The law actually makes no mention of ESRB ratings at all. Another law (but not the California one) did attempt to give legal force and teeth to ESRB ratings, but that got struck down for exactly that reason. (And also the ESRB isn’t a goverment body and is accountable to no one; it could start a blacklist and threaten to rate your game ‘M’ if you hired the wrong person - but the law would still enforce the “violent” rating as if it were legit. That’s a no-no; legislative bodies cannot delegate power like that to unaccountable private organizations.) California’s law has its own, very complex, definition:
With the following additional definitions for “cruel”, “heinous”, “depraved” and “torture” and “serious physical abuse”:
And then the law has the following general caveat:
If the game meets the very complicated definition above, it is a “violent video game”. Under the law, you can’t sell or rent them to minors. Stores don’t get in trouble if a minor shows a fake ID to buy the game. The law also has a specific exclusion allowing family members and legal guardians to buy games so labelled as “violent” for their own children.
The immediate problem I see is that the definition appears that it might include almost any game where you kill your enemies. Per part B), if the game features what is defined as “serious physical abuse” then it falls under this rubric. And “serious physical abuse” includes “injury or damage to the victim’s body which involves a substantial risk of death, unconsciousness”. The rest of the definition seems to imply that it’s intended to cover only the ability to inflict more damage than necessary to defeat the enemy, but any enemy must be killed in order to die. So that’s problematic right there. The Legend of Zelda (the very first one) had you doing “injury or damage to the victim’s body which involves a substantial risk of death”.
Edit: But California has given up on part B; in the appeal, the judge writes that California conceded that B) was unconstitutional - that means no matter what, that part of the definition is gone.
Another CNN article. This one isn’t about violent video games, but the appeal of violence itself, and that it’s apart of human culture - like it or not:
To be honest, I don’t think this law will really change much, if the Supreme Court accepts it.
Supposedly game stores like GameStop and WalMart don’t sell mature rated games to minors, because they have a “moral responsibility” to protect children. That being said, there’s no federal or state law (except in California) that says retailers are beholden to do this. GameStop and WalMart have chosen to not sell violent games to children.
Unless I’m missing something, all the California law does is make it mandatory that violent/sexual games cannot be sold to minors. Therefore if that’s the honest to God case, I can’t see how it’s wrong. If the Supreme Court agrees, then game sales will basically be treated like theatrical movies - children aren’t allowed to be watching R-rated movies. Basically the ESRB = MPAA. Thus M for a video game is R in a movie. Children can still see it without their parents going to jail if they let their child see it… just that it takes a parent being present for all that to happen. When the kid hits 18, he can buy/watch whatever the hell he wants (theoretically the same with movies and television).
Having said that, my only beef, is that such a mandatory system means the ESRB becomes even more powerful that it ever was: it goes from being voluntary, to required. I don’t like this, because the ESRB is private institution that possesses monopoly control. Therefore I’d like to see an “alternative” rating company with equal authority among retailers to arise as a balancing factor: like how Japan ero studio can choose between EOCS and CSA. The ESRB has been accused of having membership that’s too “puritan” and “conservative” from time to time.
How are you to determine who is mature enough to handle content? I agree with this. As it does interfere with the first amendment rights. Even minors have a number of first amendment rights and this is impeding on it. Should be interesting to see the result though. Reason? This may just be what is needed to make certain japanese companies (Alicesoft or Black Cyc) more interested in the English market. This when it goes to supreme court could effectively legalize rape in videogames and there would be nothing the feminazi’s could do about it.
Hell the only thing the current law does in terms of violent videogames is prevent a child from buying it. They can still play it at a friend’s house, have someone of age buy it, have their parents buy it, etc… If a kid wants something they have alternate methods of getting what they want. It tends to work for the most part. All it is doing is restricting “minors” the right to purchase an item.
I do agree though that the ESRB is a horrible institution and they do not reserve the right to pick what ratings should be what. Hell ikki tousen (probably a bad series) was denied a game because characters had their clothes shredded and would have received an M rating. This would make it so that M rating is less important and we might see a lot more interesting games appear as result. Rather than companies struggle to make a game fit the T standards they now have no financial limitations preventing them to create what they want.
