Manhunt 2 Banned In Britain 593
westlake writes "Rockstar's Manhunt 2 has been banned in the U.K. for what the British Board of Film Classification calls its 'unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying.' 'There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game.' The company has six weeks to submit an appeal. The last game to be refused classification was Carmageddon in 1997. That decision was later overturned via the appeals process."
Wasn't there problems with Manhunt in Britain too? (Score:5, Informative)
BBC bias is largely to blame. (Score:5, Informative)
Whilst the BBC report mentions that the police have come forward to say that the game had no impact on the killing, it's sad that they omit the very fact that frees the game from any blame, that as mentioned above, the victim owned the game. To me this suggests that they were clutching at straws to find an example of why the game should indeed be banned, and when unable to find one figured they'd use the next best thing and omit the facts that would negate the use of this example.
Of course, it was only yesterday we were hearing about how the BBC has a serious bias problem in it's reporting, so it really comes as no suprise. It's just a shame that only a day later they insist on proving their fault with the fact they once more publish half truths and bring up an irrelevant murder to try and justify the ban.
I'd argue, that the whole reason Manhunt 2 has been banned is not because there is a problem with the game as such, but because the BBFC felt it had no choice due to the public uproar various anti-video game media establishments like the BBC have produced - you only have to look at this weeks Panorama for a top notch example of the problem. How could the BBFC allow a game to be published, that as far as the general public know is responsible for a murder? It's hard to blame the BBFC on this one but easy to see that the British media is the real problem here.
Re:wtf (Score:3, Informative)
That would be the definition of psychotic. [google.com].
They just don't understand (Score:4, Informative)
But that's what makes it FUN!
Re:Its not going to work (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Its not going to work (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Nanny State Strikes Again ... (Score:5, Informative)
These stats are a bit dated, but still suggestive:
Gun deaths per 100,000 population
US Homicide 4.08 Suicide 6.08 Accidental 0.42 [1999]
UK Homicide 0.12 Suicide 0.25 Accidental 0.01 {1999] [*slightly simplified] Some Facts About Guns [gun-control-network.org]
There were 765 homicides in England and Wales in 2005/2006. The numbers are small enough that the work of a single serial killer or a lone terrorist incident can be visible on the charts. 'Homicide' - Long-term national recorded crime trend [crimestatistics.org.uk]
Re:The Nanny State Strikes Again ... (Score:2, Informative)
healthy way to release aggression
Actually, Freudian catharsis [wikipedia.org] is now considered a largely defunct concept; it turns out that people who practice a violent response to stress (eg, hitting a pillow), are more likely to repeat that violent response in a social situation, not less.
IANAP ... but I am a psychology student.
Re:How dare they! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Its not going to work (Score:5, Informative)
Long answer (disclaimer, I am *not* an expert). The PAL variants vary only in sound encoding and this ONLY affects transmitted material- and only with actual analogue PAL.
This is a situation where using "PAL"/"NTSC" as synonyms for 50Hz/625-line, and 60Hz/525-line displays is misleading. Digitally-transmitted and recorded material is not in PAL or NTSC, or SECAM format. (In fact, strictly-speaking, PAL only refers to the colour encoding, not the frame rate or resolution!!)
Yes, the refresh/resolution specs of our digital systems normally reflect the old analogue systems for compatibility, but they're not "PAL" or "NTSC". Remember that games, etc do not use analogue PAL/SECAM video.
Since (AFAIK) PAL and SECAM countries mostly use the same frame/refresh rates, that should be all that matters when it comes to playing back digitally-recorded and generated material. At worst, the system you are playing the game on should be compatible with your TV system (for composite video???) but this will usually be the case anyway. At best, people will be connecting via RGB SCART, so only the refresh/resolution is an issue, and that's the same in both cases.
As I said above, regional lockouts and so on would be more of an issue.
Re:The Nanny State Strikes Again ... (Score:3, Informative)
Note that Washington DC leads the nation in per-capita violent crime, even though they have very restrictive firearms ownership laws ( until recently, private ownership of handguns was illegal ).
Number 49 on the list, Vermont, permits it's citizens to carry concealed weapons without a permit.
So, to those who think more restrictive firearms laws somehow equal a safer society... would you care to explain that?
Re:The Nanny State Strikes Again ... (Score:3, Informative)
Still is, actually. The law was struck down in the Parker case but still remains in effect while DC appeals the decision.
There was some movement in Congress to repeal the law after Parker won but it didn't go anywhere, nor would I want it to go anywhere, as that would strike the case as moot and the Supreme Court wouldn't have any reason to hear it.
