Video Game Free Speech Ruling Aftermath 258
On Monday we discussed the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that a California law banning the sale or rental of violent video games to minors was in violation of the First Amendment's free speech protection. By now, both sides of the debate have had a chance to respond to the Court's ruling. Congressman Joe Baca and CA State Senator Leland Yee pledged to continue the fight for stricter controls on the distribution of violent games, while others cried, "think of the children." Game industry groups were unsurprisingly pleased with the decision, but warned that this won't be the end of it, and asked lawmakers to stop wasting time with such legislation in the future. An article at the NY Times points out how the ruling highlights the lack of clear evidence supporting either side of the debate, and Time notes the Supreme Court's double standard, asking, "Why does the court treat violent images and sexual images so differently?" Finally, an editorial at Gamasutra reminds us that even though most game developers are breathing a sigh of relief, many would like to see the industry shift toward something more creative and meaningful than violence.
Already have a voluntary rating and enforcement (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing newspapers keep missing is that there is already a voluntary rating system out there, which all game retailers adhere to. Console makers have already banned Adults Only games from their consoles, and violent M games are kept away from kids by retailers already. By most tests, the system is more effective than the Movie rating system at keeping kids away from M (R) rated content.
So really, the court didn't rule that you can't have a ban. The court ruled that to overcome the first amendment challenge, California had to prove significant interest in a government-enforced ban above and beyond the already in-place industry ban. Since the California law was only going to add legal confusion to an already working voluntary system, the supremes ruled against them.
Double Standard? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why does the court treat violent images and sexual images so differently?"
To call it the 'court's' double standard seems rather unfair. The justices specifically noted that it was rather odd how American tastes in media, past and present, were highly permissive of violence, even for fairly young children; but much less permissive of sexual material. However, in keeping with their job description, they couldn't really do much about that. 'Miller-test obscenity', while pretty unsatisfactory in a number of respects, is one of the few ways to successfully exempt something from First Amendment protections. For reasons having to do with American culture in the past, continuing into the present, that one doesn't mention violence.
Perhaps more importantly, the court argued that the law was attempting to enforce an (unconstitutional) double standard by imposing special restrictions on violent media that happened to be video games, restrictions that were not imposed on violence in other media: had the law flipped out at violence per se, as people often do about sexual content, regardless of medium(except for stuff old enough to have a gloss of cultural respectability, which is why 120 Days of Sodom is on the shelves and Playboy behind the counter, wrapped in plastic...), it would have at least had a shot at getting some Miller-esque test carved out for it. Since it specifically targeted video games, it was quite arguably an attempt to legally silence one specific class of speakers, rather than a specific perfidious topic(which might not have necessarily succeeded; but would have had a better chance...)
The court, for the most part, was just repeating back to us an observation on our own standards.
Re:Wasting time (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, BTW, in regards to
"Why does the court treat violent images and sexual images so differently?"
a possible answer is: violence tends to lower the demographic pressure, sex to increase it. With limited Earth resources, this is still "think of the children" but on a longer run.
</sarcasm>
Clearly you've never read the bible. Endless killing of people of other religions is "OK" even encouraged by God. On the other hand, extreme societal control of what goes on in "private" bedrooms is mandatory.
Re:How effective are the restrictions? (Score:5, Insightful)
In individual-scale studies, people often demonstrate that subjects primed with violent video games are somewhat more likely to act-out violent behaviors, answer ambiguous prompts with the more, rather than less, violent possibility, etc.
In population-scale statistical work, of the 'epidemiological' style, the results usually seem to be that video games, presumably by providing an extremely easy and attractive(and generally quite cheap, too) timesink for the idle and troublesome youngish males who handle most of society's grunt-level violence, appear to reduce the levels of violence sufficiently intense to show up in crime statistics.
Re:Wasting time (Score:1, Insightful)
Clearly you've never read the bible. Endless killing of people of other religions is "OK" even encouraged by God. On the other hand, extreme societal control of what goes on in "private" bedrooms is mandatory.