Age of Suffrage is 18, as accorded by the 26th Amendment, so I see no reason why that can’t be the line of demarcation: works for buying porn, legally killing someone (via military service), consensual sex between adults, and getting firearms.
Actually the Constitution says nothing about minors having rights. What minors can and cannot do, are covered by other federal and state laws. I believe the official legal view is that minors have “disabled rights” until they reach 18 or are emancipated (even when emancipated they can’t watch porn or buy semi-automatic rifles). Minors don’t have rights, but rather, are Protected by the Law.
I honestly fail to see why minors should have the legal right to buy games full of violence and sex, and can overrule a retail store employee if they object to selling such a game to them. If the parent agrees to such a sale, then the parent should buy the game for the minor, which the law seems to allow (denying the parent that right, would interfere with constitutional rights and free speech). However the minor himself cannot do it. Pain in the ass, but honestly no different than trying to watch an R-rated movie, which is 100% legal.
What you’re missing is a common misconception – a lot of politicians and commentators on all sides are under the impression that it is against the law for a child to see an R-rated movie.
It is not.
Theater owners aren’t subject to fine and imprisonment if an underage person who looks old gets into an R-rated film. They’re subject to angry parents writing letters to the editor, demanding an apology, and other public pressure. Boycotts, and the like.
And THAT is what makes this bill (IMHO) unconstitutional: It is unconstitutionally UNDER-inclusive. In First Amendment law, this is very important. If you have a legitimate grounds to regulate speech (say, preventing violence) - but then don’t regulate equally, that’s discriminatory. (Imagine a hypothetical law that made it illegal to advocate violence to influence an election … only in favor of a Democratic candidate.) This bill treats video games as different than other types of violent media, when the effect they claim to be worried about has not been proven to be worse in video games. And even if video games were worse than, say, movies - that says nothing about the violence-generating tendencies of sports like football.
They shouldn’t. And if the law is struck down, that isn’t what will happen. The stores’ policies of not selling M-rated games to underage gamers will be unchanged.
The reason the game industry opposed the law is the chilling effect it will have on stores. Being subject to fine or imprisonment for failing to have a 100% success rate at keeping minors from buying the games will lead to self-censorship by game retailers, who may decide not to carry a game at all. Because the standard is very vague and hard to apply, chains like Gamestop and Wal-Mart would probably need to pay a lawyer to review a questionable title to ensure their chain’s managers and employees aren’t fined and thrown in jail for making a mistake. Think about how many games get moved at these chains. One mistake could have tens of thousands of dollars in fines and a jail term attached. Much simpler to decide that, if a given mature title isn’t a guaranteed hit, just don’t carry them.
And don’t think there won’t be pushback over this. Right-wing culture war wagers would love to have a law like this. Look at these guys - by generating a massive wave of complaints to the FCC, they’re able to actually affect the way that agency operates. Any controvertial game is going to have any violence that might be contained within it seized upon as a pretext for a challenge by certain groups.
The result will be predictable; a drop in sales for said mature titles, because of lack of availability. Adults who want to buy them won’t be able to find them as easily because they’re controvertial. Games being big business and hugely expensive to make, this will mean less controvertial material will be created. That’s a textbook case of a chilling effect. Look at what happened to movies once the Hayes Code was put in place, or to comic books after the Comic Code Authority was instituted.
Oh, the law makes no reference at all to ESRB ratings. Instead, it has its own definition - I think that’s the thing I block quoted from the law directly. It’s not nearly as simple as “if the ESRB rates a game M, it’s illegal to sell it to minors”. That would be extremely easy for retailers to enforce. Instead, they have to parse several paragraphs of dense legalese and come to a decision about how a jury would view a particular game in light of the law’s very vague definition. It’s possible a game rated ‘M’ might be OK under the law, and vice versa - it’s possible a game might get a ‘T’ rating but run afoul of the law in some very conservative jurisdictions.
