Supreme Court Strikes Down Video Game Ban

[zinfamous]

After Sam Walton died, family values were thrown out the door in favor of profits. I remember back in the mid-1980s when Sam Walton banned the sale of heavy metal groups like Ozzy and Iron Maiden. After Sam died, the stores started selling those albums again.

Most large companies will not take a political stance on anything, they get caught in the middle and lose business from one side or the other.

As for video games, those choices should be left up to the parents and the local communities, and not the state or federal government.

wut? In one breath you say it was right for a business to censor artists through banning a certain genre, then in another you see it is incorrect to do so?

why is it OK for Sam Walton to promote censorship but not the government? Censorship is BS, period. whether it be a private or federal decision.

Why are video games some higher standard of family values than music?

Honestly, I don't believe the rating system should exist at all, at least not how it is current administered. (I understand that parents would like some kind of idea as to the content of certain films), but as it current exists in the film and music world, it needs to exist with modern video games.

I do agree that the Feds have no business banning such products, and it truly remains the domain of retailers to enforce the supposed restrictions, and parents to pay attention to what their children are doing.


EDIT:
Oh, I see you weren't exactly saying that. when you make statements like "sacrificing family values for profit" it tends to imply that you support such actions. :\

 

[Tom]

What a load of crap. We've got everything from V chips in TVs to computer programs to limit your kids access. Curb your own damn kid and stop insisting society do everything for you.

I didn't ask for this law. I don't live in California either. I don't have any minor children. Neither the V chip or a computer program is going to control access to games on a game console.

So besides making a personal attack on a child that doesn't exist, everything in your post is either wrong or nonsensical.

And my post is primarily about why the majority opinion is flawed.

 

[wuliheron]

I didn't ask for this law. I don't live in California either. I don't have any minor children. Neither the V chip or a computer program is going to control access to games on a game console.

So besides making a personal attack on a child that doesn't exist, everything in your post is either wrong or nonsensical.

And my post is primarily about why the majority opinion is flawed.

The principle still applies whether you have kids of your own or not. Parents need to deal with their kids themselves instead of insisting society bend over backwards and do it for them. I know parents who don't even own a TV much less a console and others that won't let their teenage kids watch anything more violent then a G rated movie. If people can't stop their kids from playing violent console games then they have a parenting issue and need to stop dragging their dysfunctional family crap into the political arena.

As for the supreme court decision being flawed, it is unconstitutional to censor free speech. You can argue that they do it for porn, but two wrongs don't make a right and all you are arguing for is the list of unconstitutional laws to be expanded. In the past some places censored even saxophone music as "too sexy" and routinely banned books from local libraries. We've been down that road before and repeating the same mistakes over again will only get us right back to where we are now.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Nobody asked you individually about selling to porn to kids either. But the court decided that a community, acting through local or state government, can set standards for porn and if it can be sold to kids.

Which is what the California law did, but with regards to violence instead of sex, and only in restricitng sales to minors, not it's production.

Which the SCOTUS did address. They decided that while SCOTUS has made exceptions to what is protected as free speech, that state legislature did not have the power to make new exceptions. They further found that violence was too much a part of our culture to be considered obscene. Finding it obscene would have to many negative consequences, as things like Grimms Fairy Tales and Dante’s The Divine Comedy would then be on the chopping block. The law was not simply censoring some videogames, but redefining what is protected as free speech.

The grounds for the majoroty opinion in this case are BS, because the court says it can't find a reason to allow community standards with regards to violence, but it could as far as sex. But the Constitution doesn't say that. They made up the authority with regards to porn, they could make up the authority with regards to violence. Doing one and not the other is illogical and based on their personal biases, not proper conduct on their part.

They had to put a stop to it somewhere. Otherwise the first amendment is useless as with your way it only protect popular speech.

And the California law doesn't censor video games at all, it just restricted sales of some games to adults. The law didn't prevent parents from buying any game for their kids, just that kids couldn't buy them.

What is censorship other then letting the government decide who can and who can't have certain information. Just because it is minors that we are censoring against does not make it any less censorship. Would you say that not letting people with red hair buy an encyclopedia was not censorship simply because it would be legal to let brown haired people buy it for them?

And that law maybe was too broad, but they could have thrown it out on that grounds, and a better law could have been written.

The concurring opinion mentions this, and states that such a law might be allowable if very strict guidelines were used to determine what was and was not allowable.

This ruling might mean for example that some sicko could post videos of puppies being tortured on Youtube, and Youtube would not be allowed to restrict viewing of that to adults, but have to let children view it too, without any restrictions or warnings.

Animal cruelty is illegal in every state. The court has already ruled that such things are not allowed.

