children bring home."
What do you want to bet that Breyer and Alito are right, and enforcement of the rating system will decline now?
Compare this with another case, when Communications Decency Act of 1996 (essentially banning the "seven dirty words" on the Internet) was struck down in 1997 at least in part because a "less restrictive means" existed for censoring content in the home — parental blocking software. I didn't like blocking software much, but as a statement of fact, it existed, and was a less restrictive means than the law. The crucial difference there was that parents who used blocking software, weren't using it in response to a government threat of legislation, they were using it because they wanted to, and didn't stop using it after the law was struck down. There's no reason to think the same is true for industry self-applied video game ratings.
Finally, Breyer (but not Alito) rejected the argument that the California law should be struck down for vagueness, arguing that it was no more vague than laws against selling pornography minors, which the court had upheld:
"Comparing the language of California's statute (set forth supra, at 1-2) with the language of New York's statute (set forth immediately above), it is difficult to find any vagueness-related difference. Why are the words "kill," "maim," and "dismember" any more difficult to understand than the word "nudity?" ... California only departed from the Miller formulation [the Supreme Court case that defined obscenity] in two significant respects: It substituted the word "deviant" for the words "prurient" and "shameful," and it three times added the words "for minors." The word "deviant" differs from "prurient" and "shameful," but it would seem no less suited to defining and narrowing the reach of the statute."
Well, I think he's right. They're all just words, and they don't have crystal clear boundaries, but you pretty much know what they mean, and there's no reason why one group of words is more vague than the other. (In fact, in a 2008 article I argued that you could measure scientifically the vagueness of a law — just show the law to different test subjects, along with some made-up scenarios, and ask whether those scenarios violated the law or not. I'm quite confident that if you applied that test to these two different laws, you would measure about the same level of "vagueness".)
Again, I don't accept the justices' premise that the government has any business banning the sale of either sexual or violent content. But if you're going to grant the premise that they can and should, then Alito and/or Breyer seem to have made better arguments than the majority on at least those three points: That violence probably deserves less constitutional protection than sex, that the industry isn't likely to keep regulating itself if they no longer think they have to, and there's no reason that "kill" and "maim" are any more vague than "nudity".
(By the way, when I say the "dissenters sounded more reasonable", I am not including Clarence Thomas, whose entire solo dissent was devoted to research showing that the Founding Fathers did not believe people under 18 had First Amendment rights at all. If Clarence Thomas thought really hard, could he think of any other category of people who were denied full civil rights in the 1700s, and hence why we wouldn't want to apply that standard today?)
Fortunately, the majority did get the most important point right, which is that studies do not show a causal relationship between video game playing and real-life acts of violence. As Scalia wrote:
"The State's evidence is not compelling. California relies primarily on the research of Dr. Craig Anderson and a few other research psychologists whose studies purport to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children. These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason: They do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively (which would at least be a beginning). Instead, "[n]early all of the research is based on correlation, not evidence of causation, and most of the studies suffer from significant, admitted flaws in methodology." Video Software Dealers Assn. 556 F. 3d, at 964. They show at best some correlation between exposure to violent entertainment and minuscule real-world effects, such as children's feeling more aggressive or making louder noises in the few minutes after playing a violent game than after playing a nonviolent game."
Unfortunately, Scalia lacked the nerve to say that this point should have been the only point that mattered, in a society where freedom is the default unless there's a good reason to the contrary. Because the logical consequence of that, would have been that since the "evidence" for the harmful effects of pornography is even weaker, then the government has no business banning that, either.
The problem constraining all nine justices is that they felt bound by the prior Ginsberg ruling making it permissible to ban sales of pornography to minors, so their options were limited to (a) striking down the video game law while ignoring the hypocrisy of continuing to ban pornography, or (b) pointing out that violent video games are probably at least as distasteful. This ignores the possibility that they could have just (c) overturned their prior ruling, as they have done many times before.
If I were a justice writing for the majority, my whole opinion would be:
Well, we can only make an exception to the First Amendment if there's solid evidence of real harm, and there is no scientifically valid evidence of harm here, so the law violates the First Amendment and is struck down. Oh, and that goes for Ginsberg too, next time it comes up. How much did you guys pay for law school again?
