If a company lies about what is the most objectionable material, or is negligent to produce it to the ESRB, then the ESRB should sue the shit out of them. Sue them to the point where they lose all the money they gained from the misleading rating (a tough estimate, I know). Now there's no incentive to hide objectionable material from the ESRB.
Not quite all money, but they do have a 1 million USD fine for failing to disclose material that leads to a re-rate. Plus there's the money lost from all the recalls off store shelves while they wait for new stickers, etc.
Non-sequitor question: how come DVDs can contain "unrated material"?
Because games are just for kids, natch. Just like anime is only for kids, and can't possible contain mature themes...
One would hope that we would start a lobby group if they start to go too far.
Ah but see THEIR lobby group has the support of the government.
As for the stores - that's their choice, and what's this about a 4 copy limit?
I was referring to the abysmally low sales figures of "Adults Only" games, which most stores refuse to carry. So by holding the AO rating as a sword over the profits of companies, you force them through the chilling effect to "tone down" their games. It's because AO is generally associated with porn.
What happens when the politicians don't feel the ESRB has done enough to ensure a higher rating the lobbyists feel a game deserved? Case in point, Bully. What's to stop the ESRB with being charged with not having "done enough" to ensure that it got a high enough rating that most stores refuse to carry it? (which in itself causes censorship, by having material removed so you can actually sell more than 4 copies)
You misunderstand the source of the material. Hot Coffee and Oblivion were both made using already present material. Hot Coffee was a disabled mini-game, the hack just enables access to it, almost like an undocumented cheat code, only you used memory/resource manipulation instead of just typing it in. Oblivion just removed the bra object, the nude breasts were already textured underneath.
Both games were re-rated due to this content, because it wasn't "added" by a 3rd party, it was already present on the disk. But playing 100% of the game wouldn't have found this material, because you needed the 3rd party hack to access it.
Unfortunately, Sen. Brownback seems to think that his legislation would have prevented Hot Coffee... Which demonstrates that like most politicians, he doesn't actually pay attention.
Also by mandating this, the government is also essentially trying to "force" ESRB ratings on games. I mean, what happens when a company decides to ditch the ESRB to get their game out faster? Compare to "unrated" DVD releases. Granted most stores refuse to sell unrated games, but no-one's pressed the issue yet. What if someone with the financial clout of Take Two decides to release two versions of the next GTA, one that spends 3-4 months being "verified" by a player at the ESRB, and one that gets sold online and is "unrated", and is released 3-4 months before the other version? I suspect the first company to try this will find that rating or no rating, the sales will pour in for the "unrated" and undelayed version...
Consider the "chilling effect". If your game has to be delayed an extra 3-4 months as the ESRB plays through all of it, because it contains so much mature material that they need to document, wouldn't you start taking it all out in the hopes your game will be processed faster?
Plus there's also the fact that once you agree to follow the government's rules for "verifying ratings", at that point you've agreed that the government can dictate that you've "done enough" to ensure the ratings match what they've determined is "appropriate".
Of course the problem is that they designed this legislation to assuade parental fears about Hot Coffee and the topless Oblivion. But playing 100% of the game, even with cheat codes, wouldn't have found such material, as both required external tweaking in order to access.
So the premise on which he crafted the act is inherently flawed.
Even foreign ratings boards, who are sometimes much stricter, their ratings usually agree with the ESRB ones (in the case of PEGI in the EU, it's actually a bit more lenient, mentioning only the most serious of content descriptors). Of course even those boards don't play all the game, but like the ESRB they do have steep fines for withholding crucial info that would have affected the rating.
But they should talk to their children and explain why they think it's necessary. Not tell them "I'm doing this for your own good." Talk to them about the dangers. Like when you want to know where they're going out that night.
Because if the child thinks you're monitoring them because you don't trust them, or they find out you were monitoring them because you didn't trust them, that can do more damage to the parent-child relationship than anything else. Trust is important.
Besides, if they don't agree, they'll just circumvent you anyway, especially if they think you don't know they know you're monitoring them. Lose-lose.
There are already a number of cities in the US which have IPTV. This works over the IP network without any prioritizing of the video IIRC.
AFAIK, most IPTV in Canada is provided by the Telco directly over it's own internal hardware. The CRTC mandated that in order to ensure quality TV, the telco must reserve a portion of it's network bandwidth for TV packets ONLY, so the service won't be interrupted by a heavy download. A horrible waste of bandwidth I know.
So they are technically prioritizing their own internal data, just not anyone else's.
I'm not sure if that's how the IPTV in the US works.
Because when you say it, it sounds like you are referring to everyday RAM for your PC.
