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.
In your face parents (Score:4, Insightful)
Now parent can focus on what's most important to them... consuming propaganda.
Well, Screw Democrats then (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Well, Screw Democrats then (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not if the parents approve?
If your legal guardian feels that you are old enough and responsible to enjoy said entertainment then it should be their right. It should also be their right to prevent their child from playing such things if they so desire by not giving the money to their kids in the first place and/or monitoring their internet activities.
If you bring up tobacco and alcohol, those things are of course dangerous and have been scientifically proven to cause harm. That said, once you are 18 then I believe you should be able to put whatever into your body you feel like, but a parent giving his kids cigarettes is about as negligent as giving them some mercury or cyanide to play with.
Video games and even content of pornographic nature has never been conclusively shown to cause physical or mental harm to the average human. Yes, there are cases where people play a video game and flip out (like kids jumping out of windows because they thought they could fly like in Pokemon), but the same thing could be said about a psycho who reads the Bible or Koran and kills someone because he claims god told him to do it.
Again, if a parent feels their child can handle it or just don't care, they'll buy it for them anyways. Its kind of just stupid to have more laws on an issue that in reality is a moot point.
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I sure did. In fact, my parents were serving themselves and I was a pre-teen. I tried it and didn't like it. I didn't have an interest in alcohol until I was in my mid-twenties. I was also exposed to cigarette smoke before I hit 18, and have no interest to chain-smoke.
I say let parents do some parents and only get into trouble if there is some obvious deleterious issue that manifests itself. If the kid ends up well adjusted, then th
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1) The **creation** of video games that are not appropriate for children
2) The selling of adult video games to minors
The problem with #1 is that it is blatant censorship. The problem with #2 is that any video game that is not appropriate for children will be immediately pulled from store shelves. No retailer will want to run the risk of accidentally running afowl of the law. Walmart especially will pull the things on "moral grounds." So in effect, it *wi
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The problem with #2 is that any video game that is not appropriate for children will be immediately pulled from store shelves. No retailer will want to run the risk of accidentally running afowl of the law. Walmart especially will pull the things on "moral grounds." So in effect, it *will* be censorship, albiet indirectly.
I'm not from the US, but I think minors can't buy alcohol, right? That didn't have the effect of alcohol being pulled from the shelves. Perhaps this is just an effect of the video-game industry maturing. 15 years ago your statement would be true. Now I'm not so sure anymore.
Filip
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Just a reminder, Hillary, Obama and Edwards have all pledged to keep the troops IN Iraq until at least 2013. I think that's why they're considered 'electable', because the powers that be will allow us to elect them (unlike my personal favorite candidate, who was deemed 'unelectable' from the start, presumably because he won't be allowed to be elected no matter what).
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In my elementary school the bullies beat up for an average of about 45c... so, yeah, it does. As an aside I very much doubt that this behavior was learned from Grand Theft Auto, which did not exist yet.
I want to believe you weren't actually trying to say that nobody IRL steals cars but people have done it before. Yes, real life does in fact include
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This single issue is so important that I will vote for Gulianni. His policies may include 1984 type directives, but at least he will not make GTA V illegal.
I can already see this thread is going to go in a bad direction and the negative moderation points will be flying...oh well.
If one were really serious about this one particular issue that I don't see how you could support Gulianni or anyone else. You'd really need to back Ron Paul. He is the closest to being a Libertarian candidate. In general the Republicans and the Democrats both want to take away your rights -- they just differ on which of your rights they want to take away.
I have a very hard tim
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I'm watching him on Meet the Press right now seeing his chances sink even lower.
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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
thank goodness (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Well, Screw Democrats then (Score:4, Insightful)
On the contrary, you should never STOP debating it and you should strie to make sure the politicians know that whichever of them does it more will be losin votes. Make them compete about who will do it the least.
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Re:Well, Screw Democrats then (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, Screw Democrats then (Score:4, Informative)
Yup (Score:5, Funny)
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Title is incorrect... (Score:3, Informative)
That makes some sense - just like rating movies.
Re:Title is incorrect... (Score:4, Insightful)
That makes some sense - just like rating movies.
Ok, But that's what we have NOW. We have a voluntary ratings system that the industry standardizes on. Same as the movie industry.
The catch is they're trying to make it illegal to sell these games to minors, which, well, yeah. That's a bit beyond what they currently have going in the film industry. Yes, if you're 14 you'll been shooed out if you try to see a R rated movie, and most rental stores will stop you from renting "Faces of Death". But it's not outright illegal. And most retailers and rental stores will shoo you away if you're not old enough to buy a M rated game. But again, not illegal if the occasional kid slips through.
Proponents of "video game regulation" aren't really interested in the market, or even protecting kids. They know that 99% of people over the age of 30 think "Pong", "Pac-man", and "Space Invaders" when they think video games, and are exploiting them wanting to make sure the industry stays that way. It's a cheap political ploy, nothing more.