Re:Its not going to work (Score:2, Informative)
Also, not all countries get a native language version of games, so there's a very good chance that the game that's sold in, say, Belgium is actually in English (although the packaging and manual might be in Dutch). And importing from Belgium is likely to be cheaper than importing from Oz.
Re:Its not going to work (Score:4, Informative)
First off, you have to defeat region coding. If you get a modchip you've got that done. If not, you have to get a EU copy (or close to EU). France doesn't use SECAM for a long time now, so no worries about that. Besides all games are 'set' to either PAL or NTSC (and if youre talking about variants, then only care if you get a Japan game - they have a modified NTSC there called NTSC-J). As the parent mentioned, the variants mostly relate to the sound, and we don't care about that since most of us use the RCA plugs to get our sound.
Now, if you are getting an import from an US country the console will _NOT_ output NTSC. And before you jump me saying that you did just that and your tv says its NTSC - i know, and the TV doesn't see the difference (well, most TVs don't) because the frequency decoder and the color decoder are usually separate subsystems.
PAL consoles playing NTSC games output PAL-60. What this means is the refresh is 60Hz (interlaced) but in PAL colour. Why should you care? If youre using a tv tuner (like a myth box) you better should because not a lot of TV tuner cards do (and even those that do don't usually have driver support for that strange mode). Setting your card to NTSC will give you a b&w picture. I have fought this for about a month when i arrived at this very resolution, then i had to catch the developer for the cx88 linux module to implement that mode (well, it theoretically was there, but it never worked and no-one tried, so yeah, Hi Mauro
Re:The Nanny State Strikes Again ... (Score:2, Informative)
Parliamentary Sovereignty is vastly overstated both as a legal and political concept. This is mostly the fault of A.V. Dicey, who in the 1880s authored a number of influential books on the UK system that rejected the synthesis expressed in (for example) the British North America Act and various Parliamentary manoeuvrings on the question of Irish Home Rule. In particular he argued very strongly on the concept that Parliament could never permanently give away primary legislative ability because a newly elected House of Commons could seize it back under the nonbinding principle, so therefore Irish Home Rule could only ever be a legal fiction.
Dicey was also an opponent of the perverse verdict rule (in which a jury can refuse to pass a guilty verdict) which has been established in England since the late 1600s and the perverse judgement rule (in which the court's presiding officer may give the most lenient, or no, sentence) which is even older. In particular, he believed that both the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the House of Lords had no right to refuse to apply Acts of Parliament. Those two legal bodies disagreed (JCPC was particularly antagonized, since a number of Privy Councillors entitled to participate in it had close ties to the colonies which had won their own home rule not many years before), and with a historical perspective, won convincingly.
Finally, Dicey put enormous faith in the idea that Parliament itself would never pass an outrageously stupid Act of Parliament (figuring that the House of Lords would block such Bills originating from the House of Commons, and vice-versa), and so should not be constrained from doing so. Funnily enough, forty years after his work on the law of the Constitution in which he made this claim, Parliament outraged him by permanently and irrevocably giving up its sovereignty over the Irish Free State.
This was the start of a long trend of the UK Parliament giving up its sovereignty with respect to wide stretches of the then Empire. Although it "could" repeal the Canada Act 1982 (UK) or the Australia Act 1986 (UK), those countries would simply ignore the result (legally) and be pretty pissed off. These stem from the Statute of Westminster (1931) which in turn had more than a decade of legislative and regulatory antecedents in the wake of Irish independence. Repealing or modifying these would have no legal effect outside the territory of the UK, and also would trigger a diplomatic crisis.
One can think of Parliamentary Sovereignty set against the history of several Parliaments dominated by supporters of a given political faction have fumed and stamped feet and put out Acts having been met with resistance ranging from civil war to a simple refusal by lower officers of the Crown (soldiers, sheriffs, police, prosecutors, judges) to enforce them either regionally or across the whole Realm. No Parliament has ever won such a conflict, and most have been short-lived (and fortunately not very violent). Usually after a Constitutional Crisis, the faction in control of the elected House defeated at the ballot box, leading to the establishment of a new controlling faction willing to pass Reform Acts to extend the franchise, to create more members of the unelected House (especially after the Life Peerage Act 1958), or to reduce the power of the House of Lords against that of the House of Commons and the Government of the Day, to negotiate independence (or devolution), and so forth.
All three primary elements of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty in the UK have been eroded substantially in the past century, and with the c