Supreme Court Hears Violent Video Game Case Tomorrow 342
SkinnyGuy writes that with the Supreme Court set to hear arguments tomorrow for California's controversial law aimed at keeping violent games away from minors, support for gamers and the games industry is coming from all corners. Writing for PCMag, Lance Ulanoff says the decision should rest in parents' hands: "If I have real concerns, it's up to me to argue it out with my son and take away the games or not buy them for him when he asks." Game developer Daniel Greenberg wants to know "how government bureaucrats are supposed to divine the artistic value that a video game has for a 17-year-old," adding that he's "disheartened and a little perplexed to see [his] art and passion lumped in with cigarettes and booze." The expectation within the legal community is that the statute should be found unconstitutional, and the Atlantic's Garrett Epps points out the irony of Gov. Schwarzenegger's involvement with the legislation.
Look, honestly, this is getting old! (Score:5, Funny)
Ban Chess! (Score:5, Funny)
We are DOING IT FOR THE CHILDREN. Why can't you all just get it through your thick heads?
Indeed, this is why we must ban the abomination that is chess. I have heard this game features uncompromising and completely unjustified, racist warfare between white and black people. Apparently players are actually encouraged to sacrifice the lives of poor people in order to murder more important, blameless enemies. There game encourages violence against women and the common soldiers main goal in life is to eventually become 'queens', which surely sends the wrong message to our youth and corrupts the heart of family values.
Though I have never played these games, I have red the tabloid newspaper descriptions and that is more than enough! Speaking as a mother, I feel the only way forwards is to ban these horrific games thinly disguised as art before they further corrupt our youth.
Re:Ban Chess! (Score:5, Interesting)
“A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages. Why should we regret this? It may be asked. We answer, chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises—not this sort of mental gladiatorship.”
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"I suppose there could be another group who do think that morality and practicality are one and the same"
Utilitarians and objectivists could both, to some extent, be viewed as holding that opinion. Neither is a small group.
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I must be missing the point here (Score:2)
How exactly is this any different from restricting the sale of R rated movies to minors, or is that legal in California?
Re:I must be missing the point here (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not aware of any law that restricts the sale of 'R' rated movies. I am aware of several corporate policies that restrict such sales. Wal-Mart is notorious for this -- I've watched the Wally World drones card people for 'R' rated movies while letting the next person buy beer without being carded.
Is there an actual law on the books somewhere that restricts the sale of 'R' rated movies?
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Don't shop at Wal-Mart
Re:I must be missing the point here (Score:4, Funny)
Exactly.
You should shop Smart... shop S-Mart.
Re:I must be missing the point here (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Of course not. That would be unconstitutional. Besides the free speech issues, how can you let a private organization like the MPAA decide what is and isn't legal?
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Neither. Kids buying 'R' rated movies are a problem for parents, not Washington and/or Sacramento.
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"Kids buying 'R' rated movies are a problem for parents"
Since movies or games don't cause violence, it's a problem for no one. No need for parents to censor harmless things.
Re:I must be missing the point here (Score:5, Insightful)
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"You must not be a parent."
If you think indoctrination and censorship is good parenting, then you're not a very good parent.
"It's a parent's responsibility to censor everything that they see fit to censor."
No, their responsibility is to educate their child on how to stay out of physical harm and how to be a free thinker, not an indoctrinated drone.
"it's the parents who decide what is harmless."
No, facts decide what is harmless. The parents can't alter reality. What we don't need is pointless censorship and
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My opinion is irrelevant.
I can not lay my hand on any part of the constitution which gives the US Government power to overrule the First Amendment. Can you? On the contrary the constitution reserves that power to the 50 Member States, whenever they meet in convention to amend/modify the supreme law. So whatever the US Court decides is irrelevant. Free Speech may not be curtailed for adults.