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.
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Normally the deal on self regulation is "if you can't work it for yourselves the government will do it for you"
The gaming industry is obviously young and naive (Score:5, Insightful)
And so are their customers. (Score:3, Insightful)
The game industry has adopted the same solution as the film industry - they rate their product according to age group. The difference is that the ratings are circumvented far more often.
Parents think the word "Game" and their internal association is probably something like "Monopoly". Despite the obvious flaws in the idea that games are li
Something of a Stretch (Score:5, Informative)
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Why cant they be treated like the movie studios? (Score:5, Informative)
Why cant the politicians and the industry come together and set up a system thats just like the MPAA ratings system and policed the same way? Oh wait, they did, its called the ESRB.
I guess the problem is the small number of highly publicized incidents (Hot Coffee, various games where the clothes and human body are seperate meshes and therefore you can "remove" the clothes and get a "naked body" and others) where the ESRB has been forced to change the rating given to a game.
What the video game industry needs is a lobby group as powerful as the MPAA is (they have a lobby group but it doesn't have much influence in the halls of power). They should try and get the retail stores on side (perhaps get the big retailers to push arguments like "we do everything we can to check that people are legally allowed to buy these games" or something)
Hrm! (Score:5, Insightful)
A few examples:
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. A store selling 18+ games to twelve-year-olds should be punished.
Good idea, honestly. Sorry, but I found Hot Coffee pretty stupid.
Again, I approve of that idea, greatly.
After all, this legislation is going to affect underage people, unlike Jack Thompson's ideas of banning such games for everyone.
Sounds perfectly unconstitutional to me (NS) (Score:2)
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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.
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Why do I get the feeling most of the posts that are against any regulation here are either by kids under 18 or people who don't have kids?
While these rules they're attempting to install may inconvenience you a little, try to look past your own somewhat selfish needs and maybe understand what good this might have for the rest of the community.
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Re:Hrm! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hrm! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fining a video game store for selling certain games to minors? Who decides what games are appropriate for minors? When I was 12, a friend of mine and I played Doom II on his Sega Saturn, and neither of us was harmed by it, even when we decided to have fun and run around with the chainsaw, spewing blood all over the place. When I was 14, I got a hold of a copy of GTA 3, and my friends and I thought it was great fun to run around shooting cops with a rocket launcher, and again, nobody was harmed by it.
What counts as a harmful game? "Hidden sexual content?" I wasn't aware that 12 year olds were harmed by sex as depicted in the GTA games. It is a stretch to claim that after playing a game like San Andreas, teenagers were running around, joining gangs, picking up hoes, and killing cops. If a teenager has emotional problems to begin with, or has trouble distinguishing the fantasy presented in a video game from reality, then they need professional psychological help.
Just how far do we take the "harmful" label, anyway? Is it more harmful to be in a game where your character is a gang member shooting cops, or a game where your character is a pilot dropping bombs over Vietnam and Iraq? Are both games harmful? What about a game where you are a wizard, who throws bolts of lighting at your enemies and electrocutes them? What if the Ender's Game novels were made into a video game; would that be harmful to youth? For that matter, why hasn't Ender's Game been taken off the shelves, or subjected to an age requirement: Ender murders a few of his classmates, with his bare hands, and then leads an army to commit genocide. Why isn't Mrs. Clinton calling for a crack down on violent novels as well, which describe violence in quite a bit of detail, far more than a video game can (video games can only provide a visual and audio reference; a written work can describe all the senses in a single passage)?
Of course, video games are an easy target, just like music was an easy target in the 80s and 90s, or hippies were an easy target in the 60s and 70s, or Jazz singers in the 20s. A candidate who wants to say they are protecting our youth only needs to find an easy target, and they are good to go: Lieberman chose Marilyn Manson, Al Gore chose Twisted Sister, and Hillary Clinton chose San Andreas. I doubt that any of them actually care about our kids, except to try and get our votes.
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If I were a parent looking to censor my kids' games, I'd be more worried about the second than the first. A game in which you are a gangster shooting cops portrays behaviour that both I and the State firmly discourage. A game in which you are a pilot blowing up Iraqis portrays behaviour that I firmly discourage, but f
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If you were a parent trying to give your child some proper education in that aspect, the effect might be somehow negated if you kid continues playing Manhunt, afterwards.
That's just it, she's trying to cater to people who want to ignore their children by punishing all of us. I -want- to have 18+ games that I can purchase for my own usage! Why should japan get all the fun?
I have a child, and I'm no worried about him playing inappropriate content. Our entertainment systems are all in public areas and he isn't allowed to play them all by himself. My wife and I pay attention to him.
Now I have to vote independent. I won't vote for her.
