Schwarzenegger vs. Interactivity

Owyn_Merrilin

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fundayz said:
Slippery slope fallacy bub. Just because someone takes action in a certain direction doesn't meant you can extend and exaggerate to prove a point.
There would have some serious changes to both state and federal law before any state could even begin to THINK of banning all violence from any media and even more to actually implement changes like that. Banning political ideas or certain words is the same thing.

People just love to live in fear eh?
The slippery slope "fallacy" is only a fallacy in the realm of academic logic; if I were do draw a truth chart, there would be one possible outcome for which the statement is false, specifically "P happens but Q does not happen." Every other possible outcome comes up true, but that one possibility makes it a fallacy. In the real world -- and especially in the world of laws and politics -- slippery slopes are very real things, and an argument based on one is almost never fallacious. As you yourself put it, there would have to be some very serious changes for an outright ban on violence to be possible. This law -- and, more importantly, the ruling that we're all hoping does not come down -- would be a big part of those changes. Your very argument showed why slippery slope arguments hold up in politics; every major change is a gradual process, it starts small and it builds up.



OT:
As I alluded in the earlier part of the post, this law is a serious danger to free speech. To all of the Brits who think it's no big deal, or that free speech is overrated by people in the U.S.: no offense, but that's one of the big reasons we fought a revolution against you guys. Freedom of speech is integral to the political structure of the United States. Any infringement upon it is in direct violation of our most sacred principles. Once one type of speech is no longer protected, it becomes easier for other types of speech to become unprotected, until one day we look back and find that America is no longer the land of the free -- or the home of the brave. Because it takes bravery to stand up for freedom -- whether on the battlefields of our forefathers, or the courtroom in the here and now.
 

Virgil

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Owyn_Merrilin said:
In the real world -- and especially in the world of laws and politics -- slippery slopes are very real things, and an argument based on one is almost never fallacious.
To be more specific, because our legal system is heavily based on the concept of "precedent", slippery slope decisions are very easily triggered by a single critical decision. For example, if the Supreme Court should rule that video games are not constitutionally protected speech, this doesn't simply mean that selling M-rated games to minors can now be fined. It also means that a law that bans all M-rated games completely is no longer prevented, because that law is prevented by the First Amendment as well. There isn't a "partially protected speech" section in our Constitution.

Removing free speech protections opens the door to government-sanctioned censorship on a scale that our country has never seen or permitted. Maybe that's the accepted standard for European nations, but it's not over here. None of our content rating systems are run or enforced by the government, whether it be for movies, music, or anything else.
 

Canid117

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Skratt said:
Canid117 said:
If the state of California really wanted to keep violent games out of the hands of children they would do a damn PSA campaign explaining the ESRB rating system to retarded parents who somehow don't seem to understand what this means
I often wonder if it is not a problem with the parents, but only a problem with people who object to the content. I have yet to see a survey or some other data collection that says parents are overwhelmingly ignorant of the things they give to their children as far as video games, movies or music are concerned.
True but a vast majority of children getting their hands on M rated games is the parents buying the games for their kids. All the stores that I know of have a policy where they card their customers when buying M rated games to make sure that you are 17 or older. This means that the very people who are testifying that their children are murdering prostitutes are the ones who bought the game for their little mouth breathers.
 

nadesico33

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Mar 10, 2010
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Virgil said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
In the real world -- and especially in the world of laws and politics -- slippery slopes are very real things, and an argument based on one is almost never fallacious.
To be more specific, because our legal system is heavily based on the concept of "precedent", slippery slope decisions are very easily triggered by a single critical decision. For example, if the Supreme Court should rule that video games are not constitutionally protected speech, this doesn't simply mean that selling M-rated games to minors can now be fined. It also means that a law that bans all M-rated games completely is no longer prevented, because that law is prevented by the First Amendment as well. There isn't a "partially protected speech" section in our Constitution.