Considering you've been modded Insightful instead of Funny, I feel the need to point that this is not actually in the bible.
Re:Wasting time (Score:1, Insightful)
You haven't read the New Testament, have you? Nothing in the Old Testament is mandatory anymore.
But even in the OT, there was no such thing as extreme societal control.
Unconstitutional (Score:3, Insightful)
If something is found unconstitutional and people keep attempting to push the exact same laws over and over, they should be personally fined for the amount of the cost to the system if again found unconstitutional.
Re:Wasting time (Score:1, Insightful)
Pick and choose... pick and choose. Toss away what you don't agree with, keep what you do.
Either follow it ALL, or don't follow it. Poser.
Re:Wasting time (Score:2, Insightful)
You haven't debated with a fundamentalist, have you? Which parts of either Testament are valid is entirely up to whoever you are talking to, and dependent on what point they are attempting to make.
Restricted to Adults != Banned (Score:2, Insightful)
I would actually have liked to see certain computer games restricted to adult sale only. The average gamer is apparently now 37 years old so why should companies not be able to produce games that are aimed exclusively at adults? If a parent wants to show let their kid play Doom or whatever then let them but force the parent to make the choice by purchasing it for them.
By allowing certain games to be restricted to adults we may get more games that were produced exclusively for adults. Some of them might be quite good. Currently if a game goes too far in this direction then it risks the distributor refusing to distribute it for fear of the moaning minnies demonstrating outside their shops or whatever.
Here in the UK we have a ratings system for both movies and video games. This results in many films and games being rated as unfit for children and not for sale to them. They are still available in shops on the high street and supermarkets, its just that the retailer has to look at the person buying it and make a judgement about their age. If they are unsure they ask for ID and refuse sale if they don't see any. Many countries use a similar system for alcohol, guns and many other things.
While this is by no means perfect it does have advantages. The main one is that if something unwholesome is sold to a minor, then the producer's hands are clean. They just point to the retailer who is clearly in the wrong since all adult only material has to be labelled with the appropriate age in big letters on the cover / box / whatever.
I can't help but feel that the current system helps the fundamentalists who feel that this content should be unavailable to everyone since they can use the think of the children excuse directly against the producers of content. If a decent, legally enforceable age restriction system was in place then they would have to concentrate on people letting minors access the material rather than using the same argument to try and attack everyone having access to it. They would certainly find other avenues to attack the people producing stuff they disliked, but by allowing the producers to say clearly that kids should not have access to this as well then it would make it harder to ban it outright.
Re:Unconstitutional (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other side of the coin does the same hold true for people petitioning the courts to overturn laws they view as unconstitutional? Should we have started giving fines to women's suffrage activists? Civil rights activists?
Fines are not the answer. The correct answer is to just not re-elect those people.
Re:Wasting time (Score:3, Insightful)
The Bible isn't just a single body of work, it's a collection of stories and anecdotes spread out across thousands of years, before being written down by many diferent people, supposedly detailing God's word, etc. and then translated by an english king, in order to slip in his own desired revisions.
There. Fixed that for you.
Context can only twist the meaning so much. When the bible says that we should stone a woman to death because she was raped, I think the message is pretty clear. How does the context change that? Two men or women in love with each other, are also to be stoned to death? Not the caring, compassionate God that I personally want to blindly obey without questioning. In fact, that's the reason that fundamentalists of ANY religion scare the shit out of me. Love your fellow man, sure, just don't read the bible verbosely.
That being said, the church has absolutely NO place in politics, and never should. Ban the games or not, religion should have no bearing on the decision.
Re:Wasting time (Score:4, Insightful)
No. That still counts. And gays are still evil and must be persecuted. But it's OK to shave (contrary to Leviticus 19.27). And to wear blended fabrics.
See, Jesus really said that only the parts of the bible that are convenient to our goals of oppressing people who are not like us are valid. I know that's not actually in the bible, but it's true. Honest. The rest of the bible can be disposed of, which is good because bacon tastes good.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)