True, but I don't see an issue though, since Joe Average isn't likely to be upgrading his "PCRAM". Someone who knows enough about computers to know about the existence of actual PCRAM won't likely be confused.
But I guess since one group already calls it that, everyone else is powerless to call it anything other than that, right?
Not really powerless, just silly. Why invent new names when it already has one that doesn't conflict with other industry-used terms?
I suppose if people feel wierd calling it PCRAM, then they can use Phase RAM (just like they still call the other kind "Flash RAM")
It's easy to be heroic when you have nothing to lose. It's like instead of rescuing the princess from a fire-breathing dragon, Jimmy is rescuing her from a field mouse.
While in the other valley, Tommy tells the dragon where the knight is hiding out, and tells the princess he had no choice, it was the only way to be able to access the dragons's hoard... er I mean to slowly convince the dragon of the error of his ways...
Look's like it's not as casual a thing as you want to make it out to be.
In my example I talk simply about just deleting the Safari app, not WebKit as well. I differenciate between the app that has permissions to run all sorts of plug-ins, and the web-rendering engine. Any web-rendering flaws in WebKit are mitigated by the fact that the 3rd party web-browser doesn't use it, correct?
Maybe I've been misled, but I've read that deleting iexplore.exe breaks a lot of other system apps, since simply "disabling" it doesn't stop other system apps from opening IE windows. So it seems to me that MS didn't seperate out their "webkit" from the IE app itself.
Nobody would care if MS didn't make the "bundled" software an integral part of the OS.
Then how come all the Apple fanboys on Slashdot ddidn't cry foul when Apple started shipping iLife with all their Mac's?
*goes to Mac box, deletes iLife, installs competitors media creation software*
Hmmm, computer doesn't seem to care.
*goes to Windows box, deletes Microsoft media creation tools, installs competitors' stuff*
*OS breaks*
Does uninstalling IE and replacing it with Firefox or Opera still break Windows? Because deleting Safari & doing the same on my Mac doesn't break OS X...
DRM does not limit your rights. it's the DMCA which makes it illegal to break/bypass/strip the DRM.
A good point. FairUse4WM would technically be legal in Canada, because we haven't adopted our own version of the DMCA yet (it was introduced last parlimentary session, but was dropped due to the election, no word on when it will be re-introduced.)
Many see DRM & the DMCA as going hand in hand, mostly because in the US they sort of do. Any breaking of DRM automatically invokes the DMCA. The distributor is essentially "taking away your rights" by saying "you can't do fair use because I'm invoking DMCA protections through the use of DRM". (An oversimplification I know.)
So, reviewing, your fair-use rights are currently limited by:
(a) laws making protection removal/circumvention illegal (DMCA or equiv.)
(b) contracts your voluntarily entered into.
I suppose the question would be whether (b) can supercede rights granted by the Copyright Act. If so, then (b) is an issue to be dealt with. Otherwise (b) is meaningless since the right to make a fair use copy would supercede any reneging of such rights by accepting the use contract....
(a) would be quickly dealt with if someone could actually challenge the DMCA all the way up to the SCOTUS. Unfortunately, everyone who's violated the DMCA has either settled out of court, or been guilty of violating the Copyright Act anyway, so they get charged with that instead.
What if you've got an MSN account that you only access through libraries and other public places? Tracing the IP of the "false reporter" would only tell the police which cafe you've been to. And if it's a really busy one, and you paid in cash...
Certainly a waste of resources just to end up a dead end...
Or what about "report pedo" messages getting spammed in from zombie PCs?
Certainly an interesting way of dealing with the situation, but wouldn't this be covered by entrapment?
Only if the officer pretending to be a 12 year old offers up the child porn. Usually they just pretend to be an "outgoing/open minded" 12 year old, and eventually the pedo makes the arrestable request. A meeting is then set up, and the pedo walks right into the officer's hands.
I heard of one pedo who was so dumb, they got him to show up at the police station to recieve his promised pictures...
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If a company lies about what is the most objectionable material, or is negligent to produce it to the ESRB, then the ESRB should sue the shit out of them. Sue them to the point where they lose all the money they gained from the misleading rating (a tough estimate, I know). Now there's no incentive to hide objectionable material from the ESRB.
Not quite all money, but they do have a 1 million USD fine for failing to disclose material that leads to a re-rate. Plus there's the money lost from all the recalls off store shelves while they wait for new stickers, etc.
Non-sequitor question: how come DVDs can contain "unrated material"?
Because games are just for kids, natch. Just like anime is only for kids, and can't possible contain mature themes...
One would hope that we would start a lobby group if they start to go too far.
Ah but see THEIR lobby group has the support of the government.
As for the stores - that's their choice, and what's this about a 4 copy limit?