Removing free speech protections opens the door to government-sanctioned censorship on a scale that our country has never seen or permitted. Maybe that's the accepted standard for European nations, but it's not over here. None of our content rating systems are run or enforced by the government, whether it be for movies, music, or anything else.
One other thing people seem to be forgetting about this legislation is that it does not specifically target Mature Rated games. The "spirit" of the law is to restrict the sale of violent games such as GTA, Gears of War, God of War, CoD, and others where excessive violence is the norm, rather than the exception (and even on games where harsh violence is the exception), regardless of the ESRB rating. The "letter" of the law, as I personally interpreted it, is restricting the sale of ANY games that include violence against humans and/or images/representations of humans and/or facsimiles that can be (potentially very broadly) interpreted as being human, again, regardless of the ESRB rating. And near to my (admittedly limited) reading of the definitions of violent games that are used, it does not state that all requirements have to be met to be termed a violent game. The broadest portion of the requirement is simply that the player is able to kill a human or image/representaion/facsimile thereof. And just how many non-M Rated games allow that?
 

cerebus23

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i am a big states rights guy, but even then the constitution and the bill of rights applies to states not just the federal government, which makes it a regular habit to violate one or the other or both on a semi regular basis, but thats a whole other discussion.

but either way it is a first amendment thing they want to restrict the speech of video game makers period.

and the fact the law only applies to the employers and not the retail clerks that maybe underage to play some of these games themselves, so we going to fine a employer if their 16 17 year old clerk sells copies of grand theft auto to his entire high school to score some popularity points?

then let us look at walmart that has already censored music, sells cigarettes well above the state minimums, and does not carry stuff they find objectional like porn etc, but does carry video games and r rated movies and most certainly encourages their cashiers to card people for everything.
 

The Random One

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Yeah, it's pretty much the movies industry trying to hate on new media.

I don't think it's going to fly. If the First Ammendment managed to survive McCarthysm, it'll survive this. Plus, federal judges have been judging these law inconstitutional for years, and the way I see the Supreme Court is more likely to corroborate their choices than not.

Plus, interactive media can also cover traditional stuff, like plays. If someone brings up that plays where the audience can interact wouldn't be protected under this new law the whole thing will come apart.

At any rate, if the law does pass, then at least anti-gaming people will cherish on their victory and leave us alone for a while. And then our own argument of 'it's parents who should keep things away from their children' will carry more weight. So it's not all that bad, it's a worse blow for the phylosophy than for the industry.
 

ReverseEngineered

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Apr 30, 2008
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wickershadow said:
Well I live in Canada and the law here is minors are not allowed to buy M games without a parent or gaurdian, and its been this way for quite a while now and I'm fairly ceetain our government isn't trying to ban all violence or curse words on video games. What I don't understand is how everyone seems to be against restricting the sale of games that were designed to be played by adults to kids under 18. I can understand that a full out ban wouldn't be right, given the diversity of the M rating (ie: Modern Warfare 2 to God of War 3)as for the online business you use a credit card or similar forms of payment so that is dependent on the parent. Telling people to check ID doesn't seem like 1000's of dollars in training to me does it?
Do you have a source for this? I ask because, as a Canadian, I was under the impression that this was not required by law, but rather, it's a policy amongst stores to enforce this.
 

ReverseEngineered

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The really crazy part about the distinction between interactivity and not is that life is interactive. Tell me, if I stand on a soapbox and profess the end of time, am I not within my rights of free speech? And is it not interactive? Bystanders can certainly shout back at me just as easily as in any online forum. Non-interactive speech is actually the strange exception in life; we invented the written and recorded word, but there has always been interactive communication.

One way or another, the "interactive" distinction is being used as an excuse to exclude games from freedom of speech. To what end? The threat to Hollywood seems as good as any theory, but there are plenty of interested parties with differ motives who would like to see video games die.
 

