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Unconstitutional Video Game Law Costs California $2 Million

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In hopes of protecting the children of California from the ravages of violent video games, then governor Arnold Schwarzenegger attempted to push through a law that would fine retailers $1000 for each infraction of selling a violent game to an underage child. However, in the wake of appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down the law, California is now forced to pay the legal fees of all parties to the tune of two million dollars."

11 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Nice! by ZorinLynx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good. Maybe this will teach future political leaders that censorship is a bad idea.

    Oh who am I kidding, these idiots never learn anything.

    1. Re:Nice! by Dyinobal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why you think the politicians are paying this out of their own pockets? This is from the tax payers pockets.

    2. Re:Nice! by kelemvor4 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Schwartsy doesnt care, hes already out of office. Which of course is the counter argument to term limits and what not. I am just wondering where California will get the 2 million. They can barely cover costs as it is. And their highways are the worst ever. It is almost like they havent repaved any of them in years.

      They were going to repave the highways but then they got high.

    3. Re:Nice! by popeye44 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, As I am one of those Caltrans employees.. I can tell you where the money goes that we take in in Gas Taxes, Construction taxes, etc etc. It goes in the General fund. Not transportation accounts. "except for certain taxes which do" So Lets say we have a good year.. and our transportation fund is swollen. The State comes over with its hand out and takes from that fund to put into the general fund. As you can imagine this practice has a way of making roads very hard to maintain. On top of that we have say 40 people to take care of around 1200 miles of road. Between staffing issues, cuts, promotions, vacations, sick days etc. There are typically 26-32 of those people at work. On a good day those folk actually get to do some maintenance on the road. On most days.. they respond to accidents and complaints from the public. So this is a snippet from my point of view. I do live in a fairly populated area.. but NOTHING like LA. SF etc. You can extrapolate that there are more people in those areas.. but by and large CT is an engineering organization and it's more fun to build than maintain.. So that is pretty much how we operate. build more ignore the old.

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    4. Re:Nice! by sg_oneill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except in the case of politicians who actually embezel cash for themselves, I dont think billing politicians for bad decisions is a good idea, because it means that only the super rich could afford to be politicians. That means that only your bushes and cheyneys of the world who a couple of million dollars bill wont send them broke, could do it. But your Ron pauls, obamas , and sarah palins could not, because these guys are just upper-middle class folks who would be bankerupted by it. And it means they could not have run.

      Do we really want to guarantee a future run by the filthy rich, folks who for the most part got rich by corruption and gouging others for cash?

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  2. As much as I like ripping into politicians by pecosdave · · Score: 4, Interesting

    for wasting money, and granted this was waste in the name of violating rights and legislating morality, when you get down to it $2,000,000 is rather cheap for a screw up of this scale.

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  3. Re:Pointless by nedlohs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's pretty big overlap between those tax payers and the people who can vote in state elections. So that seems reasonably fair in the end.

  4. Politicians care about votes not money by perpenso · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Good. Maybe this will teach future political leaders that censorship is a bad idea. Oh who am I kidding, these idiots never learn anything.

    That is not quite true. You have a very different perspective than the politicians. The politicians have already banked the votes of frightened parents. Wasting money and time and going counter to the constitution are irrelevant to them. All they care about are the votes and the likely voters are the silly frightened parents and not the gamers.

    It is amazing to watch the very same people who in their youth were outraged when Al Gore led his crusade against music become the middle aged people who support a crusade against video games.

  5. Interesting by colinrichardday · · Score: 5, Funny

    Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to prevent children from experiencing violence?

  6. Re:there is nothing wrong with a rating system by cgenman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Both of those that you list kids could see with parental permission. But more importantly than that, the rating system in Hollywood and the Video Game industries is voluntary. There is no law against kids seeing an R rated film, just a theater owner's agreement. A big part of that is if the rating were given the force of law, it would need to hold up to scrutiny. As it stands, there are a lot of societal standards and other things which don't necessarily hold up to government oversight, and the ratings process is entirely opaque for fear of influence scandals.

    So yes, reward retailers who adhere to the ratings standards, be it movies or games. But there are major, obvious constitutionality challenges in giving a voluntary system the force of law.

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  7. Re:there is nothing wrong with a rating system by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Some states have successfully made it illegal for anyone under the MPAA or ESRB rating to see the movie or purchase the game without parental permission.

    I'm not aware of any such state. Can you identify these "some states"?