Unfortunately, Obama has said that he's looking for Supreme Court candidates that display "empathy", and what I said would probably hurt the other justices' feelings, so don't hold your breath for my being nominated.
Sex is taboo, violence and carnage is great, I guess they never watch TV in America?
The cleavagiest fighting game series in existence. Catgirls clad in fur pasties, succubus with the high Theiss tittilation theory, bee girls with obvious camel toes, it won't be the same if all this needs to be cut back because of congress! Though, I do applaud their red blood > white suspicious liquid substance preference.
George Carlin said it best in his classic routine! In our culture violence is more acceptable than sex ... it's manly and competitive .. .whereas sex is dirty and shameful.
Why is that hypocritical? Hasn't violence in games been shown not to induce violent behavior in players (at least that what Slashdot constantly claims)? Conversely, with sex, the opposite is true.
Why, then, is it hypocritical to want to curtail something that stimulates socially dangerous behavior among children and not be so worried about something else that does not?
Perhaps it's because Americans are violent but not sexy?
I fight for the the freedom of speech... IN BED
http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/52261/detail/
After all, sex hurts people, and violence doesn't. Or . . . wait, maybe I've got that backwards . . .
And it all started with the Hays codes in the 1930s. Get your religion-based censorship out of my TV and radio broadcasts already.
I thought a major part of the decision was that other forms of entertainment are not similarly restricted. Violence in films and TV are not subject to the same sort of law, and the decision was based on that discrepancy in the restriction of speech. However, those forms of media are restricted when it comes to sexual content, so a similar restriction can be applied to video games. This is of course separate from whether or not it *should* be applied to any of them. Isn't that the job of parenting?
Anyway, it seems as though the court was trying to just align the law with current precedent, and clarify that video games are speech like other formats, instead of getting into a major brouhaha over the issue restricting sexual content in any media which is outside of the scope of this case.
There is no obscenity exemption in the Constitution. I've looked. The Supreme Court invented the obscenity exemption. Only Congress is supposed to have the power to create law, and they may only modify the Constitution after ratification by the states. The Miller test hasn't passed any of these hurdles so it is quite plainly unconstitutional.
This is an absolutely crystal clear case of activist judges legislating from the bench.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Stunning hypocrisy by supposed "adults". It's a symptom of the garbage they grew up with, though.
America really needs a cultural shift so that everyone is taught that:
1) Violence is bad.
&
2) Sex is good.
A good starting point for all this is to vilify the right-wing Christian culture that preaches violence over sex. America doesn't need a religion from the middle-east in its land. There are plenty of Native American religions one can choose from, both violent and non-violent, should anyone feels the need for religion.
American citizens have a long and well publicised record of being shocked and upset by seeing the human body, while being more relaxed about exposing their children to acts of simulated violence. Guns ok, bare bodies not ok.
When Janet Jackson showed a nipple in a show on prime time tv at the superbowl, the USA took to the streets and threatened to riot for this shameful behaviour that would damage their kids for life. Over in Europe, people laughed: you can see posters of half naked people on billboards selling perfume and the like on the way to the shops, no big deal. Sometimes models are completely naked in posters. Europeans are more worried about exposing their children to violence.
Different places, different cultures. Violence is ok in the USA, sex is ok in Europe. You take your choice and live where you feel comfortable I suppose...
I used to work at EB, and I always thought it was sadly funny when some parent would get offended at some very crude/pixelated nudity... But be perfectly OK with wholesale slaughter.
Seriously.
Most people, at some point in their lives, see a naked body. Most people have sex. That's generally considered to be a good thing. Aren't parents stereotypically bugging their children for grandkids after they get married?
Most people, on the other hand, try to avoid getting dismembered with a chainsaw.
And yet... According to the way we rate our media... Chainsaw dismemberment is apparently more acceptable.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
the editors of this internet website chat room message board are ignorant hypocrites.
slashdot = stagnated.