AvsJoe

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May 28, 2009
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Chilling news indeed. Thanks Arnie. Way to make me regret liking a couple of your movies.
 

Nmil-ek

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Meh I'm on the legislations side, sorry but kids dont have freedom of speech not really you dont really have any rights until your an adult. Yeah you should not let kids play violent games not these days, know what violent was when I was growing up? Splatterhouse and freaking Mortal Kombat we were limited to 64 bit graphics and our imagination, now we can zoom in and replay in full HD every brain particle flying or detail every incision on a mutilated corpse.

And look what not regulating games sales has got us a generation of self important, desensatized, antisocial little shits splouting plattitudes over x-box live.
 

RowdyRodimus

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snowfox said:
RowdyRodimus said:
Maybe if more people spent a little less time playing games and spent a bit more time...
Just gotta point out that that's a very bold statement to say on a gaming site, just because we're all gamers doesn't mean we're so stuck in our hobby that we don't know what's going on. The only time Fox news was brought up was some one saying that they're glad they didn't have that where they lived. If anything, if some one did try to throw blame to Fox news on this one, they obviously didn't read the OP correctly.

The rest of your post is fine, that last bit just seemed like an unnecessary stab at the community.
I apologize if that's the way it came out, as that wasn't my intention. When I said "more people spent a little less time playing games" I meant the politicians and their political games, not the members here playing video games- I see where it can seem like I was being degrading to my fellow gamers and Escapists and again I apologize for that (the reason I'm not editing it is because I wrote it and if someone sees it the same way you did, I deserve the derision I get from it)

Also, I didn't even see the previous post where Fox News was mentioned, I just know fro,m my limited time here anytime something comes up involving politics, the anti-Fox News brigade shows up lol.

So again, I'm sorry if I didn't express myself correctly and hope you can understand what happened.
 

Callate

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If a store like Best Buy or Wal-Mart faces fines of $1,000 because a clerk made a mistake, there is a very real possibility that they'll stop selling the games altogether. And without the retail power of the major merchants behind a game, a lot of AAA games simply won't get made. Or they'll be bowdlerized (look it up) before they ever make it to market.

Before you get to sneering that such a thing could never happen, be a good chap and realize that similar things have happened in the past. Blood had a special version released at Wal-Mart with the blood removed. Thrill Kill's getting saddled with an AO played a part in it never receiving an official release. Nintendo nerfed Mortal Kombat, took a gander at how Sega's version beat the pants off of theirs in the marketplace, and had a change of heart- because when you come down to it, it's the pocketbook that makes the decisions.

That's not even bringing into consideration the potential far-reaching effects of deciding that video games don't deserve the rights and protections of free speech. Have you considered the possibility of being fined for playing a violent game in public? Or in front of a minor? Such are the potential reprecussions.

There is no soundly-considered potential good that could come of the courts deciding in Schwarzanegger's favor that isn't completely and resoundingly trumped by the potential ill. This isn't about "just training your sales clerks", not by a long shot.
 

jad4400

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I'm following this case closely and hoping for a victory, which chances are, is very likely. All you have to do is look at the courts composition. The liberals on the court are the "let people do what they like and not interfere" kind of liberals, so they usually won't try to regulate free speech. The conservatives on the court are the kind that seek to protect the Constitution, so they probably won't rule against a free speech case (Heck, Scallia thinks flag burners should be thrown in jail, but he still sided with them in a case that came to the court over a states decision to make flag burning a crime.) So I think if the ESA has all its ducks in a row, they should probably pull a win (knock on wood)
 

snow

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RowdyRodimus said:
snowfox said:
RowdyRodimus said:
Maybe if more people spent a little less time playing games and spent a bit more time...
Just gotta point out that that's a very bold statement to say on a gaming site, just because we're all gamers doesn't mean we're so stuck in our hobby that we don't know what's going on. The only time Fox news was brought up was some one saying that they're glad they didn't have that where they lived. If anything, if some one did try to throw blame to Fox news on this one, they obviously didn't read the OP correctly.