Re:I must be missing the point here (Score:5, Interesting)
That's legal everywhere (or at least as far as I know) - there is no Law saying that your movie has to be rated, you can choose to go and have your movie unrated if you want - but certain theatrical companies may not want to air your film, or they'll give it their own rating. Basically, when someone says you can't see an R rated movie - its the company policy, not law. No body of the government is responsible for upholding that law.
This being said - its the same way video games are right now. Places like Gamestop are not legally binded to uphold the ESRB ratings system, it's just their company policy to do so.
Now other things, like cigarettes and alchohol, ARE bound by law. This court case is about making video games part of those groups - where distributors can be held accountable for selling video games to people younger than the rating system allows, like selling or giving cigarettes to under-aged smokers.
Right now - if a kid wanted a video game and he did not meet the requirements he could ask his parents to buy it for him, that way they know what he's purchasing and they can check the ESRB rating and look at the box and all that nice stuff. Basically the law being proposed would take that out of the equation - as in the reseller or parent can be liable for letting them acquire that game, just like if your parents were to buy you smokes or if the 711 let you buy smokes underaged.
Now - thats the way it is where I am - in other places of the states, perhaps no company is imposing any restrictions based on the ESRB ratings. If thats the case, I can see where the people are coming from - but they should be lobbying their distributors to impose the restrictions, not the Government.
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That's the difference with the video game legislation at issue. The ESRB was originally intended to be a private ratings group like the MPAA--just an organization to give suggestions on content to conscientious parents. It was never intended to be a government watchdog. Now California wants g
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Plus, most people don't really want porn games compared to things like porn movies and even "indie" games have ESRB ratings and "indie" records usually don't bother to get certified by anyone.
It has nothing to do with the strength of the ESRB and
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How exactly do you measure "success" for a rating system?
Re:I must be missing the point here (Score:5, Informative)
By surveying parental and retailer/exhibitor awareness and performing "secret shopper" trials to test enforcement.
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Which may or may not be related to any societal benefit. A rating system with 100% compliance which causes no decrease in violence can not be accurately described as successful.
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Real world violence is dropping, as shown by murder rates. If you want less violence in games in general, I would ask why?
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Which may or may not be related to any societal benefit. A rating system with 100% compliance which causes no decrease in violence can not be accurately described as successful.
Wouldn't that be a reasonable indicator that whatever it is you are rating is quite possibly not the cause of the violence?
Hypothesis: We have X% of violence in children because Y is unregulated by age-restriction ratings.
Experiment: Regulate Y by age-restriction ratings.
Result: We still have X% of violence.
Conclusion: Hypothesis is rejected.
Tentative interpretation: Y is not the (most significant) cause of violence in children. Further study along these lines recommended.
If you don't automatically accept t
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If you don't automatically accept that violent video games lead to violent behavior, then a rating system with 100% compliance can be successful by simply allowing parents to have a reasonable, standardized assessment of whether or not the content of a game is age-appropriate for their child
If allowing parents to have a reasonable, standardized assessment of whether or not the content of a game is age appropriate for their children does not lead to a drop in anti-social behavior, then it's pointless not suc
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Personally, I'd like to have an idea of whether a game is going to give my young daughter nightmares, for instance. There's quite a few movies, books, and games that I look forward to introducing my kids to when they get older but I know they aren't ready for them yet. I know they aren't ready for them because I read the book, watched the movie, or played the game al
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Can I assume that you think the rating system for movies is equally pointless?
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They're fine as a basic guideline, but in terms of actually enforcing it, not going to work. So much of it is subjective. Ever notice how most programming on TV is TV-13 or so? It's not
Does anyone on the court play video games? (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow I can't imagine Scalia doing drug runs in GTA 4, but you never know.
this case has big1st amendment parts to it as if y (Score:2)
this case has big1st amendment parts to it as if you can ban violent parts of works of art (games) then it makes it that much easier to ban parts of free speech.
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Well, it's not really that big as some proponents of the ban claim that video games aren't art- as in there is no quantifiable speech or artistic value in them to fall under the first amendment.