Courts are extremely reluctant to impose prior restraints on speech - that is, prohibiting speech before it occurs. While minors have lower levels of free speech protection, there are adults with interests at play: here, the adults who develop and sell violent video games and the adults who wish to purchase it.
The ban against pornography sales to minors came under a lot of attack for the definition of obscenity as "I know it when I see it." When it was first created, the ban on pornography sales was probably too ill-defined to be appropriate. But now we have sufficient definitions, through court decisions and application, that sellers know what they cannot sell to minors. State statutes specifically define what constitutes "sexual content."
This is not the case with violence, especially that which exists purely in a fictional realm. What level of fictional, digital violence would be patently offensive? What does it mean to "kill" a video game character, since they aren't alive in the first place? After all, the criminally has long recognized that you cannot kill a person who is not alive at the moment of the conduct. In a video game realm, these definitions just don't work. Technically speaking, Mario kills Goombas by jumping on their heads. Would the California law have banned the sale of Mario games to anyone under age 18?
I would argue that, because all violence in video games occurs as against inanimate creations, no level of violence is patently offensive. Distinguish this from violence in movies, which appears to happen to real people. Yes, there are arguments that video games are more harmful because of their interactivity, but my point is simply this: we don't have clear enough definitions to create prior restraints. Nudity is nudity. This is not so clear.
The answer is in the Old Testament. All over it. Killing=good, sex=evil. Just be killing the right people.
Since both the government AND the supreme court is in hands of religious people, this sets USA on par with Iran as teocracy.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
No matter what you think about sex vs violence, that isn't what this case was about. This case was about whether there should be special rules for video games! If California had simply passed a law against selling depictions of gratuitous violence to children, that would have been a whole different matter (and an unlikely law in the land of Hollywood). Do we really need special, separate rules for each new medium? I don't think so. Consistency is the thing! The Supremes considered the question of whether video games needed separate rules, and concluded that there was no evidence they did. If you don't like violence in media, petition for a ban on violence in media, not violence in video games!
If you think the objective of censorship is anything but profit, you're sadly mistaken. It's not rocket science: if the executives in the business of government can justify censorship, then they have justified power and revenue. More power and revenue makes the business of government more lucrative for those who can leverage that cash flow for personal gain.
If 200 years of government expansion proves anything -- year after year of more spending and more borrowing -- it's that the people who run the business of government are primarily driven by money.
Just because the old people in the Supreme Court declare "violence is okay; sex is bad" does not mean other judges have to obey.
These state and local judges are free to reach their own conclusions and, if they wish, allow sex and nudity in contexts the SC claims is forbidden. (Like not punishing a Utah bookstore for selling issues of playboy.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Because people's bodies are so much less offensive when they are being riddled with bullets or exploding, versus just being viewed.
Huh?
Which movie would you be more comfortable watching with your family, a movie with lots of nudity or one with lots of violence?
Looks like someone thinks alike:
Supreme Slaughter From icepick eye games.
It was a pleasant surprise to see a large and articulated text instead of the usual summary.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
I always found it odd that censorship was more strict with respect to sex, something almost everyone will experience, than violence, something much more rare. Not to go all hippy, but shouldn't we encourage love, not war?
Or best yet, leave it to the esrb.
They cry out in agony and beg for mercy... The objective of one game is to rape a mother and her daughters; in another, the goal is to rape Native American women."
Ahhh...Rapelay and Custer's Revenge..., the sights, the sins, the sheer disgust and piqued interest reflecting more about what society has made me into rather than what monster I've become for no reason as they would have it.
I would retort with the Pinhead-quote: "This...is my blood, this...is my flesh, happy are those who come to MY supper".
NB: I get Extra-points for my captcha being "unstable" ^^
Which is most likely to cause a responsive change in the viewer: watching violence, or watching sex/nudity?
We've had article after article on here about how violent video games are not shown to produce violent individuals.
I know Slashdot isn't exactly a bastion of Christian ideals, but surely you can understand that people who hold sex to be sacred don't want their children to be exposed to it in a disrespectful or objectifying context. Images of nudity are often burned into an individual's mind; that's a purely biological response. You don't have to agree that it's wrong to expose children to sex in video games, but surely one can understand that -- barring some exceptional cases -- violence doesn't have nearly the same kind of effect on the mind.
