Games on Trial

[Negatempest]

I'm not very worried. In GameStops you're not allowed to sell M games to minors. My mom still gets carded. I also highly doubt this means people won't be able to purchase games like that via stores like GameStop because they'll stop stocking it, which is very doubtful. Guys, GameStop stocks tons of shitty games that never sell. I highly doubt they're gonna stop selling some of the most popular games on the earth because now kids will just send out their oblivious parents (like they always have) to fetch their games. Not to mention, just because California passes it doesn't mean every state in the U.S. is gonna pass it.

The only reason I'd be worried is that this case is even being considered. No matter who wins, it's such a stupid thing to fight over, because the constitutional option is the most obvious. Hell, it's not even worrying, just frustrating how broken the system is in this country.

I will make this short since I have responded to this same type of comment many times before. There are about 11 states that want the California law to pass. This is FACT. If this passes, each of these 11 states will make their own laws that determine what kind of content is acceptable. If you think they will stop at simple human violence, you would be wrong. Some states will choose to ban drug use, violence toward women, stereotypes, or demeaning of the U.S. government.

There are also an unknown amount of states that are on the fence about what laws they should make on video games. Just think about that very carefully for a bit.

EDIT: Stereotypes=Degrading minorities/ethics.
Oh and don't forget religion. Since it is not a protected free speech degrading any modern religion would be unacceptable for some states. We ALL know how nit picky modern religion can be when it comes to portraying them.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Baaaaah. People are being useless again.

I guess I feel SLIGHTLY better about them arguing over video games than political correctness. (SANTA? THE SYMBOL OF CHRISTMAS. HE MUST BE THE JOLLY NON-AFFILIATED WINTER HOLIDAY FIGURE FROM NOW ON!)

Still...they're missing the point. I don't see why everyone over a certain age (I'm guessing about thirty here) remains ignorant of teenagers and young adult's...I want to say pop culture, but I feel like that's the wrong word.

Example, (While back) when a kid buried himself under the sand and suffocated for pretending to be like Gaara or something, the news report claimed it was the fault of a show called Narewo that was about sand ninjas or something. Another one is a story on CNN saying Touhou and everything relating to it was ripped/attributed to a stop-motion thing on Youtube playing to the song Bad Apple.

I really don't get how they screw up so badly when five minutes on google could give them far more...and I loathe to say this, because it implies they got it something right, accurate information.

Lost where I was going with this...point is, maybe someone should force a few of them to sit down and play a few games from each genre. You know...so they actually know what they're talking about.

 

[Something Amyss]

I guess you could classify by dad as a "leeburall!", though I personally consider myself in the "common sense" department

I'm mostly just liberal by my family's standards. Voting for anything a Democrat would support makes you an evil commie marxist leftist in my family. not that I don't have left leanings, it's just that I'm nowhere near what they seem to think I am. I'm closer to a Libertarian than a socialist, but guess which one I'm pegged as?

 

[fletch_talon]

Let them regulate.
I still don't see why you can't regulate the sale of videogames to a certain group (ie. minors) whilst having them still be protected by the free speech thing.
I would assume pornography is legally not available to minors, it comes in both text (magazine) and movie formats, yet books/magazines and movies havn't been banned. Not to mention anything less than outright pornography is still available to minors (depending on how hard the stores enforce the ratings).

Why is it not possible to say "create whatever you want just don't sell it to minors"
Why is this apparently the equivalent to saying "don't sell this to minors, oh and that game's banned completely cuz we don't like it"

In other words, why does everything have to be in absolutes, if you lose the right to legally sell games to minors do you really lose the right to free speech entirely?
If the answer is yes, someone needs to review that ammendment.

 

[Grey_Focks]

after listening to the recording, I had three thoughts-

1) it's good to see a couple of them may be on our side, but it looks like the majority aren't

2) I laughed how they all just talk over the one really old lady justice (whose name escapes me atm)

3) I really wish Postal 2 didn't exist.

 

[Lonan]

The focus on freedom of speech in America always confused me. Canada drew its constitution much later than American, and our politicians qualified the freedom of speech as being preserved, so long as its use, does not significantly restrict the rights and freedoms of the overall population.

For example, a Nazi subculture in Toronto decided it wanted to march down Queen Street some years ago. The police caught word of it and broke up the march under the premise that, freedom of speech or not, nobody needs nazism in their community. That restricting this use of free speech does not significantly impede the rights and freedoms of Canadians at large. So long as restrictions are applied responsibly (which I personally agree that they were in this case) there will be no real problems.

I only quote this as an analogy, not to compare video gaming to nazism. But, maybe there are some parts of the gaming products that should be examined, and that we should say, 'dude, seriously, that's wrong.' With its authority and scope of operations, so long as you can find good ministers maybe the courts are the best medium available for that.