The rest of your post is fine, that last bit just seemed like an unnecessary stab at the community.
I apologize if that's the way it came out, as that wasn't my intention. When I said "more people spent a little less time playing games" I meant the politicians and their political games, not the members here playing video games- I see where it can seem like I was being degrading to my fellow gamers and Escapists and again I apologize for that (the reason I'm not editing it is because I wrote it and if someone sees it the same way you did, I deserve the derision I get from it)

Also, I didn't even see the previous post where Fox News was mentioned, I just know fro,m my limited time here anytime something comes up involving politics, the anti-Fox News brigade shows up lol.

So again, I'm sorry if I didn't express myself correctly and hope you can understand what happened.
Haha, it's all cool. Heck since it seems I'm the only one who read it like that, it may have even be me reading it wrong. It was something about the post that I just connected 1 thing to another and went "Uh Oh!" xD
 

cpsusie

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Nmil-ek said:
Meh I'm on the legislations side, sorry but kids dont have freedom of speech not really you dont really have any rights until your an adult.
Ummm . . . you couldn't possibly be more wrong. Children have the right to free speech. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969).

Second, the legislation does not restrict the freedom of speech of children, it restricts the freedom of speech of video game developers.

I think the chance that the Supreme Court will rule that video games aren't protected speech is almost non-existent. Almost every reported Court of Appeals decision has ruled that they are protected speech. A particularly well reasoned example is
American Amusement Machine Association v. Kendrick, 244 F.3d 572 (7th Cir. 2001).
 

cmstewart87

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Feb 18, 2010
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Blah Blah Blah I've heard it all.

I moved to California a year ago. It sucks and everyone should leave the state, I know I am as soon as possible. The government wants all your money to pay for their "Expensive" work, and if they don't come up with crazy laws and such, then they have nothing to prove why they should get paid what they get paid. So if everyone leaves California they can all pay for each other.
 

Therumancer

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Worgen said:
Therumancer said:
This is the problem I have had with fence walkers. I agree with Arnie on a lot of things but he's been a social liberal and hypocrit on subjects like this for a long time. Very quick to jump on the "protect the children" bandwagon and attack free speech, and one of the Repblicans that seems to go consistantly cross party for this kind of thing. This makes him a hypocrit because he obtained his fame and fortune through very violent action movies, and many of those action movies had video game tie ins (albiet usually bad ones). I seriously doubt he ever turned down his share of a video game's sales based on one of his movies because it included violent content.
the protect the children bs is a socially conservative ideology not a liberal one
Incorrect, though to be fair most liberals buy into a lot of party hype and don't know most of what their party stands for, represents, or has done.

Though to be entirely fair, with the way how politics are mixed up and the fact that no one side stays "pure" to it's ideology you have people from both parties supporting any issue you can think of, someone is always crossing the fence somewhere.

The "protect the children" bit is largely a device intended to try and convince people into giving the federal goverment more power, pretty much "please take away our rights to protect us". Most recently the big proponents of this arguement have been people like Hillary Clinton who spearheaded attacks on video games over things like the San Andreas "Hot Coffee" incident.

Likewise it plays heavily into the persecution of hate speech and other contreversial forms of free expression, the basic idea being that the goverment needs to be given increased censorship powers to prevent hate speech and prevent children from hearing it and somehow being tainted.

This is not to say that conservatives have not used that basic logic and similar arguements themselves on various issues. It is fairly easy to confuse the "protect the children" BS with Conservative "family values" BS, and the rhetoric can be pretty similar, though there are substantial differances if you look at it.

