Who gets to define 'sexual abuse,' though? Morality In Media? The specific problem I have with your post is that it equates physical abuse with letting your kid get a peek at Janet Jackson's nipple. (If there's some other way to interpret "I mean graphic pornography, or direct sexual contact", it escaped me.)
The absolute reality is simple: no one, anywhere, can point to valid scientific evidence that exposure of a child to a given form of media causes quantifiable psychological harm. Human beings are not as programmable as that. If your 8-year-old accidentally sees Gangbang Girls #18, she'll wrinkle her nose and ask you, as her parent, what the heck is up with that stuff. Your reaction to her question is where any potential for psychological harm lies. (You are aware that panicked exclamations of "OMG little Bobbie saw a naked person!11!!!" are pretty much a uniquely-American phenomenon, right?)
Any attempt to limit the First Amendment's scope should require the highest standard of evidence of imminent harm to society. It isn't reasonable to use studies about genuine child sexual abuse, which involves everything from physical injury to gross violations of trust, to push an anti-pornography agenda. When you equate these things, you're helping groups like Morality in Media to pretend that they're in possession of that "high standard of evidence." That wouldn't be such a problem if our legislators weren't so damned eager to believe them.
But way back when, I always wondered why a company like valve took an opengl engine and ported it to directx (for hl1) when no one would argue that directx was better then. Hell, carmack had his famous open letter to microsoft to ensure support for opengl
The DirectX version that Carmack argued against was very, very different from subsequent versions. Microsoft addressed the criticisms, and at this point, there is no particular benefit to using OpenGL except for its cross-platform support.
(By "sexualizing children", I mean graphic pornography, or direct sexual contact; not "birds and bees" discussions.) There's no lack of evidence of this.
If the designers were 15% sure that the plane would crash, you would not get on the plane. If scientific evidence shows a 15% likelihood that we need to clean up our act or our comfy, cozy lives as we know them will end, you *should* be thinking about what can be done to change that.
Using my argument on that side of the debate is called the "precautionary principle." It's a logical fallacy, related to the fallacy of the begged question. Basically, we'd never have left the safety of our trees or our caves if we assumed the worst-case outcome was a foregone conclusion.
No matter what we do as a society, there will be serious negative consequences for some people.
How many people would get on a medical protocol if it had only a 90% cure rate? What if the designers were only 85% sure it would help you live past the next week?
That analogy isn't helpful, because 99.9999% of people alive now will still be alive if the Earth is allowed to warm unhindered. Some will even benefit, if more land becomes available for agriculture and other warm-weather activities.
On the other hand, while I'm not qualified to discuss climatology myself, I am very aware of what a convenient argument global warming makes to radical-leftist elements (read: damned hippies) who already have a beef with capitalism and Western civilization in general. People absolutely have suffered and died every time those elements have gotten their way. There has to be a way to separate the political considerations from the scientific ones, so that truly-rational decisions can be made about the extent of anthropogenic climate change and what, if anything, should be done about it. But I'm not convinced we're able to make that call yet.
How many people here would get on an airplane if only about 90% of the principles behind aerodynamic science were understood? Or if the designers were only 85% sure it would fly?
Not many, huh?
Well, why are you so gung-ho about rewiring the Western world's economy based on degrees of consensus and confidence that aren't even that good?
Carl Sagan was quite the environmentalist himself, but he still believed that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." I've never been a fan of that quote because it implies that scientific scrutiny should be applied only to a degree sanctioned by someone's value judgment. But I think a reasonable rephrasing would be, "Extraordinary demands require extraordinary justification."
Credit where it's due: the IRS reps I've dealt with (as a small business owner with the occasional accounting glitch) actually have been courteous, professional, and helpful.
You can certainly complain about the agency's policies, and loathe the beast it's designed to feed, but the IRS's "customer service" is much better than most people have been led to expect.
Also keep in mind that you're not likely to get an unbiased view of the legal landscape from the Attorney General of Utah's web site. Major court decisions since the 1970s (where their cites all come from) have gone the other direction entirely, e.g. http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp ?documentID=13519. And gee, not a Commerce Clause citation in sight.
The Indianapolis case, and the Supreme Court's refusal to grant cert to it, is the one that really makes it impractical to dictate content restrictions to retail game publishers.
The decisions referenced on the Utah site are aberrations. Go back a bit farther than 30 years, and you'll see stuff like the Comstock Laws being cheerfully upheld by the Supreme Court. Want to see that happen again? By all means, write your Congressman and ask for more anti-video game legislation.