"Does not significantly impede the rights and freedoms of Canadians at large." This is what I, and the writers of the US constitution, have a problem with. This is skirting on tyranny of the majority. Because the "average" viewpoint does not support something, should it be outlawed for everyone? "Canadians at large" may not have felt marginalized or threatened by the police's actions in that case, but you can bet the guys who got told they weren't allowed to express themselves freely did. Even if the only thing being censored nowadays are fringe Nazi groups, the concern is that, if these guys can be silenced, there is potential for the expansion of these powers. Where do you draw the line? It's completely arbitrary, and thus it's dangerous to use this as law, which is supposed to be precise. Canada has experienced more than one sticky court case over their limitation clause, and it's just going to keep happening so long as they keep that vagueness in there. If Nazis are being censored now, what's to keep some other group that is very similar to Nazis, but not quite, from being censored? And then a group just a little different from them, and one a little different from them, etcetera etcetera until you've moved down the line to, I don't know, anything, really. That's the problem with vague definitions and arbitrary limitations in law - it leaves the door open for things to get out of hand.

The US constitution attempts to protect the freedoms of everyone with regards to speech regardless of their extreme views, up until the extent that their speech infringes upon other another person's rights. Restrictions such as "shouting fire" are in place only because they carry potential for causing immediate physical harm to other people. The one obvious exception to this general rule is the obscenity clause, which traditionally only relates to sexual material, and which is what California is currently trying to incorporate into its attempt to control the distribution of violent games.

EDIT:
And please don't get me wrong - I don't think anyone should be censored, even fringe Nazi groups. I don't care if the average person doesn't want them out expressing their views in their community. "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." To prefer censorship to confronting bad ideas and dealing with them in the light of day is just cowardly, and can't lead anywhere good. If people want to preach hate and ignorance, let them, and then go out and preach the opposite. If you dislike what they have to say, do something about it yourself, don't rely on the government creating a special exception to human rights so that people don't have to confront something like this. Imagine if they treated other issues the same way! No, having a clear, defined, and most importantly, UNIVERSALLY applied rule of law is vital, especially when it comes to guaranteed freedoms.

It clearly isn't universally applied if if you can't "shout fire" in public, as this is simply creating the potential for short term rather than long term harm to others. As for obscenity, that is also tyranny of the majority and censorship, and an incredibly clear-cut case of it. This is the same censorship, just different justifications for it. I think it's far more obscene to allow Nazi's to run around preaching their crap than it is to have naked woman running around in a video game, but the censorship of both is simply the difference in values between our two countries. The U.S. is deeply religious, Canada is deeply anti-racist. "I may not agree with a thing that you say, but I will defend to the death you're right to say it." Apparently this doesn't apply to the great societal harm of nudity. In Calgary, we had white supremacists running around, and there was wide-spread condemnation of it. They weren't stopped by the law, and were in fact loaded onto buses and evacuated from downtown away from anti-racist protesters.

 

[Hyperactiveman]

FFS HOW MANY TIMES?... IT LIES WITH THE PARENTS DAMNIT!

It shouldn't be held to the responsibility of the distributors of certain forms of games, movies and other media who buys their merchandise. It's just not possible to police right and it's not fair on the rest of us to restrict it entirely.


A responsible parent will watch what their kids play and watch and will end up better off.

An unresponsiveness parent will not give a shit and end up in shit for their carelessness.

Not broken... Simple.

 

[IAmTheVoid]

I like how the Californian representative sounds like such a weasel.

But seriously, listening to the oral argument gives me faith in the people handling the case. They're keeping their minds open and heavily scrutinising the case. Hopefully they'll see sense- based on its vagueness, or simply on its lack of any significant base.

 

[JDKJ]

It scares me that even one of the justices on the Supreme Court would side with this law.

While I realize that this was a New York Supreme Court Justice, this story pretty much sums up the state of the U.S. legal system.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20021342-504083.html

So, no. It isn't all that surprising anymore.

How so does it sum up the state of the U.S. legal system? You might have missed the all important fact that "and their parents" can also be sued was what the Justice decided. This reflects nothing more than the age-old legal concept of vicarious liability (i.e., a parent can be sued along with a child for the harms caused by the child even if the parent was nowhere around when the harm occurred). Despite the obvious spinning of the facts so that it reads as if the children are the ones primarily being sued, the more meaningful subject of the suit are the children's parents (the ones who I have to assume are in the position, unlike the children, to actually pay any monetary damages which may be awarded to the plaintiff). If you take the time to search for similar decisions among those of any Anglo-Saxon-based civil law system, including that of the UK's, I'll bet you'll easily find a number of similar decisions. This decision is neither unique nor peculiar and hardly serves as some sort of negative commentary on the state of the U.S. legal system.

It's generally a good rule of thumb to believe half of what you hear and nothing that you read in the news.