Regardless of the motivations, perhaps these restrictions are doing kids a big favor.
Evidence indicates that saturating kids with violent images actually leads to ~less~ violent behavior.
So...what if saturating kids with sexual images leads to less interest and joy in sex later in life?
It would suck to hit "porn burnout" before puberty, and miss out on much of the fun and excitement of personal sexual discovery.
Just a thought.
I'm talking about something important to me here, and I'm not eager to be attacked and labeled because of it. I seriously considered posting AC because the comments so far look like a roving lynch mob...prove me wrong.
As an aside, I believe strongly that the first amendment is a good idea. I do not agree with the law which was pushed by California. I play lots of video games.
I'm not trying to talk about that, though, I'm trying to give my insight about the repeated comments of 'How can you complain about sex when clearly you don't care about violence'.
There is a gap between the person that I want to be and the person that I am. I absolutely believe that everything you see and think and do is slowly turning you into a different person. I try to choose entertainment that doesn't move me further from the person that I want to be.
Encountering profanity makes me want to swear more. I do not appreciate this.
Sexual depictions makes me want to have sex with someone, even if they are not my wife. I do not appreciate this.
Violent depictions currently do not make me want to go kill something. I therefore don't account it as particularly damaging...perhaps I am wrong.
The idea that my discomforts should change what you get to have is one that I'm unclear on my opinions towards. For the purposes of this post I'm only trying to demonstrate that people can put different weights on different types of content and not be stupid.
Please stop acting like everyone who does so is stupid.
This is important for the warrior country, violence and killing is normal, war is good. Now go sign up to kill some more foreign soldiers.
We (the USA) already restrict certain things based on age. You can't vote until you are 18. You can't drive until you are 16. You can't drink until you are 21. You can't serve in the military until you are 17?. You can't work full time until you are 18. I don't think that anyone is going to propose letting a 5 year old, vote, drink alcohol, drive or work full 40 house a week killing people in the military. If we can restrict all of these things based on age why not restrict sales of games. Unless I am mistaken the law didn't restrict minors from owning or playing the games. If parents want to allow their children to play the games they should be allowed to. Just like parents can (or should be able to) let their children operate a vehicle on private property. Children are not first class citizens. They shouldn't be first class citizens. Restricting sales of violent games, alcohol, pornography, or tobacco should be alright.
where *obscene* violence is more acceptable than completely *normal* sexuality. It's beyond me. WTF?
In my family we want our children to believe in Santa. We would be really upset if someone told them that Santa does not exist. However I would never think to make it a crime if you do.
I do believe that people should respect each others beliefs and should not force their beliefs on others. Don't you?
Stupid Lameness Filter Filler
How can the designers of Mortal Kombat justify ripping Sonya in half like that? What was the goddamn point? To prove that they could? To take it to the extreme? That disgusted me. That flat-out disgusted me. I see John's point in playing that. Whatever line there was, the designers of MK stepped over it with that Fatality
I'm all for freedom of speech. I don't see what the point of that Fatality was. Who are we appeasing there, sadists? Do we really have that many sadists in the marketing demographic for that age-range? Did someone hold a fucking focus group full of 14-25 year old males and someone said: "I want to see a girl get ripped in half, starting from her vagina upward, lingering with her face still contorting in pain, and then have that come off as well!"
How the fuck can we claim with a straight face that we can defend THAT Fatality by lumping it into the same category as pornography? To answer my own question: by finding people willing to come forward and say that they believe in torture and sadism as expressed rhetorically by a given artistic medium. Someone out there was gratified by that scene. I want to know who. I want to who the fuck was visually gratified by that exact Fatality, and I want them to explain WHY to me. Explain WHY you were gratified, and what point you feel that scene made, and I will be able to defend that game's right to First Amendment protection with a straight face. I want to know what the designers were thinking, and why they designed it. Because if we can't come up with a good reason, then we have to fall back on the whole "Well, if you're going to protect porn, you'll have to protect this" defense. And let me tell you, GENTLEMEN, that defense holds only as long as you can keep society convinced of it. And society isn't just made up of gamers, it's also made up of concerned parents who aren't gamers, women who may not enjoy seeing a virtual woman get split in half, Christians, Muslims, Atheists, and a whole lotta people who'll look at that and think "Hmm... maybe I should elect a politician who'll pass a law to ban that".