In order to ensure they’re bulletproof, a retailer would have to have played the game in question fairly exhaustively (or otherwise done research) and assessed whether it was likely to run afoul of the law or not. For anything they sell rated T or M.
No, that’s a matter of state vs federal law/jurisdiction. From a federal standpoint, the minimum age for a handgun owner is 18, but that’s just that: A minimum. Federal law gives leeway on how individual states and localities can set up the minimum age for handgun ownership in their jurisdictions, as long as it doesn’t go below the federal’s. As far as the military is concerned, if you’re on base, you’re not even in the jurisdiction of state law at all. If you’re on base and on duty, you’re under the exclusive jurisdiction of the UCMJ, which is a component of federal law: You violate a law on base, you’ll get tried under a military court, and you get sent to federal prison (Ft. Leavenworth), not state prison. If you’re an MP carrying a handgun on base, you won’t get tried under state law even if the base is on a 21+ state because the state law doesn’t apply there. Besides, why would the federal government be dumb enough not to inform younger military personnel about the fact that you can’t carry handguns off-base on such states?
There is no federal equivalent pertaining to videogame legislation as there have been proposed in certain states. (Ya hear me, Aussies/Brits?)
If you’re in military service, you’re [u]always[/u] under the UCMJ no matter what, and even when discharged can be recalled at any time (i.e. no expiration) under jurisdiction of the UCMJ if a crime was committed while in military service, and the military wants to charge you with punishment (this predominantly applies for espionage and war crimes).
Also if you’re criminally charged off base - on duty or not - you will be punished by the authority that got you first. AFTER you’ve been released, the military will take you and charge you for being AWOL, among other things. There have been cases when someone has been charged three times: court of the host country, a united states court, and then a military tribunal. See when some idiot Marine rapes a Japanese girl, and the Japanese refuse to hand him over.
If you’ve served in the military, you already know the infinite stupidity of sailors, airmen, soldiers, and officers: MP’s drive off base with firearms all the time, when they’re not supposed to.
If you’ve never served in the military, do not doubt the infinite stupidity of sailors, airmen, soldiers, and officers: MP’s drive off base with firearms all the time, when they’re not supposed to.
For those who are totally civilian, the military ain’t half as disciplined as they’d want you believe. Dogging the watch… going on foreign port liberty without a buddy… visiting the Honch when it’s been secured… giving the captain of the other ship a stinger… avoiding GMT…
I said the “federal government”, not the individual staff. It isn’t anyone else’s problem if the soldiers don’t obey the rules concerning where/when they can/can’t carry their stuff.
Besides, you forgot to distinguish the ‘marines’ from the ‘soldiers’. [size=25]They account for over 90% of the stupidity that occurs in the armed forces.[/size]
Just in Korea we had guys burning down stores, stealing taxis, jumping fences to dodge curfew, “finding” missing night vision goggles that still had a price tag from the shop that he’d sold them to and subsequently bought back from, and so on.
Not entirely true. In the military shit rolls uphill almost as easily as it rolls downhill. If a private breaks a rule that they are supposed to have been taught by their NCO, then the NCO’s above that NCO get in trouble for not checking, followed by officers and so on. Depending on how bad it was, and how little attention has been paid by the upper echelons, a single incident can become an absolute shitstorm. That night vision goggle bit I mentioned was great fun, what with an entire base being on lock down for a week.
Hmmm… the law isn’t about censorship or free speech though: it’s about regulating sales.
Censorship =/= Commercial Regulation
No one is stopping the creation of violent or sexual games - they’re stopping the [u]direct[/u] sale of them to minors. If a parent bought a violent game for their kid under the proposed ban, then no crime is committed. The crime would be when a kid buys the violent game without the authoritative parental approval.
Look at it this way: Do minors have the legal right to buy violent video games?
Me personally? No. They shouldn’t have the “right” to buy violent video games.
Does there need to be a specific law that outright makes it illegal for kids to buy violent video games?
No to that too… but I don’t see why we should fretting about Uncle Sam censoring the entire video game industry, because that’s not even an issue. I think the legal precedence isn’t video games whatsoever: the legal question is if the government can regulate the sale of merchandise (violent or not) to minors. That’s what the real battle is about.