I was referring to the abysmally low sales figures of "Adults Only" games, which most stores refuse to carry. So by holding the AO rating as a sword over the profits of companies, you force them through the chilling effect to "tone down" their games. It's because AO is generally associated with porn.
What happens when the politicians don't feel the ESRB has done enough to ensure a higher rating the lobbyists feel a game deserved? Case in point, Bully. What's to stop the ESRB with being charged with not having "done enough" to ensure that it got a high enough rating that most stores refuse to carry it? (which in itself causes censorship, by having material removed so you can actually sell more than 4 copies)
I doubt they'll be happy until every game company goes under.
;)
Nah, just like P-A said, they'll be satisfied once their own lobbyists are in charge. Instead of those money-grubbing industry lobbyists.
I'll trust politicians to evaluate "done enough" just as soon as I've figured out what "mission accomplished" means...
You misunderstand the source of the material. Hot Coffee and Oblivion were both made using already present material. Hot Coffee was a disabled mini-game, the hack just enables access to it, almost like an undocumented cheat code, only you used memory/resource manipulation instead of just typing it in. Oblivion just removed the bra object, the nude breasts were already textured underneath. Both games were re-rated due to this content, because it wasn't "added" by a 3rd party, it was already present on the disk. But playing 100% of the game wouldn't have found this material, because you needed the 3rd party hack to access it. Unfortunately, Sen. Brownback seems to think that his legislation would have prevented Hot Coffee... Which demonstrates that like most politicians, he doesn't actually pay attention.
Also by mandating this, the government is also essentially trying to "force" ESRB ratings on games. I mean, what happens when a company decides to ditch the ESRB to get their game out faster? Compare to "unrated" DVD releases. Granted most stores refuse to sell unrated games, but no-one's pressed the issue yet. What if someone with the financial clout of Take Two decides to release two versions of the next GTA, one that spends 3-4 months being "verified" by a player at the ESRB, and one that gets sold online and is "unrated", and is released 3-4 months before the other version? I suspect the first company to try this will find that rating or no rating, the sales will pour in for the "unrated" and undelayed version...
Consider the "chilling effect". If your game has to be delayed an extra 3-4 months as the ESRB plays through all of it, because it contains so much mature material that they need to document, wouldn't you start taking it all out in the hopes your game will be processed faster? Plus there's also the fact that once you agree to follow the government's rules for "verifying ratings", at that point you've agreed that the government can dictate that you've "done enough" to ensure the ratings match what they've determined is "appropriate".
Of course the problem is that they designed this legislation to assuade parental fears about Hot Coffee and the topless Oblivion. But playing 100% of the game, even with cheat codes, wouldn't have found such material, as both required external tweaking in order to access. So the premise on which he crafted the act is inherently flawed. Even foreign ratings boards, who are sometimes much stricter, their ratings usually agree with the ESRB ones (in the case of PEGI in the EU, it's actually a bit more lenient, mentioning only the most serious of content descriptors). Of course even those boards don't play all the game, but like the ESRB they do have steep fines for withholding crucial info that would have affected the rating.
But they should talk to their children and explain why they think it's necessary. Not tell them "I'm doing this for your own good." Talk to them about the dangers. Like when you want to know where they're going out that night.
Because if the child thinks you're monitoring them because you don't trust them, or they find out you were monitoring them because you didn't trust them, that can do more damage to the parent-child relationship than anything else. Trust is important.
Besides, if they don't agree, they'll just circumvent you anyway, especially if they think you don't know they know you're monitoring them. Lose-lose.
As I recall I was trying to make a point that people should be productive with their children and maybe things like this won't happend.
I know, I was just pointing out that not only did these parents NOT teach him proper morals, they taught him bad ones at that.
Even if the kid was the spawn of Satan, you can't shoot somebody if you don't have access to a gun. Where did he get the gun?
FYI He was a kid living on a ranch. And while his parents apparently bought a long-gun safe, they didn't lock up the handguns.
Parents have an obligation to teach their kids morals
Such as it's ok to beat children.
The kid's defense lawyers argued that years of physical abuse from his father and step-mom drove him over the edge.
And being a ranch boy, he'd already know how to use a gun, he didn't need a "murder simulator" to help his aim...
Instead of just putting you under surveillance without one?
There are already a number of cities in the US which have IPTV. This works over the IP network without any prioritizing of the video IIRC.
AFAIK, most IPTV in Canada is provided by the Telco directly over it's own internal hardware. The CRTC mandated that in order to ensure quality TV, the telco must reserve a portion of it's network bandwidth for TV packets ONLY, so the service won't be interrupted by a heavy download. A horrible waste of bandwidth I know.
