CA Game Bill Struck Down, Governor Vows Appeal

GamePolitics has the full story today on the removal of California's violent games law. A judge has found it unconstitutional after a protracted legal battle. The law was originally passed back in 2005. "The bill, championed by then-Assembly Speaker Leland Yee (D) was signed into law by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (left) on October 7th, 2005. The video game industry filed suit to block the law 10 days later. Judge Ronald Whyte issued a preliminary injunction on December 22nd, blocking the California law from its planned effective date of January 1st, 2006. Since then, both sides have been waiting for Judge Whyte's final ruling. Today it has come." The law's sponsor Leland Yee is quite disappointed by the ruling, of course, and Governor Schwarzenegger plans to appeal the decision.

Re:Irony

[Kamots]

You do realize that there's no legislation making it illegal for minors to buy violent movies?

You do realize that the only meaningful difference in the sale of violent movies and games comes from apathetic parents that when they hear "game" they translate it as "appropriate for 10 year old"?

Get parents to treat games the same way they do movies, i.e. get them to check the freaking rating before letting little Johnny have it, and there won't be an issue.

But... that requires parents take responsibility. Nope, can't have that! Lets pass some laws instead!

*sigh*

It's just like with porn

[Kawolski]

They'll keep trying to pass laws like this because they've succeeded in passing laws that prohibit selling pornographic material to minors. Restricting the sale of "violent video games" is just seen as an extension of that, and it isn't a difficult task to convince U.S. government lawmakers that controlling a virtual character to chop another person's head off with gallons of blood flying everywhere is more or just as harmful to children as seeing a pair of exposed female breasts. Lobbying dollars are not required. After all, if the "think of the children" mantra didn't work, politicians wouldn't use it so damn often.

Re:Good for them

[Rakarra]

Calling the Governator overly conservative is quite a stretch. As another poster hinted, Arnold is more in the vein of 60's and 70's Republicans rather the neo-cons of the Reagan/Bush era. His biggest problem with the California Legislature at the moment is that he gets better results working with the Democrats than he does with the Republicans who don't think he's conservative enough. And the bill's author and primary sponsor is Leland Yee, a Democrat who's clueless about games, hardly a right-wing figure.

When it comes to media censorship, the Democrats have not had a stellar track record.