Arnie runs on a Conservative platform but is a well known "social liberal" as he's said himself. That doesn't quite mean that he supports minority rights and so on quite the way a lot of people like to try and interpet such things. What it means is that he believes in using big goverment to try and remove or limit people's rights to "protect" those groups. This includes doing things like trying to make it actually illegal to say or express racist or derrogatory things. Leading into the entire idea of the goverment effectively becoming the moral guardian of the people and having the right to take action against people for what amounts to subjective reasons. Meaning that part of this is not just to protect social groups as many people think, but also to morally govern society by doing things like going after video games and other similar things.

Both partys are out for power grabs and cover a lot of the same ground, Conservatives in many cases can be just as bad, albiet Republicans as a general rule tend to support this kind of thing on a state or local level more than anything, rather than supporting the idea of sweeping legislation throughout the entire nation.

Conservatives get the uninformed reputation of both supporting social bigotry, and somehow at the same time oppressing free speech and the abillity to engage in said social bigotry, largely because of how a lot of media networks (run by guys like Ted Turner) report things. Like everything there are exceptions, but for the most part Republicans support the idea of states to set their own policies on things like gay rights, and people's right to say more or less what they want to in public without fear of censure or legal action. This of course means that a lot of people with those "offensive" messages of course gravitate to this party, and in an overall sense Republicans can be seen as obstructing things like gay rights because they stand in the way of sweeping policies dictated overall and believe it should be up to the states to decide what they want their own policies to be (especially seeing as money gets involved in this due to tax breaks for married couples).

No party is a carbon copy of an idea, and exceptions can always be found. The "problem" with Arnie is that a Republican by principle should not be supporting goverment control of speech and expression for something like this. The same principles that have had the party in the past defending the rights of religious expression (ranging from fire and brimstone rants and passing pamphlets by private citizens in public parks and such, to the aforementioned christmas decorations) and even in the past supporting the right of groups like the KKK and Aryan Nation to assemble and speak (and of course leading to the unfortunate patronage of a lot of those people as a result), also apply to things like video games and the expectation for people to police themselves rather than the goverment doing it. The fact that Arnie is the kind of guy who supports goverment action against free speech whether it's thoughts on gays, ethnic minorities, video games, or anything else is what makes him a social liberal. Free speech means taking the good with the bad, and the hate speech with people spreading messages of love and compassion, that is what freedom is about. Of course given some of the whack jobs out there it can be hard to seperate their actual message from the principle, especially when some of those guys have lots of money and go directly into politics themselves.

While it DOES go cross party, stop and consider that what Arnie is doing is very similar to what Hillary did with the "Hot Coffee" incident. In fact the involvement of people like him in issues like this what what MAKES these issues cross party. For the most part you'll see a lot of Republicans badmouthing immorality, and talking about values, but it's pretty bloody rare when you see them trying to take actual action, especially on a federal level. I'm not saying that it hasn't happened (it has), but especially nowadays attacks on media and video games come almost exclusively from left wing leaders, and it's people like Hillary who have been using the "protect the children" battle cry.

A lot of people who are dedicated to the left wing, and have been raised to think of the right wing as satanic evil don't see this because they don't want to see it, but it's there. You'd be surprised at how many people don't even realize that Hillary was one of the major forces on point during the screaming about moral censorship over "Hot Coffee". She wasn't an aberration either, she had a massive following (and arguably still does).
 

Fensfield

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The worst part in all this, is America is effectively the chokepoint for the Western gaming world. If it's not indie - heck in many ways even if it Is indie - videogames we play route through America. If the changes California want pass, the entire Western gaming world'll be effected, even if not as badly as America itself.

Developers limiting their games' content to pander to American censors, American censorship on translated videogames, the simple fact that those American-localised games almost always go through America's censors before foreign localisers get the content, thus meaning a double helping of censorship for foreign consumers..

The only good thing could come of this mess is our localisers might stop buying and adapting American localisations in favour of making their own, but that's only assuming restriction really outweighs convenience.
 

SL33TBL1ND

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Nov 9, 2008
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I hope they lose, then we can use the fact that the standard principle of "correlation does not imply causation" is true and stop all the video game slamming all over the world.