What I think is a much better commentary on the state of the U.S. legal system is the fact that the second the California Governor signed the law into effect, a lawsuit seeking to block it was filed and, by all accounts, looks as if it will succeed in shooting down what by any stretch of the imagination is nothing more than a foolish attempt at censorship. Say what you want to about the Americans, but you can't say that there isn't a vocal contingent of them who just happen to think that the right of free speech is an important right and who will go to any lengths to protect that right against government interference. For better or worse, many of them also feel that way about the right to own a gun.

No. I didn't.

I also didn't miss the part that CBS got the story wrong and that the woman died three months (not weeks) later. I also didn't miss the part that the woman died from unrelated issues according to her doctors. I didn't miss the part about the judge applying an artificial standard of "reasonable prudence" to a four-year-old. I didn't miss the fact that the judge concluded that the mother had no active role in the incident but he is still alowing the estate to sue her anyway.. I didn't miss the fact that, while it is true that this is being used as an avenue to sue the parents, the children will still be taken to court and have their lives turned upside down at an age where they'll need booster seats just to reach the witness microphone. I also didn't miss the part that CBS decided to expose 4-year-olds to media scrutiny by naming names.

I also didn't miss the part that, despite all this, the judge is letting the lawsuit proceed despite it being a completely groundless suit. By itself, it doesn't serve as a negative commentary on the U.S. legal system. The fact that this type of thing is increasingly the norm and is not "unique or peculiar" does serve as a negative commentary on the U.S. legal system.

Why, if the reportage is so unsound and unethical, are you even sharing it? As commentary on the sorry state of news reportage?

Why is "reasonable prudence" an artificial standard when negligence is defined at law as "the failure to use that degree of care that an ordinary person of reasonable prudence would use under the circumstances?"

Why shouldn't the court allow the mother to be sued despite having no active role in the incident when the law, by the well-established principle of vicarious liability, routinely and sensibly allows for such suit? If a parent leaves their child without any adult supervision to engage in conduct that likely will result in harm to others, why shouldn't that parent be sued along with their child?


Why do you think a four year-old will be called to the witness stand and placed before the microphone when it is well-established at law that a four year-old is too young to appreciate the oath and therefore can't give sworn testimony?

Why shouldn't a court allow cases to proceed if it determines that the legal standards for early dismissal of "failure to state a claim" or "summary judgment" have not been satisfied and regardless of whether or not you are of the opinion that a case is "completely groundless?" And if, in the absence of either of those standards being met and putting aside your opinion of the merits, why would a universal refusal to allow early dismissal be any sort of negative commentary on the U.S. legal system? Isn't the preference of the U.S. legal system, as reflected in its procedural and evidence rules, not to dismiss cases early in the litigation process but, rather, to give plaintiffs a full and fair opportunity to make their case, if they have a case to make at all, and only to dismiss the plaintiff's case once it becomes abundantly clear that they have no case to make a positive commentary on that system?

I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing where you're trying to go.

 

[concietedgrl]

I didnt really read ALL of the comments here so if i am making a point or comment that has already been made than I appologize. Has anyone ever seen the film The People VS. Larry Flynt? I hadnt until recently but long story short its based on a true story about larry flynt who is the hugh heffner of hustler magazine who goes to the supreme court over a tasteless satire cartoon. Anyways its a First Amendment case in which larry Flynt won which made me feel a little more secure about this whole silly california/video game first amendment case because it has to protect freedom of speech/expression NOT taste. The best line in the movie was after Larry one he says to the media "If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, then it'll protect all of you -- 'cause I'm the worst," Lets all hope that statement holds true.

 

[JDKJ]

I didnt really read ALL of the comments here so if i am making a point or comment that has already been made than I appologize. Has anyone ever seen the film The People VS. Larry Flynt? I hadnt until recently but long story short its based on a true story about larry flynt who is the hugh heffner of hustler magazine who goes to the supreme court over a tasteless satire cartoon. Anyways its a First Amendment case in which larry Flynt won which made me feel a little more secure about this whole silly california/video game first amendment case because it has to protect freedom of speech/expression NOT taste. The best line in the movie was after Larry one he says to the media "If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, then it'll protect all of you -- 'cause I'm the worst," Lets all hope that statement holds true.

"The People vs. Larry Flynt" should be viewed by all if for no other reason than it stars Woody Harrelson, an unabashed pot smoker, opposite Courtney Love, an unabashed crack smoker. Ya gotta love it!

 

[SpidersLie]

I dont mind people limiting violent games 2 adults but i have 2 problems with this law.

A)Vague: How do you define ultraviolent? Watch Saw 4 or 5 and then play Gta4. which one is more violent, more unaccectable? i get wanting 2 restrict kids from violence and sex, but how do yu define it? will it set guidelines for each age? and will differnt courts be allowed 2 make different ruling on the same game?