So they are technically prioritizing their own internal data, just not anyone else's.
I'm not sure if that's how the IPTV in the US works.
And replace it with this?
Because when you say it, it sounds like you are referring to everyday RAM for your PC.
True, but I don't see an issue though, since Joe Average isn't likely to be upgrading his "PCRAM". Someone who knows enough about computers to know about the existence of actual PCRAM won't likely be confused.
But I guess since one group already calls it that, everyone else is powerless to call it anything other than that, right?
Not really powerless, just silly. Why invent new names when it already has one that doesn't conflict with other industry-used terms?
I suppose if people feel wierd calling it PCRAM, then they can use Phase RAM (just like they still call the other kind "Flash RAM")
It's easy to be heroic when you have nothing to lose. It's like instead of rescuing the princess from a fire-breathing dragon, Jimmy is rescuing her from a field mouse.
While in the other valley, Tommy tells the dragon where the knight is hiding out, and tells the princess he had no choice, it was the only way to be able to access the dragons's hoard... er I mean to slowly convince the dragon of the error of his ways...
Look's like it's not as casual a thing as you want to make it out to be.
In my example I talk simply about just deleting the Safari app, not WebKit as well. I differenciate between the app that has permissions to run all sorts of plug-ins, and the web-rendering engine. Any web-rendering flaws in WebKit are mitigated by the fact that the 3rd party web-browser doesn't use it, correct?
Maybe I've been misled, but I've read that deleting iexplore.exe breaks a lot of other system apps, since simply "disabling" it doesn't stop other system apps from opening IE windows. So it seems to me that MS didn't seperate out their "webkit" from the IE app itself.
What do you want them to call it? PCRAM? You don't think that will confuse anyone?
Why not, that's what it's already being called, isn't it?
How is this different from "other" Phase Change RAM?
PRAM is Parameter RAM in Apple Macs, and that's a vital part of the computer (well, logic board). Maybe Apple will start using PRAM for its PRAM?
Yeah I was kinda wondering about that...
Besides, isn't "Perfect" RAM a little arrogant? What do they call the next stuff, "Super-Perfect", "Ultra-Perfect", "Mega-Perfect", "Super-Duper"?
Nobody would care if MS didn't make the "bundled" software an integral part of the OS.
Then how come all the Apple fanboys on Slashdot ddidn't cry foul when Apple started shipping iLife with all their Mac's?
*goes to Mac box, deletes iLife, installs competitors media creation software*
Hmmm, computer doesn't seem to care.
*goes to Windows box, deletes Microsoft media creation tools, installs competitors' stuff*
*OS breaks*
Does uninstalling IE and replacing it with Firefox or Opera still break Windows? Because deleting Safari & doing the same on my Mac doesn't break OS X...
DRM does not limit your rights. it's the DMCA which makes it illegal to break/bypass/strip the DRM.
A good point. FairUse4WM would technically be legal in Canada, because we haven't adopted our own version of the DMCA yet (it was introduced last parlimentary session, but was dropped due to the election, no word on when it will be re-introduced.) Many see DRM & the DMCA as going hand in hand, mostly because in the US they sort of do. Any breaking of DRM automatically invokes the DMCA. The distributor is essentially "taking away your rights" by saying "you can't do fair use because I'm invoking DMCA protections through the use of DRM". (An oversimplification I know.)
So, reviewing, your fair-use rights are currently limited by: (a) laws making protection removal/circumvention illegal (DMCA or equiv.) (b) contracts your voluntarily entered into.
I suppose the question would be whether (b) can supercede rights granted by the Copyright Act. If so, then (b) is an issue to be dealt with. Otherwise (b) is meaningless since the right to make a fair use copy would supercede any reneging of such rights by accepting the use contract....
(a) would be quickly dealt with if someone could actually challenge the DMCA all the way up to the SCOTUS. Unfortunately, everyone who's violated the DMCA has either settled out of court, or been guilty of violating the Copyright Act anyway, so they get charged with that instead.
What if you've got an MSN account that you only access through libraries and other public places? Tracing the IP of the "false reporter" would only tell the police which cafe you've been to. And if it's a really busy one, and you paid in cash...
Certainly a waste of resources just to end up a dead end...
Or what about "report pedo" messages getting spammed in from zombie PCs?
Certainly an interesting way of dealing with the situation, but wouldn't this be covered by entrapment?
Only if the officer pretending to be a 12 year old offers up the child porn. Usually they just pretend to be an "outgoing/open minded" 12 year old, and eventually the pedo makes the arrestable request. A meeting is then set up, and the pedo walks right into the officer's hands.
I heard of one pedo who was so dumb, they got him to show up at the police station to recieve his promised pictures...