South Korea To End Its Controversial Gaming Curfew (engadget.com) 26
South Korea is ending a law it announced in 2011 that blocked young gamers from accessing game websites after midnight. "South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, as well as the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, say that they're ending the law to respect children's rights and encourage at-home education," reports Engadget. "The country aims to abolish the law by the end of the year when it revises its Youth Protection Act." From the report: The news doesn't mean underage gamers are entirely off the hook, though. Instead, excessive gaming will be managed by the country's "choice permit" system, which lets parents and guardians arrange approved play times. Still, that sounds more permissive than China's gaming curfew, which bans players under 18 from playing between 10PM and 8AM. Additionally, they're limited to 90 minutes of game time during weekdays, and three hours on weekends and holidays.
As Kotaku reports, the shutdown law was originally meant to curb PC gaming, but it also affected consoles. Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live ended up restricting their accounts to adults. That's why Minecraft is now an R-rated game in the country. "In the changing media environment, the ability of children to decide for themselves and protect themselves has become important more than anything," Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said, according to The Korea Times. "We will work with related ministries to systematically support media and game-use education at schools, homes, and in society so that young people can develop these abilities, and continue to make efforts to create a sound gaming environment and various leisure activities for children."
As Kotaku reports, the shutdown law was originally meant to curb PC gaming, but it also affected consoles. Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live ended up restricting their accounts to adults. That's why Minecraft is now an R-rated game in the country. "In the changing media environment, the ability of children to decide for themselves and protect themselves has become important more than anything," Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said, according to The Korea Times. "We will work with related ministries to systematically support media and game-use education at schools, homes, and in society so that young people can develop these abilities, and continue to make efforts to create a sound gaming environment and various leisure activities for children."
Evidence? (Score:3)
Is there any evidence that curfews and limits have any positive causative effect on student performance or juvenile delinquency?
The correlation is in the opposite direction: Since online games have become popular, teenage crime has declined and standardized test scores have improved worldwide.
give poor incity kids free PlayStation / xbox + IP (Score:2)
give poor intercity kids free PlayStation / xbox + FREE internet and see if crime rates drop.
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When I was a kid if you gave us a computer and a modem we'd pirate games from BBSes or dial-up internet. That's technically an increase in crime ... even if only a superficial crime.
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pirating games is an lot better then hanging out at 16 years old with an gun at 3AM.
Re: give poor incity kids free PlayStation / xbox (Score:2)
Depends by what standard. If you go by the potential sentence, then copyright infringement appears to be definitely worse in the eyes of the lawmaker.
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pirating games is an lot better then hanging out at 16 years old with an gun at 3AM.
Context kind of matters here. If you're out at 3 AM with a gun hunting wild hog, there's a good chance you'll be bringing home some pork. I'm not a parent, but I think I'd be more proud of having a kid who understands firearms safety and brings home some food, than a kid who is up all night breaking copyright laws.
I'm assuming though, you meant some kid out gang-banging with a gun. Yeah, that's an epic parenting fail.
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Well, you may be happy now that they're 16, but when they're 40, the BBS kid turns into a well paid IT security consultant and the one shooting boars turns into ... well, someone shooting boars. And hopefully only boars.
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You could just as easily end up with a kid that gets stoned, works at Subway, and plays video games all night into his 40s. Computers are not a magic genie that grants your wish of future career opportunities. I'm old enough that I've seen plenty of (now adult) kids who just killed time on PCs because it was something to do - it never became a career path. Computers have been nothing more than interactive idiot boxes since Windows XP, and that was 20 years ago.
The kid who goes out hunting learns the valu
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Well, comparing copying games with breaking into stores to steal the CDs, I know which crime I'd prefer.
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And that preference depends on if you're a copyright holder or live in a nearby community.
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Indeed, for the copyright holder one is a loss and the other one actually a profit, because he already sold the CDs to the store.
Re:Evidence? (Score:4, Insightful)
And at the same time, social awkwardness, mental illness, and most critically family creation has crashed. Seems like risk taking behaviour outside of home is associated with both criminality and building new bonds, businesses and families.
In nations that are in grips of the middle and final stages of acute demographic collapse like South Korea, this issue is not a matter of efficiency or criminality. Those are issues of low relevance that only people who are safe, well fed and stable can afford to care a great deal about. For South Koreans, it's a matter of national survival. East and South East Asia are among the most invaded, the most competed for land masses on the planet. If you can't hold your ground there, there are many around you who will happily take it from you.
Just look at your nearest map at how many wonderful, friendly nations with long standing history of love and understanding South Korea has around it. There's a reason why it has one of the longest universal male conscription periods in the world. And they're running out of those young people, because they're not being born in anywhere near sufficient numbers. At least in part because of that social awkwardness and lack of risk taking outside of one's home.
This is why it's often easy to shout from the safety of Western cheap seats about things like crime as if they really matter to a nation that is in the advanced stage of rapidly accelerating demographic collapse while being surrounded by hostile nations who want a chunk of it if they're nice and friendly, and the whole thing when they're slightly less nice and friendly.
Re:Evidence? (Score:5, Interesting)
North Korea as well as SK has a birth dearth. Yet few N. Koreans play electronic games.
Meanwhile, gaming is nearly as popular in the Philippines as in S. Korea, and Filipinos certainly have no problem procreating.
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The birth rates are low in NKor as well, and for the same reason: Insecurity and bleak future prospects. Though for different reasons. In the North because you can't feed them since there is no food, in the South because you can't feed them because you don't earn enough.
The main difference between the two systems seems to be the reason why the poor can't afford having a family...
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This kind of law can be considered a contingent punishment ie. do this or this will happen to you. Much like rewards, in alfie kohns book 'Punished by rewards', endless citations for research studies have concluded that the long term effects of punishments and rewards are extremely detrimental to intrinsic motivations.
All these laws and curfews do is signal a lack of interest in investigating the issues as to why someone chooses to do an activity and work with them on what they do want. They're a 'lazy' way
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maybe an day ends at like 3-4AM like some casinos
As Alan Jackson says (Score:2)
Its five o'clock somewhere
Compliant (Score:2)
I can't even imagine being in such a compliant culture. Can you imagine that? The government making rules on when you can and can't game? If they tried to do that here, we'd have people saying that not-gaming turns you into a 5G antenna.
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I know! Next the government will be mandating what we wear, how fast we drive, seatbelts, and Lord know what else?
Thank goodness we have such a strong, independent, freedom loving mindset over here in the West.
We knew this (Score:1)
You can't force people to sleep (Score:2)
Its all there of course, you don't need any more t (Score:1)