I’ve written about chilling effects before, so I won’t repeat myself However, I do have to ask one question:
Equivalent restrictions do not exist for books, or movies, or music - and would be shot down as unconstitutional under existing Supreme Court precedent (because of chilling effects). Do you support changing these precedents to permit banning violent media of any form for children? Without any credible evidence that it’s harmful to them? (For that’s what the courts have found, the evidence doesn’t support the claim the media harms children.)
Unconstitutional how? How is banning the sale of video games to minors unconstitutional? What Constitutional law does it violate on a minor? Censorship? It is not censoring anything whatsoever. Freedom of speech? Minors don’t have freedom of speech: parents can and do restrict what their children can say. Nor does whatever a minor say have the full effect of an emancipated individual, because children can’t be held accountable for a whole ocean of things until they are adults.
What is being violated? The right of a child to buy a violent video game. Obviously parents do and can deny that privilege… and Prince v. Massachusetts says the government can do it too (to what extent is left open to interpretation of course). I think that’s the keyword here: with obvious exceptions to prevent their exploitation, children have privileges - not rights.
That argument has a major flip side: there’s no creditable evidence it isn’t harmful to them either… and there’s the entire gauntlet of human history that proves constant exposure to violence induces negative effects on people of all ages. It’s also well documented that media such as horror movies, increases the chance of people experiencing short term anxiety, with long term recognition of that anxiety effect: checkout the popular culture ordeal about Bambi’s mother… and that was a cartoon.
I fail to see why selling violent video games to children - CHILDREN - should be sacredly defended. This isn’t a slippery slope: no one is going to ban violent video games for adults. I think you’re hyping the chilling effect way too much: banning child pornography did not have a “chilling effect” on other forms of pornography. It’s not against the law to produce tapes of screwing a dead cow in Wyoming, because that state doesn’t have laws against necrophilia or zoophilia. If they do charge you: it’s for obscenity, not for specifically having sex with the dead cow.
This is a law stating children can’t do something. That is nothing new. Children can’t do a lot of things: be it for their own good, do not have the capacity to comprehend the extent of their activities, or because parents/government say so.
The last thing I need is for my child to have the right to buy something violent - even against my consent… because hey, the chilling effect works both ways.
That actually wasn’t a rhetorical question. I’m honestly interested in what you DO propose. I was trying to be as neutral as possible in my phrasing to avoid coming on too strong. Guess it didn’t work …
Children don’t have that right. If they did, they could sue Blockbuster over the objections of their parents for refusing to rent them Hostel. This law doesn’t change that. Stores won’t sell or rent Hostel to minors. Not because it’s illegal, they’ve just adopted policies that say they won’t. If it happens accidentally, people don’t go to jail, they get fired. This law changes that only for videogames, without convincing proof videogames are somehow different.
Do you think that’s OK? Do you think the answer is to go get that proof that videogames are different? Do you think this ban should be extended to movies as well? Or do you think it’s acceptable to leave it the way it is: store policies and the ESRB aren’t legally binding, but they exist and mostly (but not perfectly) work anyway?
I would never suggest minors of any age ought to be able to buy Berserk or Min Dead Blood over the objections of their parents. But this isn’t an either-or choice, here, there are several different options.
I’m quite surprised you would say banning CP had no chilling effect on other forms of pornography. You’ve been directly affected by that chilling effect; you blanked out your website over the issue for a few months. Nocturnal Illusion was censored many years ago because of it. Kazoku Keikaku and XChange 3 were censored just recently. Soul Link was almost censored. It’s been all but confirmed that too-young characters are an automatic exclusion from localization prospects, by Peter, even though you reviewed some games on your site that you say could never be found to be obscene.