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GTA3 does, actually. If all you're after is a rampage, then you can freely drive around, cause mayhem, fight some cops, get killed, and repeat. Fine. But if you want to actually progress in the game you have to complete missions, and to do that you generally have to minimise police attention as far as possible. Running over pedestrians is not a good thing in this case.
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Bah! Third, fourth, you're just another corporofacistrepublicrat brainwashed drone.
I vote LAST party. Armageddon party. The last party you'll ever need!
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Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. A store selling 18+ games to twelve-year-olds should be punished.
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.
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Hot Coffee was stupid and way overblown. Watch an episode of CSI where they're investigating illicit drug users, brothels, or any other controversial 'sin' crime. Far more explicit with a greater audience of viewers. And as liberal as Hollywood tends to be, they would certainly object
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Irrelevant. Whether a National ID system works for another country has no bearing on whether it will work for us. No government can be trusted completely, but some can be trusted in ways that others cannot. Given the nature of our Federal Government today, and where it is heading, I can't believe that a National ID card would benefit of
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Regardless, what is you reason for wanting such laws? Why should the sale of videogames be regulated when no other medium in the USA has its ratings regulated by the government?
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All of these questions can be corrected by active parenting. None of these situations requires a government board to get together to review processes and make laws, unless of course we should all just give up on bothering to parent our offspring. you know, just get drunk, fuck, breed, turn over the little brats to someon
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On-site store managers would be subject to a fine of $1,000 or 100 hours of community service for the first offense and $5,000 or 500 hours of community service for each subsequent offense.
And when said retailer is in Canada, Mexico, or China?
The bill would also require an annual, independent analysis of game ratings and require the FTC to conduct an investigation to determine whether hidden sexual content like what was in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a pervasive problem and to take appropriate action
And when the design studio is in France, the UK, Ireland, Canada, South Africa, or China? Especially if they offer their content online or allow to download via the internet with servers hosted out side of the Jurisdiction?
Finally, the bill would authorize the FTC to conduct an annual, random audit of retailers to monitor enforcement and report the findings to Congress.
See above remarks. And to this one, great, another "Random" government inspection. And are they going to go after the big box shops? No. It will be the smaller businesses. Not that there are a lot of them, but there are
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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
Big Brother (and Sister) (Score:4, Insightful)
PGA
Re:Big Brother (and Sister) (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Minor correction (Score:2)
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I like Kucinich, but know he is terribly unlikely to win the primaries let alone the general election.
This pops up EVERY election (Score:2)
Note however, once in office it's all reduced to huffing and puffing and no real progress.
It's the Democrats equivalent of the "abortion issue" where they make a lot of noise to get that particular fascist-leaning voters to vote for them. Then claim "well the rest of congress didn't want to do that" when that same slice of fundies starts to expect action.
Its BS to get votes from soccer moms and other retards.
Once you are ol
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
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Alright. (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? I meet a lot of parents who rent those games because their kids explicitly ask for them, and maybe, just maybe, the content in video games just doesn't hold a candle to that in television, the internet, and perhaps even their o
It's all campaign rhetoric (Score:2)
She supports a measure that sails safely past the first ammendment and rallies concered parents who aren't looking at the big picture. If this was really implemented it would do little to protect childeren and cause a
For once I don't really disagree with her (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree with her on this as much as I did "It Takes a Village [wikipedia.org]. Unless and until science can proof these games harm children there should be NO LAW about them.
FalconCruelity (Score:3, Insightful)
Parenting (Score:3, Insightful)
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Telling people to raise their own kids is not comparable to watching a house burn and not calling 911. If you think so, then you are a borderline fascist.
Subject needs fixing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed that for you.
Honestly, I doubt that H. Clinton gives one whit about games. But her focus groups tell her it'll get her a couple points with the "Think Of The Children" voting segment, so she'll say she's "against violent video games." She'll say whatever'll get the voters off to get elected (the same can be said of many politicians).
On a somewhat related note, Ms. Clinton has always struck me as the kind of person who, if presented with a pistol and a note from that stated if she killed the people on the attached list, she'd be out the door, gun in hand, before checking that the thing was even loaded.
Not (Score:2)
Think of the Interns! (Score:2)
Enforcement is the real issue (Score:2)
In the USA medium ratings are NOT laws (Score:4, Informative)
In the USA no other medium has its ratings enforced by the government. Not the music industry, not the comic book industry, not the internet, not tv, and not the film industry. The MPAA ratings are self-enforced. There is no law against selling a ticket to an R rated or unrated film to anyone. If someone under 17 isn't allowed into an R-rated movie without an adult it is because the movie industry is enforcing those rules, not the government.
There are state and local laws against pornography but to the best of my knowledge there are no state or national laws regulating the sale of violent forms of entertainment.
Numerous laws from places like Indianapolis, St. Louis county, Oklahoma, and Illinois have all been ruled unconstitutional. To single out videogames for regulation would require a mountain of evidence that they are harmful to minors. No such mountain exists.
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...
And this is surprising anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
Seems like a mis-communication here (Score:2)
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Clinton is a corporate whore. The rest of the Dems are letting the industry deal with itself but the control is coming from the right and you yell socialism?
Retard.
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Clinton is a corporate whore.
Wow, way to make a point, dude! Keep sticking it to the man.. I mean woman, whatever..
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The real shocking thing is that the circle jerk picture was taken at the international kill the whales conference. This is a bipartition and international thing where they think if they can make the whales extinct outside captivity, the environmental movement will flounder to nothing and they would have free reign to do wha
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You need to pull your head out of your ass. I'm sorry, but that is one of the most ignorant comments I've read in a while.
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"The United States had the highest breast cancer survival rate, the highest cervical cancer screening rate and the lowest smoking rate."
According that article, no one is best.
The problem with the United States is that people don't take care of themselves. The best health care system is worthless if the people themselves don't care. Preventative care (should) start at home.
Re:Socialism (Score:4, Informative)
No one in the US goes without treatment. Hell, even illegal aliens get treated. It may bankrupt you, but if you are in need of treatment in the US, you will get treated.
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You must have been watching FOX news again, because you are full of shit. People are routinely refused treatment or medication because they cannot pay for it. I guess you are referring to the required MINIMUM treatment at certain emergency rooms. Such treatment options suck because A: If your symptoms do not meet the definition of immediat
Re:Socialism (Score:4, Insightful)
And before someone goes into a rant about the cost, don't you think spending money on fixing your broken and wounded is better than spending billions on killing others?
I've seen people around here saying "oh but its too hard for parents to monitor games 'cos they'd have to play them".. well there are plenty of review sites (and room for new websites that rates games suitability for kids) that comment in more detail about what's in the game than the ESRB rating.
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"Socialism" is when it's not necessary (Score:2)
Yes, it will. Any state will have provisions for state control of some activities. The degree of "socialism" can be defined as the amount of intervention over activities that aren't strictly necessary to be under state control.
I wouldn't like to have police entirely under private control, but I wouldn't like to pay for all the expenses banks have with security, either. Same as fire departments, would you agre
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Yep, the US-health-care system (like anything US) is so much superior to what all of the rest of the population of the world (some ~95%) can offer that it would be much wiser to enforce it there instead of giving it an overhaul.
Those who think otherwise do not have inhaled enough of patriotism and threaten the overwhelming majority of those 'in the know' with angst and terror, quote [health-care-reform.net]: "In spite of the rising health care costs that provide the illusion of improving health care, the
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In another comparison reported by the World Health Organization that used a different set of health indicators, the U.S. also fared poorly with a ranking of 15 among 25 industrialized nations
In that same report, it is noted the if accidents were removed from the statistics, the US would have the number one lifespan in the world.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/11/beyond-those-health-care-numbers-us.html [blogspot.com]
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-the-us-lead-in-life-expectancy-223/ [wsj.com]
http://firstfriday.wordpress.com/2 [wordpress.com]
Re:Socialism (Score:4, Insightful)
Take the following scenario, you are in a car accident, or been shot. Would you want to be shot or in a car accident in say Mexico, or say Norway? This is important because the quality of emergency care you get is a result of the quality of health care. So if more people die in America due to accidents or gun shots then you have two reasons; bad drivers and lots of guns killing people, and health care that is not capable of dealing with those situations.
What you are doing by removing accidents and homicides is being selective in your statistics and focusing on those people that don't do dangerous sports, or do anything that might bring harm on them. Not a good idea...
Re:Socialism (Score:4, Insightful)
The entire point of stats aren't to give credit to your cause. While that is the popular thing to use them for, it is to see where the problems are or the trends. Lets put it this way, If more people are dieing from gunshot wounds in one country where guns are legal for everyone to own then in another country where only government officials, law enforcement or military people can have, the problem isn't the medical treatment, it is the presence of guns. When you do something like a comparison of countries, you have to look for places where things are severely different and find a way to normalize them. Poor people in the UK don't have cars, so normalizing the effect of motor vehicle accident makes sense. Average citizens in the UK and Japan don't carry guns, some can in the US, normalizing for this needs to happen.
So yes, it is entirely appropriate to make a fair comparison. Even when it doesn't agree with your world view.
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That's why it's such a crock. It's basically expanding access to the broken system that lets you die when it's not profitable to save your life.
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(insert manic laughter)
Either you have no idea what you're talking about or just trolling. Personally, I think both.
Re:Think of the children! (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't you pay attention to the last election? Those things don't matter. What matters is "family values."
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So, I guess fat girls [wikimedia.org] are OK, then...