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
In my view we need to revisit the concept of "obscenity." It should either be redefined to include violent material, or abolished altogether. As it stands it's not consistent.
I think most of us agree that there is some violent visual material that children simply should not be exposed to. Given how negligent a huge fraction of the parents in the USA are, I think it's it's not a bad idea for government to provide some degree of protection to minors from such material. You can always argue that motivated minors will access this material anyway... but that does not mean such efforts are pointless. The point is that for a large fraction of minors, it *does* matter when society takes a stand and labels something as obscene. And I think the most graphic violence in these media should indeed be labeled obscene.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sure the Supreme court has ruled on sexuality before. This case was about video game violence. They correctly ruled that the responsibilities lies with the parents and not the state to restrict access. Breyer makes a good point, but that doesn't mean that this ruling is bad because it conflicts with a previous ruling, it means that the previous ruling needs to be revisited.
Why would the Video Gaming industry discontinue their content rating system just because they stopped feeling the pressure from our Government? The Industry would only drop it if in some way it behooved them to drop it. Seeing as the content rating system is something that some of their costumers expect best case scenario they loose a few customers on principal by dropping it. It's not like it's that big of a deal to rate a game.
Maybe the reason why parents go nuts when children see sex but not when they see violence is that over-the-top violence is seen as total fantasy--something they or their children will never be actually involved with, on par with a Dungeons & Dragons game--whereas sex is seen, rightly, as a very real part of the human experience.
BUT, importantly, sex is meant to be only a real part of the ADULT (or at least late adolescent) human experience, and so if children are watching sex in videogames (or TV, etc.) they are joining the club of adults...and this is heartbreaking, because parents think of their children as innocents and want to preserve that innocence for at least a dozen or so years, since being an adult often has tragic pain that a child is (we hope) protected from.
The Puritans believed that sex is a gift from God that should be celebrated and enjoyed. They had no specific nudity taboo as such - they believed that the human body, being made in the image of God, was beautiful and sacred - although they abhorred "immodesty", which meant that exhibitionism and the flaunting of beauty were considered scandalous and prideful (inordinate pride being a most dangerous sin).
They also believed in the sanctity of contracts and regarded marriage as a good example of a sacred trust that bound the partners to the words of their vows.
So, Puritans didn't care if you breast-fed in public, didn't care if you bathed naked in mixed company, and didn't care if you enjoyed a rollicking good time in bed. In fact they would consider such activities normal and healthy.
But they most certainly did care, and would punish you, if you committed adultery, or flaunted your naked body in order to incite the passions of people you had no intention of marrying, or did anything similar which could be construed as either breaking a contract or being sinfully proud.
This is a far cry from today's America, where on prime-time TV you cannot show a loving couple enjoying their commitment to each other sexually, but you can have a two-hour special centered around rape, bestiality, murder, pederasty, or any other harmful deviant behaviour. We've only banned the love, which the Puritans would rightfully see as a perversion of their views.
I think that was true right up until Reagan was elected. We've been backsliding ever since at the governmental level, but fortunately the populace is continuing to move forward and eventually dragging the politicians and teabaggers (kicking and screaming) with us.
As a culture, we could do worse than returning to the Puritan values of hard work, fair dealing, personal and group responsibility, and -gasp!- a healthy enjoyment of sexuality. We need to stop this mad rush to Ayn Rand style glorification of violence and rape.
When America's two real powers argue, don't expect logic to ensue.
America's media masters have a very fucking twisted sense of what's "acceptable" and what's not.
They just know what the government will permit. To answer TFS's question, it's because the Unites States is now a warfare State. The compelling State interest is to have lots of young men ready to kill when ordered to do so.