So if they get their way- the ban can stay without any transferable first amendment problems unless you consider classifying something that can be copyrighted as not being speech.
Re:Does anyone on the court play video games? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh how 'bout this? We'll stop playing violent video games when Clarence Thomas stops watching videos of white women having sex with donkeys? Maybe some of you are too young to remember Anita Hill's (corroborated) testimony, but this is a guy who's got a serious porn addiction, in addition to being a serial sexual harasser.
The only reason he was confirmed by the Senate is because the Senate judiciary committee was an all-boys' club back then, and when a woman would bring sexual harassment charges, she was told "well, you must have been asking for it" (which is pretty much exactly what the Senators said to Anita Hill).
Re:Does anyone on the court play video games? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Scalia is more partial to Duck Hunt, particularly when he hangs out with Dick Cheney ;)
Ahhh, in that case I hope Scalia understands THACO and how to properly equip himself. Also, understanding that just going out with Dick Cheney requires you to roll a 16/20 or greater on saving throw or have your alignment permanently changed.
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Yes, when talking about Scalia, I have often referred to him as "Duck Hunt".
Re:Does anyone on the court play video games? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:May not matter (Score:5, Insightful)
The SC justices are pretty good at being able to understand the details of a case and apply the law to it in a theoretical way, even if they themselves have no experience.
Didn't we just have a story last week [slashdot.org] that showed how false that is? If they can't accurately predict the consequences of their decisions on the field of politics, which they should be experts at, how can you expect them to make good judgments about anything?
I fully expect the Supreme Court to declare software as mechanical, not speech, which would allow it to be banned just like realistic toy guns. Obviously the wrong decision, but you can't count on the Supreme Court to make the obviously right ruling. Remember, these are the best lawyers in the country. They can find a way to twist the law (and reality) to fit their argument, instead of the other way around.
I must be a threat to public safety then! (Score:5, Interesting)
No, correlation does not imply causation, nor would that make in this particular case. Furthermore, homicides can't be construed as an end-all, be-all indicator of any culturally-induced violent behavior. But saying that kids who play Counterstrike and then leave their house with their dad's shotgun and blow holes in their neighbors' heads were inspired to do so from playing video games is ludicrous.
Video games may nudge already-unstable mental states of individuals in a certain direction, but it's nothing that a certain environment wouldn't have done on its own anyway. They don't turn "normal" human beings into mindless rampaging murderers.
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Without the release of playing a game and blowing a few things up after school I have little doubt I would have snapped and tried to go on a killing rampage.
Re:I must be a threat to public safety then! (Score:5, Informative)
Source: www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/business/media/07violence.html
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Re:I must be a threat to public safety then! (Score:5, Funny)
And I'm way less horny after I've just ejaculated.
Re:I must be a threat to public safety then! (Score:4, Insightful)
All I know is that if I didn't have an outlet for my anger at home, I would have let it out at school. Does that mean I would have brought a gun in and shot someone? Likely not, but I probably would have shouted and hit a bully or two, which means I'd get detention, which means I'd become a problem kid, and a decade down the road I could have shot someone.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case for many other people here. It's not that a video game would normally make me a violent person, and it's not like I'm a violent person who needs to have some kind of murder take place just to satiate me. It's that they are a regular outlet to let off some steam, whereas without video games it tends to build up, which will only blow at the wrong times at the wrong person and get you in trouble which is where all the bad influences are anyways. Seriously, taking all your "trouble" kids, having them stick around after class, in the same room... it's a silly idea. That means when they go home from school, the only other people to talk to are other trouble kids. Does someone who yells at a teacher need to be sitting around the kid who got caught smoking?
See Bobo Doll study (Score:3, Informative)
All I know is that if I didn't have an outlet for my anger at home, I would have let it out at school.