My whole point being, don't give the Tipper Gores of the world any legal ground that they haven't actually taken.
I did a quick google: "The Supreme Court of the United States has stated many times that children can be protected from adult material and such protection does not violate the minor's First Amendment rights. Material that is inappropriate for children can be regulated but it cannot be completely outlawed."
Keep Googling until you come up with the Supreme Court's definition for 'adult material'.
Stores are prohibited from selling Playboy magazine to minors for example.
It'll be good to hear you cite the specific law on this one.
Hint: there isn't any. Stores don't sell Playboy to minors because they don't want to be confronted by torch-wielding zealots the next day.
Your reasoning is precisely analogous to that of the probably-90% of the population who think that it's "illegal" to let kids into an R- or X-rated movie. There is absolutely no legislation of this nature in place. The MPAA was formed under the same threats as the ESRB.
The MPAA rating system guarantees that the only movies that receive distribution are those below a particular rating, and the ESRB ratings will have the same effect. Some people have a problem with that. I don't want the only commercially-viable games to be the ones that happen to be fit for children... but for some reason, you and a hundred other apologists who show up in these threads seem to want exactly that. To back up your arguments, you literally make up laws where none exist.
I'm just calling you out on that, because the more those "b... but... but it's illegal to sell Playboy or show Fight Club to kids" arguments see the light of day, the more people believe them, and the easier they are to accept.
Point 1: Citing your own post may be what amounts to law-review material at your school, but not in most cases.:)
Point 2: I'm still waiting for your explanation of why the same methodology of regulation wouldn't apply to books, movies, and other forms of media. If all you need to do to impose prior restraint is invoke the Commerce Clause, "it's only a rating system," and "we must protect minors," then how come the last five thousand or so attempts to regulate print publishing have been shot down by various courts?
How does your (quite flawed) understanding of the Commerce Clause account for the Supreme Court's history of rejection of prior restraint?
If the Federal government doesn't regulate the publication of books, movies*, paintings, or jigsaw puzzles, why are you and your friends so enthusiastic about allowing it to regulate games? What's the difference?
*: To forestall the inevitable horde of replies, no, the MPAA is not a government agency.
I'd say you need to tell the Supreme Court that, but again, I have a feeling they already agree with you.:-P
Commerce is not speech, but speech can be a product bought and sold commercially. Furthermore, the First Amendment comes, well, first, as in before the Commerce Clause. Its language brooks no exceptions.
I'd invite you to take your reasoning to its logical conclusion. How could any controversial books have survived prior-restraint challenges in Federal court? By your reasoning, we should have nothing to read but Mother Goose... because, hey, books and magazines are bought and sold, too.
Re-read my post, seems like you are having reading comprehension problems today -- it's not about the flipping constitution.
In the USA, it most certainly is about the flipping constitution. The Constitution limits the scope of governmental authority very explicitly in some areas, and prior restraint on the press is literally first on the list.
If the "public" wants to play a role in content regulation, their only recourse is to not buy the content in question. You don't seem to understand that, but you're obviously in good company.
You cannot lie in court and claim you are protected under the First Amendment.
Perjury is a legitimate crime.
Campaign finance laws exist dealing with fair political campaigns.
Those laws are without exception unconstitutional, regardless of what a court says on the matter. The authors of the Constitution did not provide for the regulation of campaign financing, so there is no legitimate role for the use of force here.
False advertising relates directly to what you can say in advertising.
RTF Constitution. In the USA (which I realize may not be your home country) the "public" is not given the authority to regulate speech.
There is no exception in the First Amendment for commercial speech. There is no exception in the First Amendment for "protecting the children." There is no exception in the First Amendment for comics, video games or pornography. There is no exception in the First Amendment for boobies on TV.
There are no exceptions in the First Amendment, period. The Founders didn't even include any grammatically-atrocious qualifying clauses like they added to the Second Amendment. They simply did not want the government to be involved in regulating content production and distribution (the 'press' at the time.)
The trouble is, your idea of "reasonable restrictions" is different from mine, and most likely different from Joe Lieberman's, Tipper Gore's, and Hillary Clinton's. Jack Thompson has his own set of "reasonable restrictions" in mind. If the government gives weight to anyone's opinion about "reasonable restrictions", the favoritism it shows has the effect of trampling the First Amendment into the ground.
So let them try... and let the publishing industry grow a pair of balls and take the offensive for once in its life. (Well, twice, if you count Larry Flynt.)
The second is that the reason the ESRB exists is because the industry realized that the alternative to self-regulation was government regulation.
Except it isn't.
There are still a few courts in the US that understand the meaning of the phrase Congress shall make no law.
The ESRB was formed in response to empty threats by people like Joseph Lieberman and Hillary Clinton. These legislators demanded that the industry form its own ratings body to forestall further legislation. Of course, they lied about the "forestalling further legislation" part.
I'm convinced that the best way to get government out of the content-rating business is to let them try to impose legislative content standards... and either let the Supreme Court strike them down, as they have in what must be a thousand other prior-restraint cases, or show the country's true colors by upholding the restrictions. Only then will reform be possible.
The current system of veiled threats and Hillary-style "investigative subcommittees" is neither Constitutional nor tolerable.
They said that the original V-Chip would put control of TV content in the hands of parents and take government out of the censorship business.
THEY LIED.
Censors always lie.
If you think it'll be any different this time -- if you think that if you give them what they want, they'll go away happy -- then you're either hopelessly naive or just plain nuts.
Yeah, unfortunately, using Google Maps is really awkward. I can't even tell how to scroll the map, frankly, since there's no way for the phone to confuse an AJAX "dragging" operation with the normal page-scrolling action.
Slashdot Mirror
Who gets to define 'sexual abuse,' though? Morality In Media? The specific problem I have with your post is that it equates physical abuse with letting your kid get a peek at Janet Jackson's nipple. (If there's some other way to interpret "I mean graphic pornography, or direct sexual contact", it escaped me.)
The absolute reality is simple: no one, anywhere, can point to valid scientific evidence that exposure of a child to a given form of media causes quantifiable psychological harm. Human beings are not as programmable as that. If your 8-year-old accidentally sees Gangbang Girls #18, she'll wrinkle her nose and ask you, as her parent, what the heck is up with that stuff. Your reaction to her question is where any potential for psychological harm lies. (You are aware that panicked exclamations of "OMG little Bobbie saw a naked person!11!!!" are pretty much a uniquely-American phenomenon, right?)
Any attempt to limit the First Amendment's scope should require the highest standard of evidence of imminent harm to society. It isn't reasonable to use studies about genuine child sexual abuse, which involves everything from physical injury to gross violations of trust, to push an anti-pornography agenda. When you equate these things, you're helping groups like Morality in Media to pretend that they're in possession of that "high standard of evidence." That wouldn't be such a problem if our legislators weren't so damned eager to believe them.
But way back when, I always wondered why a company like valve took an opengl engine and ported it to directx (for hl1) when no one would argue that directx was better then. Hell, carmack had his famous open letter to microsoft to ensure support for opengl
The DirectX version that Carmack argued against was very, very different from subsequent versions. Microsoft addressed the criticisms, and at this point, there is no particular benefit to using OpenGL except for its cross-platform support.
(By "sexualizing children", I mean graphic pornography, or direct sexual contact; not "birds and bees" discussions.) There's no lack of evidence of this.
Really? Let's see some.
If the designers were 15% sure that the plane would crash, you would not get on the plane. If scientific evidence shows a 15% likelihood that we need to clean up our act or our comfy, cozy lives as we know them will end, you *should* be thinking about what can be done to change that.
Using my argument on that side of the debate is called the "precautionary principle." It's a logical fallacy, related to the fallacy of the begged question. Basically, we'd never have left the safety of our trees or our caves if we assumed the worst-case outcome was a foregone conclusion.
No matter what we do as a society, there will be serious negative consequences for some people.
How many people would get on a medical protocol if it had only a 90% cure rate? What if the designers were only 85% sure it would help you live past the next week?
That analogy isn't helpful, because 99.9999% of people alive now will still be alive if the Earth is allowed to warm unhindered. Some will even benefit, if more land becomes available for agriculture and other warm-weather activities.
On the other hand, while I'm not qualified to discuss climatology myself, I am very aware of what a convenient argument global warming makes to radical-leftist elements (read: damned hippies) who already have a beef with capitalism and Western civilization in general. People absolutely have suffered and died every time those elements have gotten their way. There has to be a way to separate the political considerations from the scientific ones, so that truly-rational decisions can be made about the extent of anthropogenic climate change and what, if anything, should be done about it. But I'm not convinced we're able to make that call yet.
How many people here would get on an airplane if only about 90% of the principles behind aerodynamic science were understood? Or if the designers were only 85% sure it would fly?
Not many, huh?
Well, why are you so gung-ho about rewiring the Western world's economy based on degrees of consensus and confidence that aren't even that good?
Carl Sagan was quite the environmentalist himself, but he still believed that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." I've never been a fan of that quote because it implies that scientific scrutiny should be applied only to a degree sanctioned by someone's value judgment. But I think a reasonable rephrasing would be, "Extraordinary demands require extraordinary justification."
Can anyone argue with that?
Hint: Google Maps 2007 = MS Flight Simulator 1992.
If there are no restrictions on who can transmit what, whoever transmits the strongest signal wins. It's not going to be you.
News flash: It's not 1934 anymore.
Good luck "winning" the battle against spread-spectrum process gain.
"The game seems to be insanely huge and how is it that there can be an infinite amount of different creates created in the game?"
I think you misspelled "crates."
I guess we'll just have to see, then. Your stance has not fared well in the courts for the last 20 years or so.
Credit where it's due: the IRS reps I've dealt with (as a small business owner with the occasional accounting glitch) actually have been courteous, professional, and helpful.
You can certainly complain about the agency's policies, and loathe the beast it's designed to feed, but the IRS's "customer service" is much better than most people have been led to expect.
You'd be surprised at how far you can push XmlHttpRequest() these days. :-P
Also keep in mind that you're not likely to get an unbiased view of the legal landscape from the Attorney General of Utah's web site. Major court decisions since the 1970s (where their cites all come from) have gone the other direction entirely, e.g. http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp ?documentID=13519. And gee, not a Commerce Clause citation in sight.
The Indianapolis case, and the Supreme Court's refusal to grant cert to it, is the one that really makes it impractical to dictate content restrictions to retail game publishers.
The decisions referenced on the Utah site are aberrations. Go back a bit farther than 30 years, and you'll see stuff like the Comstock Laws being cheerfully upheld by the Supreme Court. Want to see that happen again? By all means, write your Congressman and ask for more anti-video game legislation.
My whole point being, don't give the Tipper Gores of the world any legal ground that they haven't actually taken.
I did a quick google: "The Supreme Court of the United States has stated many times that children can be protected from adult material and such protection does not violate the minor's First Amendment rights. Material that is inappropriate for children can be regulated but it cannot be completely outlawed."
Keep Googling until you come up with the Supreme Court's definition for 'adult material'.
Stores are prohibited from selling Playboy magazine to minors for example.
It'll be good to hear you cite the specific law on this one.
Hint: there isn't any. Stores don't sell Playboy to minors because they don't want to be confronted by torch-wielding zealots the next day.
Your reasoning is precisely analogous to that of the probably-90% of the population who think that it's "illegal" to let kids into an R- or X-rated movie. There is absolutely no legislation of this nature in place. The MPAA was formed under the same threats as the ESRB.
The MPAA rating system guarantees that the only movies that receive distribution are those below a particular rating, and the ESRB ratings will have the same effect. Some people have a problem with that. I don't want the only commercially-viable games to be the ones that happen to be fit for children... but for some reason, you and a hundred other apologists who show up in these threads seem to want exactly that. To back up your arguments, you literally make up laws where none exist.
I'm just calling you out on that, because the more those "b... but... but it's illegal to sell Playboy or show Fight Club to kids" arguments see the light of day, the more people believe them, and the easier they are to accept.
As discussed in another post, it does not. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=260273&cid=201 07825 [slashdot.org]. Hint: note words like "ratings" and "minors".
:)
Point 1: Citing your own post may be what amounts to law-review material at your school, but not in most cases.
Point 2: I'm still waiting for your explanation of why the same methodology of regulation wouldn't apply to books, movies, and other forms of media. If all you need to do to impose prior restraint is invoke the Commerce Clause, "it's only a rating system," and "we must protect minors," then how come the last five thousand or so attempts to regulate print publishing have been shot down by various courts?
How does your (quite flawed) understanding of the Commerce Clause account for the Supreme Court's history of rejection of prior restraint?
If the Federal government doesn't regulate the publication of books, movies*, paintings, or jigsaw puzzles, why are you and your friends so enthusiastic about allowing it to regulate games? What's the difference?
*: To forestall the inevitable horde of replies, no, the MPAA is not a government agency.
I'll clue you in: commerce is not speech.
:-P
I'd say you need to tell the Supreme Court that, but again, I have a feeling they already agree with you.
Commerce is not speech, but speech can be a product bought and sold commercially. Furthermore, the First Amendment comes, well, first, as in before the Commerce Clause. Its language brooks no exceptions.
I'd invite you to take your reasoning to its logical conclusion. How could any controversial books have survived prior-restraint challenges in Federal court? By your reasoning, we should have nothing to read but Mother Goose... because, hey, books and magazines are bought and sold, too.
The first amendment does not apply to the public, it appies only to Congress.
It applies to all governmental entities on US soil. (Try having your small-town city council ban a particular religion and see how far you get.)
Again, the "public's" ignorance of, and/or disagreement with, the First Amendment does not invalidate it.
If a private distributor such as Wal-Mart wants to demand the formation of an ESRB-like board, that is perfectly fine.
If parents get together and demand an ESRB-like rating system by voting with their dollars, that's also fine.
If Joe Lieberman threatens to impose content legislation if the industry doesn't form the ESRB, that is a direct violation of the First Amendment.
Really. This stuff isn't that hard to understand, is it?
Re-read my post, seems like you are having reading comprehension problems today -- it's not about the flipping constitution.
In the USA, it most certainly is about the flipping constitution. The Constitution limits the scope of governmental authority very explicitly in some areas, and prior restraint on the press is literally first on the list.
If the "public" wants to play a role in content regulation, their only recourse is to not buy the content in question. You don't seem to understand that, but you're obviously in good company.
You cannot lie in court and claim you are protected under the First Amendment.
Perjury is a legitimate crime.
Campaign finance laws exist dealing with fair political campaigns.
Those laws are without exception unconstitutional, regardless of what a court says on the matter. The authors of the Constitution did not provide for the regulation of campaign financing, so there is no legitimate role for the use of force here.
False advertising relates directly to what you can say in advertising.
Fraud is not speech.
RTF Constitution. In the USA (which I realize may not be your home country) the "public" is not given the authority to regulate speech.
There is no exception in the First Amendment for commercial speech.
There is no exception in the First Amendment for "protecting the children."
There is no exception in the First Amendment for comics, video games or pornography.
There is no exception in the First Amendment for boobies on TV.
There are no exceptions in the First Amendment, period. The Founders didn't even include any grammatically-atrocious qualifying clauses like they added to the Second Amendment. They simply did not want the government to be involved in regulating content production and distribution (the 'press' at the time.)
The trouble is, your idea of "reasonable restrictions" is different from mine, and most likely different from Joe Lieberman's, Tipper Gore's, and Hillary Clinton's. Jack Thompson has his own set of "reasonable restrictions" in mind. If the government gives weight to anyone's opinion about "reasonable restrictions", the favoritism it shows has the effect of trampling the First Amendment into the ground.
So let them try... and let the publishing industry grow a pair of balls and take the offensive for once in its life. (Well, twice, if you count Larry Flynt.)
The second is that the reason the ESRB exists is because the industry realized that the alternative to self-regulation was government regulation.
Except it isn't.
There are still a few courts in the US that understand the meaning of the phrase Congress shall make no law.
The ESRB was formed in response to empty threats by people like Joseph Lieberman and Hillary Clinton. These legislators demanded that the industry form its own ratings body to forestall further legislation. Of course, they lied about the "forestalling further legislation" part.
I'm convinced that the best way to get government out of the content-rating business is to let them try to impose legislative content standards... and either let the Supreme Court strike them down, as they have in what must be a thousand other prior-restraint cases, or show the country's true colors by upholding the restrictions. Only then will reform be possible.
The current system of veiled threats and Hillary-style "investigative subcommittees" is neither Constitutional nor tolerable.
They said that the original V-Chip would put control of TV content in the hands of parents and take government out of the censorship business.
THEY LIED.
Censors always lie.
If you think it'll be any different this time -- if you think that if you give them what they want, they'll go away happy -- then you're either hopelessly naive or just plain nuts.
WTF, this wasn't supposed to be funny. It's a real shortcoming with the Maps application that keeps it from being useful on hikes and stuff.
Yeah, unfortunately, using Google Maps is really awkward. I can't even tell how to scroll the map, frankly, since there's no way for the phone to confuse an AJAX "dragging" operation with the normal page-scrolling action.