Truth be told, they could also use more procreation to help fund their Ponzi schemes, but at this point it's too late for that.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
that the reasoning behind restricting pornography is being driven less by a reasonable desire to avoid spurring an abusive porn industry than it is by the kind of thinking that led to Burqas, hijabs and niqabs. Apparently iconodulism holds that exploitation of any kind is less shameful than being caught leering at women's bodies and rather than stop the leering, it is easier to shroud the flesh. I can't think of a better case of "blame the victim".
Nullius in verba
Well DUH! These are the same dumbfucks that think corporations are people, Walmart can't be sued because it might bankrupt them (break the law ok, go bankrupt after you get sued, nu-uh!), and that individuals can't file class action lawsuits against service providers but instead must use their arbiters instead (cause we all know that THEIR arbiters are fair and balanced, right. Surrrrre...)
So it is any surprise that this ruling makes no fucking sense either?
I don't know about you guys, but I don't like violence and like sex, so why the legislators think the opposite?
Find a watch the documentry "This Film is not yet Rated".
It is a wonderful exploration of the backward-ass thinking of Big Media and law makers. While it deals with Film ratings the overall themes appy on point to this topic of video games.
For reasons that I will never understand, people in goverment feel that sex, which almost every human being does, is bad while violance, which almost no humans do, is ok.
I guess that's our punishment for "In God we Trust".
This is the best /. summary I've ever read. However I come down on the issue itself, I just wanted to say that kudos for /. for posting a thoughtful and detailed discussion, instead of the usual trollop of innuendo, non-authoritative articles, general flamebait and slashvertising.
Hey fellas, more of this kind of article/issue summary please!
That was when they cut off a woman's breast. Assholes.
Um, what are the first ten amendments to the constitution called again? Bill of... something....
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
The normalization of violence is a wonderful thing, isn't it? Bandura showed us back in 1961 how easily children learn from even the most passive media. But... Let's just ignore that and smile as military recruitment picks up.
Killing, torturing, and mutilating is great fun, but the human body is a filthy, filthy, vile thing --especially the female body. It should be covered up completely in a dark sheet. Allah Akbar!
Ask me about my sig!
More cleavage = population grows
More carnage = population shrinks
The opinion quoted Ginsberg v. New York because it's prior precedent, and did not overturn Ginsberg because it was an inappropriate case to do so. An appropriate case to overturn Ginsberg would be one that dealt with sexual material (not violent material), and expanding this case to cover sexual material would have been judicial activism in the technical sense of the word.
Make War not Love!
:)
War on Drugs!
War on Terror!
War on Crime!
War on Poverty!
Bear arms but don't bare breasts!
At least by my experience...
"Properly" being defined as, the same as or equivalent to the majority, sane."
There are plenty of so-called adults, over 25 years of age in this context, that as you say "can not properly estimate risks, come to a rational conclusion, so on and so on". I am not joking.
I'd say there are way more adults with this sort of deficiency than teens.
Shall we bring up the topic of a citizenship test, even for the native born?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
continue it, but base it on income, not race
the real reason for the economic disparity between whites and blacks in the usa is because of economics, and that IS a historical hangover from institutional, governmental, and ad hoc societal favoritism towards WHITES since, well, since before this country was founded
in fact, affirmative action should exist forever, but again, based on income, not race. there is no reason why a rich black son should get preferential treatment over a poor white son, but there IS a reason for a poor child, of any race, to get preferential treatment over a rich child, of any race
simply because without the counteracting force of government policy, nepotism and cronyism will inevitably concentrate power and wealth with a few. governmental policy HAS to counteract this, in any society, for all time. or injustice, based on economic class, inevitably develops
a true meritocracy is NOT the default status of human society. money INEVITABLY concentrates power, which leads to cronyism and nepotism: the useless son of the rich guy getting the good high ranking job, rather than the guy who busted his ass for 20 years in the company and who really deserves
therefore, society MUST counteract nepotism and croyism and favoritism based on class, wealth, and family connections by promoting poor but brilliant children to the front of the line, forever. the free market does not sovle this problem, it CREATES this problem
a free market will DESTROY a true meritocracy based society because of cronyism and nepotism
that is, belief in a self-regulating society, and belief in a meritocracy, are mutually exclusive beliefs. to believe in meritocracy, you must believe in government regulation and programs LIKE affirmative action (but not EXACTLY like affirmative action), and you must understand that a self-regulating society will inevitbly lead to a regimented stratified calss based society where power and wealth concentrate with a few: money attracts more money, and that's the way it's always been. a just society MUST constantly counteract this natural gravity
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way..... I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves. In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer." = Judge Barrow
He clearly stated that this is his own belief. He not exhorting the mob to do massive violence on differently-skinned people KKK-style. He's not encouraging violence. Stimulating violence is what counts as "hate speech" in most European jurisdiction.