This ruling takes away parental rights to have a say in what their children are exposed to.

Now you are being reactionary. This ruling does no such thing. Parents are still allowed to tell their children what media they can and can not consume. The only thing this ruling does is tell the state that it can not hold retailers responsible for enforcing parent’s choices.

 

[Tom]

Smogzinn-

I appreciate your well thought out response, but lots of it is either wrong, or irrelevant.

1. My whole point is a "community standard" for violence is no different than a "community standard" for sexual content. The court should either allow them both, or throw them both out. The only reason not to is their personal bias, which is not supposed to matter.

2. The California law put nothing "on the chopping block". And speech doesn't need to be "obscene" to be regulated. Nobody suggested banning anything, just restricting sales to adults. And parents could buy any game they want for their kids.

3. Children are a very specific group, they do not have the same rights as adults in a number of ways. And their parents are responsible in many cases for their conduct. They are not comparable to "people with red hair".

4. I said along I was talking about the majority opinion. The concurring opinion doesn't hold as much weight.

5. Animal cruelty videos illegal ? Not so. Read this.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/20/AR2010042001980.html

6. In the real world society makes decisions to help parents control their children's behavior. We don't let merchants sell Jack Daniels to 14 year olds. The argument that parents are supposed to know what their kids are doing every second of every day, and know what content is in every video game on the market, is ludicrous.

 

[wuliheron]

Keeping kids away from drugs, alcohol, and porn is setting minimal standards for their health no different then making sure the food we eat doesn't have rat poison in it. Insisting that society do more then set minimal standards when it clearly infringes on constitutional rights is absurd. Free speech IS a community standard as well.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Smogzinn-

I appreciate your well thought out response, but lots of it is either wrong, or irrelevant.

I enjoyed reading your ideas as well, even if I disagree with them. Sometimes we need to be challanged in our ideas.

1. My whole point is a "community standard" for violence is no different than a "community standard" for sexual content. The court should either allow them both, or throw them both out. The only reason not to is their personal bias, which is not supposed to matter.

The point of the decision was that "community standards" can't be applied across the board. The ruling that made porn a special non-protected category hinged on the fact that porn did not have an ‘idea’ that it was trying to transmit. That is what led to the famous line ‘I can’t define porn, but I know it when I see it.’ The decision here is that video games do indeed have an ‘idea’ that they are trying to transmit, and therefore are not subject to community standards. Ideas are never subject to community standards. Your speech does not have to popular, but it does have to say something.

We can argue whether porn has an idea it is trying to transmit or not, but the ruling is that no speech that has an idea can be banned from any group, including children.

2. The California law put nothing "on the chopping block". And speech doesn't need to be "obscene" to be regulated. Nobody suggested banning anything, just restricting sales to adults. And parents could buy any game they want for their kids.

Okay, banning might be to harsh of a word for this case. But if the court had ruled that video games were not protected speech there would be no legal barrier to banning the material altogether.

3. Children are a very specific group, they do not have the same rights as adults in a number of ways. And their parents are responsible in many cases for their conduct. They are not comparable to "people with red hair".

I was not directly comparing children to people with red hair. I was showing that your definition of censorship does not work. Your functional definition was 'it is not censorship if we only don't allow it to special groups.' By putting it in a situation where the definition was clearly ridiculous I was hoping to show you that.

4. I said along I was talking about the majority opinion. The concurring opinion doesn't hold as much weight.

I agree, but it tells us something about how the court made its decision, and give us some where to work to make a passable version of the law. Bring a law up that uses the stronger definitions that the concurring decision wanted to see and some of the Justices will jump sides, if it is enough you have a new decision.

5. Animal cruelty videos illegal ? Not so. Read this.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/20/AR2010042001980.html

I had not read that, but now I have.

The court only ruled that the law in question had too broad of a definition of what animal cruelty was. The law basically said that any depiction of the death of an animal was animal cruelty. SCOTUS specifically said that the same law with a reasonable definition of animal cruelty would be allowed. This seems to be very in line with the video game decision. Only this law did not use the Miller Test, so did not touch on the same subjects.

But, still it looks as though I was wrong here. Although a quick search shows that a number of states have already drawn up new, better defined legislation to outlaw animal cruelty videos, some of them expected to pass this year, some already in effect.

6. In the real world society makes decisions to help parents control their children's behavior. We don't let merchants sell Jack Daniels to 14 year olds. The argument that parents are supposed to know what their kids are doing every second of every day, and know what content is in every video game on the market, is ludicrous.

Be that as it may, it is not taking away parents rights to control their childrens behavior, it is at worst taking away one tool used by parents to do so.