B)Unlike a movie theater, where a ticket is usually a free pass, i have 2 actually obtain the violent game if i want 2 play it and veiw the content i shouldnt. this reqiures me 2 either: get it from a freind or buy it from a retailer who has a clause, and therefore, employees, saying they wont sell certain games 2 certain people. on top of those hindrances, parents are the only peoople the law should giving the power 2 prevent there kids from violent content.
For Example, when Gta4 came out walmart wouldnt sell it 2 me. my parents bought it for me with my money. however if i want 2 see a violent movie and im old enough 2 be dropped off but not old enough 2 purchase a ticket, I can( and have) simply bought a ticket for a different movie and then gone 2 see the violent one.

I geuss the real question is why Video games when movies,the internet, and books, Including the bible, are just as violent if not more so but thre protected?
And,for the record, I dont think any medium of entertainment should be censored more than the current laws. they seem 2 work fine 2 me.

 

[The Atomic Lamp]

Good to see that the sensible people getting upset about what actually matters. The western world rapes and pillages countries for oil, manipulate goverments for their ideological and financial gain support free trade zones to stimulate their own economy. But someone taken away their rather average video games. Oh no!

 

[lead sharp]

Censorships just a lazy way to avoid educating people.

 

[JDKJ]

Good to see that the sensible people getting upset about what actually matters. The western world rapes and pillages countries for oil, manipulate goverments for their ideological and financial gain support free trade zones to stimulate their own economy. But someone taken away their rather average video games. Oh no!

Ironic, I think, that you don't hesitate to voice your opinions while at the same time attempting to minimize the issue of free speech. That's a neater trick than riding a unicycle while juggling three bowling pins. Bravo!

 

[The Atomic Lamp]

Good to see that the sensible people getting upset about what actually matters. The western world rapes and pillages countries for oil, manipulate goverments for their ideological and financial gain support free trade zones to stimulate their own economy. But someone taken away their rather average video games. Oh no!

Ironic, I think, that you don't hesitate to voice your opinions while at the same time attempting to minimize the issue of free speech. That's a neater trick than riding a unicycle while juggling three bowling pins. Bravo!

Commenting on the apathy and sefl-involved nature of a generation or culture is arguably more important than all the things I suggested as it leads to the problems I suggested.

 

[JDKJ]

Good to see that the sensible people getting upset about what actually matters. The western world rapes and pillages countries for oil, manipulate goverments for their ideological and financial gain support free trade zones to stimulate their own economy. But someone taken away their rather average video games. Oh no!

Ironic, I think, that you don't hesitate to voice your opinions while at the same time attempting to minimize the issue of free speech. That's a neater trick than riding a unicycle while juggling three bowling pins. Bravo!

Commenting on the apathy and sefl-involved nature of a generation or culture is arguably more important than all the things I suggested as it leads to the problems I suggested.

Feel free to comment on the apathy and self-absorption of whoever all you'd like. But, in so doing, to take an issue of censorship and then try to twist it into nothing more than "someone tak[ing] away . . . rather average video games" may not be the best way for you to win converts. You certainly didn't win me over to your position. Rather, my first response was to conclude that you're more than a little bit of an idiot.

 

[Baron von Awesome]

I normally consider myself a centrist when it comes to politics in America. I try to avoid buying into either side's propaganda, and usually find little reason to support any of the major candidates. However, what is really pissing me off is how politicians on both sides are starting to try and restrict our freedom under the guise of "for our own safety." I think it's pathetic that politicians think they need to monitor what people are allowed to eat. It's like they think we're cattle who will just gorge ourselves til we explode.

What turns children into violent mass-murderers isn't violent media. It may give them ideas, but what turns children into mass-murderers is living in a stressful hateful situation during their childhood and having no recourse. Either ignored or abused by their parents, tormented in PUBLIC schools, or just altogether having a rotten childhood. Not saying that all people who have this kinda childhood won't be able to overcome it, but this is what contributes to school shootings. Watching violent media just glorifies violence and gives them an idea on how to act out against their sad situation. Is it really that hard for people to understand this? I feel like it would be the first thing that came to my mind when there was a school shooting, not "I wonder if he did it, because he played Doom."

The irony of it all is that a man who got rich and famous from being the protagonist in violent media is now arguing for censorship of it.

 

[Dreslough]

What sticks out to me is the comment that has been made that Obama is "the first nerd president". Interestingly, his two Supreme Court Nominees appear to be "the first nerd Justices". Kagan seems intimately familiarly with Mortal Kombat. And Sotomayor is going off about Human violence versus Vulcan violence. Nerds.

Honestly, having two nerds on the court should at least help this case get a fair hearing.

I am so proud to be an American.

 

[Dreslough]

Either ignored or abused by their parents, tormented in PUBLIC schools, or just altogether having a rotten childhood.

One can also be tormented in private schools.