Not to say one way or another - it's really hard to prove causality in media/violence cases especially in video games - but I'd like to refer you to Albert Bandura's famous Bobo Doll study [wikipedia.org] (video [youtube.com]). The belief that an outlet for violence (particularly violent television) was good for satiating people's natural aggressive tendencies was widely believed up until this study was published in 1961. I am shocked nobody else here bothered to cite this study.
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Seriously, taking all your "trouble" kids, having them stick around after class, in the same room... it's a silly idea. That means when they go home from school, the only other people to talk to are other trouble kids. Does someone who yells at a teacher need to be sitting around the kid who got caught smoking?
That's exactly the problem with prisons. I think we need to come up with a better system than prisons, that is still socially palatable.
Oh it gets better (Score:5, Interesting)
Violent crime as a whole has been dropping fairly steadily for about 2-3 decades. Despite the "We are less safe," hysteria from the media we are actually more safe. Violent crime levels have trended downward. Not every year, not every place, but you look at the over all trend and it has been on a decline for a good bit. Well guess what? That neatly maps with the rise in videogame popularity. In 2-3 decades they went from things only geeks played to something everyone does. As their popularity has risen, crime has fallen.
There you go! Clear correlation! Games cause crime to go down!
Or course Steven Levitt has some pretty compelling evidence that legalized abortion was one of the major factors, not games, but then the kind of people who say "OMG games cause crime!" aren't in to good evidence.
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Oddly enough, firearm ownership has
Server Rules (Score:2)
[server] Next map is dm_MarijaunaFields.
[cosm] Sweet ****!
[server] cosm (1072558) was permabanned for language.
Rush Limbaugh is against California's law (Score:3, Informative)
A bunch of blah blah blah and then "...I'm glad to have you on our side, 'cause I agree with you. Leave your game alone. The people that put together these video games are artists in their own right. If you're gonna start saying that video games are raunchy, then how the hell do you leave cable television alone?"
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_102910/content/01125113.guest.html [rushlimbaugh.com]
http://kotaku.com/5677274/rush-limbaugh-defends-video-games-free-speech-says-this-is-where-the-battle-is [kotaku.com]
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I guess he's arguing that many liberals find violence offensive, by the same token that many conservatives find naked boobs offensive. There are enough politicians from both sides demanding unconstitutional artistic censorship of video games and other media that it doesn't really deserve to be spun as a partisan issue as Limbaugh did.
By the same token, though, it's important to have support from free speech from across the political spectrum as well, so I hope Slashdotters won't laugh this off just because
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While I understand Rush panders to the fringe right and the scared conservative moderates, I don't think he really is that fringy himself. He is acting and spinning people up as part of his job.
So yea, he'll hammer on the left about this, but really he is saying its an art like film, TV, writing and we can't censor it if we aren't going to go after the "untouchable" mediums. And it's extra hypocritical for California to do it when they are the center for sex and violence in film and TV in the US, at least i
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A bunch of blah blah blah and then "...I'm glad to have you on our side, 'cause I agree with you. Leave your game alone. The people that put together these video games are artists in their own right. If you're gonna start saying that video games are raunchy, then how the hell do you leave cable television alone?"
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_102910/content/01125113.guest.html [rushlimbaugh.com] http://kotaku.com/5677274/rush-limbaugh-defends-video-games-free-speech-says-this-is-where-the-battle-is [kotaku.com]
While I agree when it comes to just speech, I don't agree with him when it comes to actions. By his logic, it should be fine for companies to dump tons of pollution into rivers with no legal consequence, because then the market will take care of it, right? Except that that river really only matters to the people who depend on it, and even if every one of them boycotted that company, they could still do just fine selling to the rest of the country and the world. It also implies that there's a way for peop
Re:Rush Limbaugh is against California's law (Score:5, Funny)
I've got something that's even -more- interesting than Rush Limbaugh's opinion: my cat just farted, and it sounded like "The wording of the bill is also terrible, 'appeals to a deviant or morbid interest' and has no 'serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value' can be interpreted as every single videogame or alternatively no videogames whatsoever."