On the other hand, he is making a discrimination solely based on the racial profile of the people who wanted to be married. He is refusing to recognise a marriage because of skin colour. In most European jurisdiction, he would have had problems due to anti-discrimination laws.
To get problems with the hate speech law, he would have needed to say something like "All the negroe don't deserve to marry, they need to be lynched instead !!!". That would have certainly counted as hate speech.
Again we see that sex is considered harmful on your side of the pond, on our side, it's violence which is considered taboo.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Not that I agree, but it is fairly clear that the deciding factor is an "obscenity" litmus. Sex and nudity pass the litmus for obscenity (in most cases) and violence doesn't. Dumb. Pure Constitutionalists should not approve of an age restriction to porn, for example, because the first amendment says the government cannot infringe upon free speech. Making exceptions like age-limited prohibition for porn, is one such an infringement.
Military recruitment is picking up due to a bad economy, despite military objectives not changing. This after the military was desperate for recruits between '01 and '08. The rifle range overseas is two-way. It takes more than violent media for someone to volunteer to possibly go there.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
Sex is violence... (repeat ad nauseum) - NIN
Geez, it's like no one really listens to the words anymore
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Not love
Folks here don't want personal business put out in public, and nudity is considered very personal business here. Guns, however aren't at all. One of our favorite pastimes is going to the shooting range, or out to the ranch, and putting a couple hundred rounds into targets.
But all of you go to strip clubs too, or most of you do anyway. So why again is it considered personal and guns aren't? You do one just as much as the other.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Noticed some interesting comments about Europe vs US attitude on nudity that may apply to violence....
some mentioned that Europe has a problem not with nudity but with sexuality. That seems to imply that in Europe an ad could get into trouble with fully-clothed models portraying something with sexual implications more than a model just showing the wrong part of their body: context matters.
Would discussion on what violence is allowable benefit from similar shades of distinction? example, someone being shot in a FPS is different from someone being torn in half in MK. But, I'd struggle to put into words what is different in objective terms. Do those categories/classifications already exist? Does someone need to define those before talking about it?
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
I beg to differ.
It is not socially sane to prosecute teens that send pictures of their nude bodies to each other.
It is not socially sane to be forced to live under a bridge for the rest of your life because you took a leak in a public place.
It is not socially sane to criminalize stick figures.
It is not socially sane to send people to PMITA prisons for browsing the wrong sites or "possessing" the wrong literature.
Come to think of it, it is not socially sane to even have (private, for-profit) "PMITA" prisons.
It is not socially sane to fill those prisons with non-violent people that decided to put the wrong substances in their bodies.
And speaking of prisons, it is not socially sane to have the highest incarceration rate in the world by a significant margin.
It is not socially sane to have an extra-judiciary detention center.
It is not socially sane to use torture, including "extraordinary renditions" and waterboarding.
It is not socially sane to torture and abuse prisoners in a country you invaded (under false pretenses).
It is not socially sane to have "free speech zones".
It is not socially sane to have a "constitution free area" that encompasses almost 2/3 of your population.
It is not socially sane to irradiate and grope people in airports.
Need I go on?
How exactly is this generation socially saner than the previous one?
More likely your grandchildren will consider you to be lucky to have lived in a time when you still had some rights and freedoms left.