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Australia Approves Final R18+ Gaming Guidelines
dotarray writes "Despite stories suggesting that a change to the Australian ratings system may be as far as two years away, the Federal Minister for Home Affairs has announced that each Australian state and territory has signed off on the final guidelines required for the introduction of an adult R18+ classification Down Under."
As one of the first people to start a statewide petition to support an R18+ rating for games, I can say that its taken a long time to reach this point, and its not over yet. This is a really encouraging step in the right direction.
What is particularly interesting about it is that it highlights the disparaity between the speed that technology moves, and the speed that our lawmakers move.
I believe we may be an entire generation away from a government of technology-savvy lawmakers.
The very thought that content would have to be approved before getting sold to adults is chilling.
yeah, Orwell thought it was scary too. :) In all seriousness though, censorship is a problem.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
If it wasn't illegal to buy snuff films, they'd be widely purchased and a market created for such
Actually, I just read an article, I think it was by BBC, that said that after doing much research, their conclusion was there is no such thing as a snuff film, nobody has actually made a snuff film, and there is no market for snuff films. Its just too difficult / costly to murder people for entertainment as opposed to doing fiction.
:P
SOMETIMES the world isn't as bad as it seems.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
In the article for R 18+ classifications:
Drug use related to incentives and rewards is not permitted.
Depending on how 'drug' is defined, a game could be banned if using apsrin was part of the plot to recover some ailment.
If this was only related to controlled substances, then a fictional drug could be used instead without problem, making the rule near useless.
Do you have any evidence to back this up?
In relation to snuff? No. As snuff films are largely un-verifiable, we can only look at anecdotal evidence surrounding popularity of extremely bad film where people have THOUGHT an individual died in the filming thereof.
I can easily back it up in relation to child porn though. Look at Ukraine, early 2000s, BD Company and LS Studios and various subsidiary and even unaffiliated companies. A market was created for CP through the temporarily unregulated sale of material from Ukraine. It started out with some small sites (LA for example), and drew a huge wealth of income from all over the world and changed from one group with a few models to multinationals and thousands of girls. It progressed to video sites, where explicit videos became purchaseable from sites, or viewable by paying additional "VIP" access fees. It was eventually shut down as the studios were beginning to expand on non-explicit (initially, and at least to those not paying VIP fees) male+female "photography".
This is just one example. There is substantial evidence that without regulation and censorship preventing child pornography, the child-abuse market would grow exponentially.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
You obviously have never a snuff film then because they are out there
Did you know, that when you see a character die in a movie, the actor didn't actually die? Strange but true.
People seem to forget that the same array of special effects and clever editing are available to adult film producers, if used (far) less often due to expense.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That said, child pornography is a serious concern.
Child abuse is a serious concern. But AFAIK there's no place left on Earth (where's there any rule of law) that it's legal to make or buy child pornography. Given there's no legal market anywhere, it would seem to me that it's the abuse, not the evidence thereof, that should be the first priority for concern.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Child abuse is a serious concern. But AFAIK there's no place left on Earth (where's there any rule of law) that it's legal to make or buy child pornography. Given there's no legal market anywhere, it would seem to me that it's the abuse, not the evidence thereof, that should be the first priority for concern.
Of course, the "child" part can vary substantially from country to country, also including ridiculous situations where there's a discrepancy between the ages where it's legal to have sex and be filmed having sex.
If snuff films were legal, I imagine that very nearly every single one sold would be a fake... including the ones that boasted loudly of being genuine. It's just so much safer to fake it, and if you do the effects right the audience would never know.