I mean, not only is my cat's asshole just as credible as Rush Limbaugh's mouth, but it also has better analysis as to why the law is a bad idea.
Welp, it was a good run, (Score:2, Flamebait)
We all know how SCOTUS feels about things like "rights" and "human dignity." Oh well. We're fucked.
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Well, I hope you're right. I don't expect them to get it right but once a decade, though, and I doubt they want to blow their wad this early...
Parenting (Score:2)
Re:Parenting (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech should be free speech. So long as it doesn't interfere with your rights and your property rights it should be perfectly allowed no matter what it is.
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Yes, that is the thing, governments should stay out of morality, its best for everyone. First off, think about your own morals, the Christian right really needs to look at trends in Europe and stand up against government regulation of morality, because, perhaps in 20 years they might not be the majority and another (anti)religious group will take their place.
As I've seen it written: Separation Of Church And State is meant to protect the Church from the State
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The point of the first poster is that the phrase "Separation of Church and State" by Thomas Jefferson had nothing to do with keeping the church out of the state until 1947 when the Supreme Court re-interpreted the meaning of it. The phrase and concept previous to this meant that the state could not tell the church what to do or believe, nor that there was any established state denomination. The whole concept came about as the state in many causes would outlaw a specific denomination and only allow worship
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Yes, that is the thing, governments should stay out of morality, its best for everyone.
So, you are saying that murder should not be illegal? Theft? All laws are about morals, it is just a question of which morals are important enough to be enforced by law.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Leave it to the parents.
Thats exactly what video game regulation would do, making it easier for parents to control what their children would consume, as children would have a harder time obtaining the games.
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If by that you mean more pointless censorship, then yes. That is exactly what it would do. Why not just leave the decision in the hands of the player, and not parents or government? I mean, if the parents already believe that video games don't cause violence (or if they do but don't have evidence) and are willing to buy a game, why would they refuse to buy a violence one? It's simply pointless.
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To be honest, I'm not necessarily against this sort of regulation so long as the provision exists for parents to override the decision. If they make it illegal for minors to play violent video games then that's a problem, but requiring them to have an adult present in order to purchase it isn't really a problem. It gives the parents a bit of help in dealing with these sorts of things before the money has been spent.
That said, I wasn't aware that the ESRB rating system was really having that many problems. I
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"Artistic" shouldn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Free speech, so long as it doesn't interfere with anyone else and their property rights should be 100% legal.
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There are only a few foundational rules in modern Western society. Kids having different rights than adults is certainly one very few would argue with in principle (perhaps in practice!). We censor stuff to kids all the time because we believe that every parent should have the right to restrict what their child does and sees.
Right now we've got a system that works, and I frankly don't care whether the private economy or the public economy enforces this restriction. What does matter to me as a parent and
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"We censor stuff to kids all the time because we believe that every parent should have the right to restrict what their child does and sees."
Where do people get this idea? Oh, wait. This is a great opportunity for personal indoctrination! You can make your child become whatever you want them to, even a replica of yourself! Embody within them your exact beliefs and censor out everything else! What a great idea to create people with minds of their own. No, that is fiction. In reality, censorship is an obsceni
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It's really the only way to separate that from inciting violence and other forms of speech which are harmful to society as a whole. Unlimited free speech is just about as dangerous to the individual as no free speech is. Certain things just don't qualify in any sane society regardless of culture.
Beer (Score:3, Insightful)
This does not mean there are not consequences. I don't believe in requiring helmets, but I would hate to be in the insurance pool with a person who rides a motorcycle and does not wear a helment. Such a person is stealing from me. Likewise, if a parent is not serving a child appropriate amounts of alcohol, that parent is libel for the resulting damage. This consequence based model makes much more sense than the big government telling us what games we can play in our own houses.
