Under this law, you get fined for selling GTA to kids, but not fined for selling them any of the Carmageddon games, in which you mutilate countless people (but no cops, yay!), or Die By The Sword, in which you sever limbs, Soldier of Fortune, in which you are making kneecap and headshots, etc…
In fact, under this law you could get fined for selling a kid a copy of a game which simply shows a cowboy sheriff getting punched in a fistfight because the law defines ‘violent’ games as any game which shows “physical harm” being done to any human “who is depicted, by dress or other recognizable symbols, as a public law enforcement officer.”
Under this law, you get fined for selling GTA to kids, but not fined for selling them any of the Carmageddon games, in which you mutilate countless people (but no cops, yay!), or Die By The Sword, in which you sever limbs, Soldier of Fortune, in which you are making kneecap and headshots, etc…
In fact, under this law you could get fined for selling a kid a copy of a game which simply shows a cowboy sheriff getting punched in a fistfight because the law defines ‘violent’ games as any game which shows “physical harm” being done to any human “who is depicted, by dress or other recognizable symbols, as a public law enforcement officer.”
This law is crap.[/quote]
Right. In that sense, the law is too limited. It doesn’t go far enough and it, as you say, overemphasizes one aspect of violence. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t doing some good. It just isn’t doing enough, IMO. If they are against these violent games being sold to children, they should be against all such games. Instead, they are playing on the current fears that people will mimic video games when in similar situations (something that has not yet been conclusively proven).
However, SOMETHING has to be done to try to enforce these ratings. This is a first step, and perhaps to some degree a mistep. But at least someone is finally trying to find a way to keep people from selling these games directly to kids. I don’t think it sets any kind of precedent for sales to adults (other people have pointed out why above). It’s aimed at selling to minors. But it can help keep them from getting SOME of the games they shouldn’t be able to buy directly. Just because it isn’t getting rid of all such games doesn’t mean that it isn’t better than what we have now, which is apparently nothing (stopping such sales).
Regulating the sale of particular materials to children is generally possible, though you have to ensure that the rights of adults to purchase the materials are not overly burdened. I’ll assume that games are protected speech.
Most US courts recognize that the government has a compelling interest in protecting children from harm. The government needs a compelling interest to limit protected speech (beyond simple time, place & manner limits). However, since that interest doesn’t exist for adults, the regulations must be narrowly drawn to stay within the child protection interest and avoid infringing adults’ speech rights. So, we get rules like “You can sell pornographic magazines, but you have to conceal the covers and check IDs.”
Now, what are we protecting children from in violent games? Do they need the government protecting them from it? It is very easy to get a US court to accept that exposure to sexually-oriented material is harmful to children. You often don’t need to provide any science to back it up, since it is such a legal truism that you can just cite higher courts that reached that conclusion.
This isn’t the case yet with exposure to violent media. The science is not there yet (which is not saying that the science will never be there), so the government cannot show the compelling interest in protecting against a non-existent harm. In an oft-quoted part of Judge Posner’s decision on the Indianapolis video game ordinance, he argued the opposite: “To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.”
If a couple of peer-reviewed studies come out that show how violent media harms children, then it will be a piece of cake to regulate violent games, and perhaps even movies and books. Kids being harmed = compelling interest = enforceable age restriction on sales. Until then, we are left with voluntary means, just like movie admissions.
If someone proves that violent media harms children, is it unreasonable to think that your local video store might have a “Violent Films” section some day, complete with curtains to keep tender young eyes from seeing the violent cover images? We already do that with the non-obscene porn section.
True. And that bothers me more than anything. I don’t think children NEED to be protected from nudity or sex, though obviously there are limits to this claim. Is hardcore porn appropriate? Probably not, but not because of the sex and nudity but more because of the way in which sex is portrayed in most of these “movies”. I think “protecting” children from seeing breasts is ridiculous. The fact that we do it while allowing them to watch gritty cop shows makes it even more ridiculous.
Then, to dismiss such cases because a precedent has already been set? That just goes beyong any sense of reason. With that kind of logic, we should have dismissed abolitionists because slavery was already accepted.
I know that issue wasn’t your main point, supertanker…I was just taking the opportunity to vent ;)
