Games on Trial, Part Two

[Henson]

i thought that the original ban was to ban the selling of violent and sundry games to minors, surely that's not unconstitutional, that's just good sense. i don't get how it works on the States side of the pond, but over here in the UK, the law regarding the sale of inappropriate material to minors is quite clear, and wholly acceptable

I'm not entirely sure, but I think the crux of it here in the States is that the government cannot carry out these kinds of bans, but private retailers can choose to enforce restrictive rules if they want. Similar for R-rated movies: there's no law saying that underage kids cannot buy a ticket for an R movie, but some theatres (not many) stop them anyway to preserve a sort of 'responsible' image.

Actually, it's kinda embarrassing that, as an American, I'm not entirely sure how these things work. Guess I better hit the books...

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

over here in the UK, the law regarding the sale of inappropriate material to minors is quite clear, and wholly acceptable

And that is exactly one of the reasons for the original US revolution and also that the prohibition against the government restricting speech was the first enumerated rights/amendments in the US constitution.

Because our founders did not trust the government to determent what is and isn't "inappropriate". This power would inevitably be abused by those with agendas and political power.

I even suspect that pornography prohibition would be overturned if it were taken to court today as vague, assuming the court chose to hear the case.

You can't define what is and isn't appropriate for my children, and I can't define that for you. That is my job as a parent. And I know some parents will do a lousy job but that is no reason to restrict everyone's freedom.

If you want retailers to prohibit sales to minors then fine write to their CEO, carry a sign out front of the store, and be picky about where you shop. I fully support your exercise of your consumer rights. But the moment you decided it is the job of the government to take the decision out of my hands and you support elected officials who would implement these restrictions into law you become my enemy and the enemy of all of freedom.

Memorize and repeat these simple words "I don't agree with your decision but I support your right to choose."

 

[AdumbroDeus]

I think it's important to understand why the court gave this cetori and why this decision was so strong.

It wasn't really about video games, nor will this decision effect just our industry. Make no mistake this is a landmark decision in two major issues, minor's right and freedom of speech.


What the decision effectively does is two major things.

1. It explicitly states that legislatures cannot create new unprotected forms of speech constitutionally speaking. This means that regulation of material beyond already formed legal doctrines (of which the only real content basis is obscenity which requires no redeeming value, and appealing to the most purient sexual interests). This means that regulation for violence in any media is out, as is any new criteria they might design.


2. It establishes firmly the line that obscenity for children does not include making new categories obscene. It still follows the miller test, only the community in question is different. Furthermore it explicitly states the government cannot regulate any material that isn't already unprotected speech in a discriminatory way towards minors, therefore the entire body of protections for such things applies to minors.


Make no mistake, this is a historical case and has far reaching implications.

 

[grigjd3]

It won't be much longer before the people who are afraid of video games are just a bit too old to be in office. I don't know whether this decision is itself the victory or the victory was already had and this decision clearly represents that.

 

[Lance Arrow]

Lazy parents of California: shut up, sit down and pay some attention to what your kid is playing. It's not the government's job to look after your wretched spawn, it's yours.

 

[Clonekiller]

Most parents need more than the finger, they need a quick boot to the ass, and some classes on parental responsibly. Mandatory ones. Games don't corrupt children, piss poor parenting does that. That and society being fuckheads to them but we can't fix everything. If a child doesn't have a nice nonjudgmental family to fall back on, they largely will have nothing and develop a metric fuckton of issues.

We need some bloody quality control with our parenting anymore largely. Yes, the government shouldn't raise our children for us, but a lot of people anymore, NOBODY is raising their children, and that's the problem. Does a line not need to be drawn somewhere?

Speaking of which, social services needs a huge overhaul, most of them will rather give a child back to their hard drug addict mother rather than letting grandparents take the child because their house isn't immaculate... what-the-fuck!?

Personal experience( My niece) here.

Don't pop a blood vessel. Very true, many people totally suck at parenting. Unfortunately, the progression of society has totally torpedoed good parenting. Is it any surprise that kids grow up weird when mom & dad are never around because they work all the time, or because mom/dad up and left leaving one parent to fend for themselves? When you "liberate" people from their societal roles and responsibilities, society itself goes down the crapper, and the younger generations pay for it. Just ship the kid off to school where politically opinionated teachers will coddle them before dumping them into the real world, where they will get a low paying dead-end job for the rest of their lives, complaining about how the government should take care of them like mommy used to. (Oh yeah, and they get married and have kids of their own, playing the cycle all over again)

That's the difficulty I've seen brought forth in many non game oriented media takes on this ruling as well, both on the media side and on the layman commentary side. As opposed to seeing this ruling for what it is, it definitely is getting some spin as the Supreme Court essentially saying "Mature games should be sold to kids!" We all know that this isn't the case and, if anything, now that there is more public knowledge about the ESRB in general (thanks to this case), I see even stores more likely to follow ESRB guidelines when selling. You are quite right, however, in saying that it's pretty easy to spin this the other way.

Doncha love the media? If there is any political gain to be made, report it that way. Screw the people it actually impacts.

 

[ckam]

I fought the law, and the law lost.
I fought the law, and the law lost.