So I would say if someone is offended by beer and cigs, then it is perfectly acceptable for other people to be offended by video games with gratuitous violence. If however we realize that everyone is going be be offended by something, and will tend to group all those things under one umbrella, then we can reach a point where we are confortable letting other people doing things that we find offended without getting offended by that fact that other think differently that we do.
The damage, of course, comes when one person thinks what they do is protected speech, maybe even art, and what other people do is simply random acts of terrorism.
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And really, kids and young adults ought to be really careful abo
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Tell you what; let's do an experiment. We'll take a bunch of sets of identical twins and give one of each set alcohol and and the other cyanide, and see whose body chemistry gets more screwed up. No? How about heroin instead of cyanide? Methamphetamine? Clozapine? Phencycl
Leaving it up to the parent works both ways.... (Score:3, Insightful)
A parent who is capable of confiscating a game that he doesn't want his kids playing should be just as capable of going out and buying a game for his kid that the kid can't buy for himself, right?
Not every parent wants to run their household like a freakin' gestapo camp (forgive me Godwin)... if the retailers face fines for not checking ID before selling a game with a mature or adult rating, there's at least a minimal level of assurance for parents who have problems with these sorts of things that the number of times they are going to have to bring down the banhammer on their kids' activities for stuff like this is few and far enough between that it doesn't end up creating more household conflict than what could easily already exist just because teenagers think that their parents can't possibly understand them. Meanwhile, parents who don't have a problem with this sort of thing should be perfectly free to go out and buy their kids these sorts of games as they wish. I have no problem with legislation in this department, and I would suggest that parents who might think I want to be a lazy parent simply because I don't want to fight with my kids may be guilty of being lazy themselves... for reasons I cannot even begin to imagine.
Of course, if video console makers actually made halfway decent parental controls that allowed things like blacklisting and whitelisting, in addition to using the general guideline of the video game rating, and said parental controls were not easily bypassed by any remotely bright kid who bothered to google how to get around them, I probably wouldn't care one way or the other. If he wants to waste his money on stuff he can't play under my roof, that's his own problem.
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The problem with this legislation is that even your child has a right to free speech that may not be infringed upon by the government. Parents can infringe that right, but the government can't. If you really want this sort of law, you're going to have to amend the constitution to make it legal. (or pull one over on a gullible elderly Supreme Court, which is what they're trying to do here.)
BTW, if you want the government to fight your battles for you, then yes you are a lazy parent.
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Except the parental controls, for most consoles, are more than adequate. They simply blacklist every game with a rating above what you deem is ok for your child. You also put a password on the parental controls and viola you're fine...that is until your child goes to his friend's house.
Truth be told I agree with you that it's ridiculous to assume that a parent will be able to supervise their child every minute that their child has leisure time. That's why you need good parenting. It's called trust and talki
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The only people detached from reality are those that truly believe that people can't differentiate between reality and a video game. That is something anyone can do.
"Leaving it up to the parent works both ways"
I don't understand this line of thinking. Usually people such as this acknowledge that video games don't make people violent (which they don't), yet they still say a parent should be able to control what video games their children buy (I know it is their money, but it still makes no sense). Why would
Silence of the Lambs (Score:3, Insightful)
3 Million children are treated for sports related injuries every year:
http://www.childrenshospital.org/az/Site1112/mainpageS1112P0.html
If you want to protect your children, lets start with the place they are most likely to be hurt. School sports programs.
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Re:Silence of the Lambs (Score:4, Insightful)
"I don't think it will, but some people do think this."
Where is their evidence of this? Oh, wait, they have none! They want to ban something that many, many people enjoy when they don't even have any evidence. Funny, that. The law shouldn't be made up of worthless opinions, but facts.
The only people truly detached from reality are those that believe that people can't differentiate between reality and a video game (something anyone is able to do). As such, it doesn't need to be in the hands of parents, as this article suggests. It should be in the hands of the player. If video games don't do any harm, then why does it suggest that it be in the hands of the parent? What is the point of that beyond indoctrination and control? Nothing. If they would refuse to buy violent video games for their child yet would still buy games that aren't labeled as violent and still acknowledge that video games don't cause violence, they're idiots.