What the industry says is NOT that they want to sell gorn to twelve year olds. What they say is the law forces every shop to conduct legal analysis on titles that might be covered. This is expensive, and if you get it wrong then you and/or your employees go to jail. Given this choice, many stores will choose not to stock questionable titles. That IS censorship, because it makes violent games less profitable. Dead Space might never have been made; it was new IP, not an already established smash hit (like Halo) guaranteed to sell huge amounts of units. The added restrictions might have made it hard to convince stores to carry an unproven title that could land their employees jailtime.
The analogus situation would be … Supposing the theatre manager was subject to jailtime every time a minor got in to see any movie meeting a vaguely-defined “too violent” standard. That varies jurisdiction to jurisdiction. What are the major theatre chains going to do? Push back - very hard - on anything that might run afoul of this law. They can’t even impose strict admission rules about R ratings, because the law doesn’t say “rated R”, it says “too violent”. If a movie is questionable, they have to decide to either not allow minors in (even if it’s rated PG-13) or pick some other movie to put in that auditorium. Many will just pick an uncontrovertial movie instead.
I thought it was pretty clear: I’m perfectly fine with it. I don’t think children should be allowed to watch violent movies or play violent video games. If the ban extended to movies: I’m 100% for it. IMHO, exposing children to scenes of realistic violence is the same as exposing children to realistic scenes of pornography.
Yea sure… there’s no scientific evidence that exposing minors to video game violence, mentally scars them for life. There’s no scientific evidence that exposing minors to video game pornography, mentally scars them for life either. As a parent, I like the errr on the side with the least opportunity of failure. I’m 100% certain that raising a child with 0% exposure to GTA4 will NOT cause irrevocable harm. I’m not 100% certain that raising a child who lives and breathes GTA4 isn’t picking up something he shouldn’t be… for the same reasons I don’t let children listen to music that calls women whores, promote gang banging, or preach white supremacy – which we [u]DO[/u] know has been a major factor on youth crimes.
My site was blanked out, because of consideration for violations of obscenity - not because of pornography.
Obscenity =/= Pornography
There is no chilling effect: just the avoidance of messing with the cesspit if fictional child porn is obscene, which honestly depends on the jury you get. Porn is 100% legal. Obscenity is not.
That is NOT censorship (which means it cannot exist or be distributed whatsoever). That is a marketing decision and failure to execute adequate employee training. And boo-hoo… the multi BILLION dollar retail market has to invest a several millions in marketing research. I’ll cry up a storm since the executives can’t buy another yacht this year. Corporations make “safety costs” sound more costly than they really are, because they wanna cut corners. There’s also insurance companies that deal with employee criminal charges… it’s all in the GameStop and WalMart hiring dockets. Richard Fontaine - one of the GameStop owners and around 70 years old - got paid over $4 million dollars last year, has $7 million in liquid assets, and owns like three or four mansions. So yea… I’m not feeling any sympathy for him only getting paid $3 million dollars in 2012. If they raise the retail price of the game, it’s more likely because he wants to be paid $5 million, than because GameStop had to raise the price or go bankrupt. Even when they do go bankrupt, it’s amazing how he has a $5 million dollar severance option.
EDIT: In addition, of the top ten best selling video game series, only one would outright violate a “minor violence meter” right off the bat. Maybe Final Fantasy. The others are cartoon violence, which isn’t even being targeted whatsoever (only mature games), nor are they even on the table - and there’s legal clause that prevent a “chilling effect” on someone banning Mario for violence. So it’s not DOOOOOOOOM! :roll:
Pulled this off Wikipedia, because it’s dead on.
1. Mario (222 million)
2. PokÈmon (200 million)
3. Tetris (125 million)
4. The Sims (125 million)
5. Need for Speed (100 million)
6. Final Fantasy (97 million)
7. Madden NFL (75 million)
8. Sonic the Hedgehog (70 million)
9. Grand Theft Auto (70 million)
10. FIFA (65 million)
That’s completely insane. More likely first timers would be warned or given a citation. The second time would be an actual fine. After that, it’s a little hard to say you made a mistake for a third time, and then you’d face formal federal jail time. It would fall under a white-collar crime.
Only first tier crimes like murder and rape, automatically get thrown into long term prison without Passing Go.
However, I do have to ask one question: