Michael_McCloud said:
Censorship is rather oppressive and annoying, and generally brought about by all the whiny soccer-moms who complain that they don't want their darling angels to hear a bad word or see something naughty on TV. It's life, lady. Shit happens, people say bad things. If you hide little Timmy from it now, he's going to think of it as taboo which will only make him do it more. Now quit being an overprotective worrywort and let your kid grow up. /short rant
As a seller of games, I usually include a warning to parents about content of said games AND make DAMN sure that those guys know exactly what their kid is buying. For example if you're buying God of War for a 5 year old I'm going to make very sure you realize it's one of the bloodiest games on the market. However, this is not censorship but rather a cry to the parent to do their job. We all saw what happened when a nip slipped on national tv. The instant reaction was that the next two years would have very boring half time shows (including some bands that most of the viewers might not have heard of). I should get to censorship before it's to late.
Anyway Censorship is usually associated with tyranny. Because of this association, most civilizations will go to great lengths to make sure that certain media are kept free of it. Probably the media most associated with censorship and the crusade against it is the written word. Seriously you can WRITE anything and still be covered against legal charges in the States assuming it's primarily fantasy. Television and Video games are censored so as not to provoke the wrath of the uninformed mob. Video Games at least have the form of censorship that is market driven rather than government. If it has offensive content to anyone (usually meaning that you can rip somebody in half and drink their blood from their skull, but one boob pops up and your a goner) it will be rated AO and thus all retailers will not stock it at all. Television is more controlled by the FCC. Do I agree with this stance? To a degree, I personally wouldn't want any child of mine to see something like Total Recall uncut when they were 6. And while there have been attempts to create things like v chips and such (for the net too) children, being the resourceful things that they are ALWAYS find loopholes, or the filtering software is so draconian it's not funny.
I think however that the Internet being a digital information, pleasure, fantasy, what have you, network is in itself somewhat self correcting in terms of a crusader trying to force a censor on something. The two best examples of this are the FoxNews "Sexbox" crap and what's been occurring with regards to Jack Thompson.