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Or at least, that is what bad parents believe. There seems to be an overabundance of those.
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"A kid needs a certain set of rules to develop in."
To keep them safe from physical harm, yes. Running with sharp objects increases your chances of getting severely injured, etc.
"Those rules are set by parents, based upon their own experiences in life."
Yet many parents choose to indoctrinate their children with their own religion, beliefs, and as I said before, pointlessly disallowing them from consuming certain media.
"you're probably still a teenager"
Nope.
"In that case, no worries, you'll understand later."
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"Let them view porn at 4 because you don't to censor the information that is given to the child?"
Let them view pornography at four? I don't see what harm that would do, but it's vastly useless to them. At most they would likely think "wow, that's gross."
"A child cannot comprehend everything like adults can."
Adults are not somehow special. They've merely lived slightly longer than a child. Depending on the rate at which a child can memorize new information, they could out perform an adult who has lived in th
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I know enough to know that censorship and indoctrination are both far from being education.
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About Child Bullying (Score:2, Interesting)
Arnold Schwarzenegger and the real irony (Score:2)
The huge guns that he shot in movies which were all rated PG-13 or well above?
PG-13: The 6th Day, Last Action Hero
R: T1, T2, T3, Collateral Damage, End of Days, Eraser, True Lies, Total Recall (secondary rating), Red Heat, Running Man, Predator, Raw Deal, Command
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The real irony is that despite these clear ratings that have been on the boxes since VHS and in many instances even included prior to the movie's starting, these 12-year olds and younger end up watching them anyway.
Heaven forbid that some people mature faster than others and can easily separate reality from fiction.
There's a case? (Score:2)
I didn't know that they had a case to begin with! I guess I was foolish to assume that you needed some sort of evidence before you, you know, ban something that many people enjoy.
"Lance Ulanoff says the decision should rest in parents' hands"
No, the decision (unless the parent is the one paying, but even then, it's pointless to not buy violent video games if they would buy another game for them anyway) should be in the hands of the person who wants to play the game. If you truly believe that video games hav
Is this really about protecting children? (Score:2)
Or is it about a bunch of people that are basically terrified over pretty much anything that might be dangerous?
I don't mean for this to be partisan or inflamitory, so please bear with me.
Look at say-- Gun control. Study after study has shown that gun control measures do not positively effect the rate of violent crimes involving guns. (in fact, several studies have contraindicated this assertion.) This is because gun control laws only impact law abiding citizens, who, being law abiding to begin with, do not
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"which showed that there was a positive correlation"
Not really. Imagine being in a room (especially at a very young age) and someone shows you an activity that appears to be fun and will damage nothing more than an inanimate object that is fine to damage. They didn't go out and shoot people with guns, they replicated an activity that appeared to be fun (or at least one that would pass the time). An activity that hurt no one.
"Not buy them *for him* when he asks"? (Score:2)
Writing for PCMag, Lance Ulanoff says the decision should rest in parents' hands: "If I have real concerns, it's up to me to argue it out with my son and take away the games or not buy them for him when he asks." If you're already buying the game for your kid, then a prohibition on sale directly to minors would be irrelevant. If anything, this law supports Ulanoff's point - that the decision should rest in parents' hands, and that they can freely buy the game if they want.
Not that there aren't other arguments, actually based on the Constitution, but that argument shoots itself in the foot from the get-go.
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"Violent games or movies do not have an effect on people past a certain age"
I must be a murderer, then, because I began watching violent movies and played violent video games at no older than the age of five.
"It has been proven that young children replicate violence they witness."
But they don't grab a gun and slaughter an entire building full of people when they know the media is not real, as even a five year old would.
"Those who saw the video abused the same toy"
The video likely gave them an idea that soun