Clinton Would Crack Down On Game Content 543
thefickler sends us word that Hilary Clinton has taken a public stand in favor of shielding children from game and other animation content that she deems inappropriate. Quote: "When I am president, I will work to protect children from inappropriate video game content." Politically, this puts her in company with Republican Mitt Romney on the subject of game censorship. Her fellow Democrats are content to let the industry self-regulate.
So now Clinton's everyones mom? (Score:3, Interesting)
And why is the debate on evil video games on again? If a poor kid is exposed to violent games, then parents are at fault, not the government. And if the parents don't give a shit about games, who's to say it stops there? Should Clinton regulate movies too? And what about televised programs? Should kids go to bed at 8pm?
Well, that decided it for me. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've really been trying to figure out how I was going to vote for in the primaries. Since I'm registered Democrat in Florida, I can only vote to Democrats in the primary. I like Kucinich, but know he is terribly unlikely to win the primaries let alone the general election. That left Obama and Clinton as reasonable choices for me since I'm not a fan of Edwards. I've been leaning toward Obama because Clinton just seems to be too populist, almost as if her stance on issues is determined by the changing winds of public opinion. Despite his lack of experience, I think I'm going to have to vote for Obama because this sort of thing goes directly against my belief that government should be getting up into this type of thing.
*emo sigh* I'm such a tortured mix of liberal and conservative. No one gets me.
Re:Hrm! (Score:3, Interesting)
What about a store that sells unrated or R movies to children? All media or none, otherwise the constitutional bar isn't met.
After all, this legislation is going to affect underage people, unlike Jack Thompson's ideas of banning such games for everyone.
Chilling Effect. So yes, it does effect adults.
Well, there's always Ron Paul.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Everyone else is probably just going to continue the current administrations game of limiting our domestic rights further, as a means of protecting us from ourselves, while doing next to nothing to give us a true exit strategy for the crap in the middle east.
Re:Well, Screw Democrats then (Score:3, Interesting)
Truth be told (which I am rather embarrassed about now), I voted for Bush in 2000 because and only because of Tipper Gore and Lieberman's stance on video games.
Of course in my defense, not in my wildest dreams would I ever think Bush would pass something like the PATRIOT Act, get us embroiled in a war, and keep the budget in check instead of giving us a 9 trillion dollar deficit.
So to be fair, given the choice between Clinton and Gulianni, I'd vote for Clinton mostly because Gulianni scares me because it appears that he believes in what he says and what he says is that he doesn't mind torture and the removal of very critical things like haebus corpus.
So given the choice of the possibility ending up being in prison for crimes I didn't commit but was forced to confess through torture or not having Grand Theft Auto V... I'll go with the choice that causes me and the rest of the citizens (who would be more likley to be in prison than I would) to suffer least.
I don't like the idea, but you have to have priorities.
Truth be told, I'd like to see Ron Paul as President just because he and congress would be fighting, vetoing, and 2/3s over ruling over everything and there wouldn't be enough free time for little things like these video game laws.
And since Ron did vote against the PATRIOT Act, I'd hope he veto such a thing. I really don't think his benefit as a libertarian As for gutting the Federal Government, he wouldn't have the power since Congress would be opposed to such a thing so at least it would result in Congress not being able to pass stuff willy nilly and we might even get a shut down like we did with Clinton and Gingrich.
Re:Hrm! (Score:3, Interesting)
Screw you and your anti-liberty nanny state. Seriously. Either we believe games are harmful (in which case they should be behind the counter like cigarettes and hardcore pr0n) or they aren't (in which case this should be no more illegal than letting a kid see an R-rated movie). People who want to add more laws in the name of The War On Something make me feel far more violent than does any video game I've ever played.
Re:Hrm! (Score:2, Interesting)
Not bad. Why not punish both? However, most parents have "no idea that [their] children were playing such games and how they could have gained access to them". You can't supervise any single family for such things. By the way and totally unrelated: In Germany (another german example) the law says that parents are responsible for crimes their children commit until they turn seven and after that an expert decides whether they can be held responsible for their actions or not. Noone sues ten-year-olds. In other words, parents are forced to look after their children by law.
Link to original CSM survey (Score:3, Interesting)
I was leaning toward Hillary until I read this survey. She really intends to spend millions of dollars just to (1) determine the effects of games on children (how many times has this already been done in academia?) and (2) to police vendors based on ESRB ratings that are only slightly less suspect than MPAA ratings? This is insane. I'd far prefer to see those same tax dollars put back into the school systems to better educate the children.
Follow the link above and read for yourself. But, to summarize, Clinton and Edwards both skew closely to Romney on this issue. Obama seems the only one who prefers to educate parents and then let them decide what is best.
Perhaps my vote in the caucuses will yet go to Obama...
Poster is incorrect... (Score:5, Interesting)
"I was motivated to take action when I found out that there was embedded illicit sexual content in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The [ESRB] was unaware of the embedded content. I called on the FTC to investigate the source of the content and, as a result, the company issued a recall of the game."
Hillary takes full credit for getting GTA:SA off the shelves. That's not limiting who gets access, that's eliminating access.
Video games are already rated. Parents need to be aware of what their kids are buying, and the current ratings system allows this.
Also, her position in that bill was to create an oversight board to make sure the ESRA was giving "correct" ratings. If you'd like to see her full waffle on the issue (including the part where she shuts up in trade for campaign cash) check out Ars Technica's coverage of the dustup.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051212-5740.html [arstechnica.com]
According to the Ars-ticle, even Jack Thompson knew the bill was a bad idea.
Think about what that means - Hillary is both more dumb and more rabid than Jack Thompson.