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Video Game ban overturned

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- States cannot ban the sale or rental of ultraviolent video games to children, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting such limits as a violation of young people's First Amendment rights and leaving it up to parents and the multibillion-dollar gaming industry to decide what kids can buy.

 

The high court, on a 7-2 vote, threw out California's 2005 law covering games sold or rented to those under 18, calling it an unconstitutional violation of free-speech rights. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia, said, "Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply."

 

Scalia, who pointed out the violence in a number of children's fairy tales, said that while states have legitimate power to protect children from harm, "that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."

 

Justices Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision, with Breyer saying it makes no sense to legally block children's access to pornography yet allow them to buy or rent brutally violent video games.

 

"What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting the sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?" Breyer said.Video games, said Scalia's majority opinion, fall into the same category as books, plays and movies as entertainment that "communicates ideas -- and even social messages" deserving of First Amendment free-speech protection. And non-obscene speech "cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them," he said.

 

This decision follows the court's recent movement on First Amendment cases, with the justices throwing out attempts to ban animal cruelty videos, protests at military funerals and political speech by businesses.

 

The court will test those limits again next session when it takes up a new case involving government's effort to protect children from what they might see and hear. The justices agreed to review appeals court rulings that threw out Federal Communications Commission rules against the isolated use of expletives as well as fines against broadcasters who showed a woman's nude buttocks on a 2003 episode of ABC's "NYPD Blue."

 

The decision to hear the FCC case was one of the last the full court made this session. Before leaving on their annual summer break on Monday, the justices also:

 

-- Voted 5-4 to strike down a provision of a campaign financing system in Arizona that gives extra cash to publicly funded candidates who face privately funded rivals and independent groups.

 

-- Agreed to hear arguments in the fall or winter on whether police need a warrant before using a global positioning system device to track a suspect's movements.

 

-- Refused to hear an appeal from former detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq who wanted to sue defense contractors over claims of abuse.

 

More than 46 million American households have at least one video-game system, with the industry bringing in at least $18 billion in 2010. The industry has set up its own rating system to warn parents which video games are appropriate for which ages, with the rating "M" placed on games that are considered to be especially violent and only for mature adults.

 

That system is voluntary, however. California's 2005 law would have prohibited anyone under 18 from buying or renting games that give players the option of "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being." Parents would have been able to buy the games for their children, but retailers who sold directly to minors would have faced fines of up to $1,000 for each game sold.

 

That means that children would have needed an adult to get games like "Postal 2," the first-person shooter by developer Running With Scissors that includes the ability to light unarmed bystanders on fire. It would also apply to the popular "Grand Theft Auto" games, from Rockstar Games, that allow gamers to portray carjacking, gun-toting gangsters.

 

The California law never took effect. Lower courts have said that the law violated minors' constitutional rights, and that California lacked enough evidence to prove that violent games cause physical and psychological harm to minors. Courts in six other states, including Michigan and Illinois, reached similar conclusions, striking down similar bans.

 

Video game makers and sellers celebrated their victory, saying Monday's decision puts them on the same legal footing as other forms of entertainment. "There now can be no argument whether video games are entitled to the same protection as books, movies, music and other expressive entertainment," said Bo Andersen, president and CEO of the Entertainment Merchants Association.

 

But the battle may not be over. Leland Yee, a child psychologist and California state senator who wrote the video game ban, told The Associated Press Monday that he was reading the dissents in hopes of finding a way to reintroduce the law in a way that would be constitutional.

 

"It's disappointing the court didn't understand just how violent these games are," Yee told the AP.

 

Thomas argued in his separate dissent that the nation's founders never intended for free speech rights to "include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors' parents or guardians."

 

And at least two justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, indicated they would be willing to reconsider their votes under certain circumstances. "I would not squelch legislative efforts to deal with what is perceived by some to be a significant and developing social problem," Alito said, suggesting that a narrower state law might be upheld.

 

States can legally ban children from getting pornography. But Scalia said in his ruling that, unlike depictions of sexual conduct, there is no tradition in the United States of restricting children's access to depictions of violence. He noted the violence in the original depictions of many popular children's fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White.

 

Hansel and Gretel kill their captor by baking her in an oven, Cinderella's evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves and the evil queen in Snow White is forced to wear red hot slippers and dance until she is dead, Scalia said.

 

"Certainly the books we give children to read -- or read to them when they are younger -- contain no shortage of gore," he said.

 

And there is no proof that violent video games cause harm to children, or any more harm than another other form of entertainment, he said.

 

One doctor "admits that the same effects have been found when children watch cartoons starring Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner or when they play video games like Sonic the Hedgehog that are rated `E' or even when they `view a picture of a gun," Scalia said.

 

Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, said the decision created a constitutionally authorized "end-run on parental authority."

 

"I wonder what other First Amendment right does a child have against their parents' wishes?" he said. "Does a child now have a constitutional right to bear arms if their parent doesn't want them to buy a gun? How far does this extend? It's certainly concerning to us that something as simple as requiring a parental oversight to purchase an adult product has been undermined by the court."

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I just want to know which game lets you bind,gag and kill??? I haven't seen that anywhere ......

 

Exactly, all hyperbole, as bad as video games are, there is usually a reason to do the violence. He could be talking about something as innocent as in Dead Red where you tie a girl up and leave her on the train tracks like some 1920's villian. Its a joke and they are incapable of humor.

 

Thomas argued in his separate dissent that the nation's founders never intended for free speech rights to "include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors' parents or guardians." As for Thomas's claim, I dont see any claim where the 1st A doesnt apply to children, they are people after all.

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Booooooooo Booooooooo stupid court. There are so much research and statistics out there. They all show ! Video games ! Kill. Every min there are somebody killed by a video game in the nation. What were they thinking ????

Plus I also want to start a non-profit organization for the protection of all virtual characters that are killed in the video games. Nobody cares about them, nobody gives them a proper burial. they just disappear :( when u turn off the game. ... That's not right ..,,

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I just want to know which game lets you bind,gag and kill??? I haven't seen that anywhere ......

postal 2 was pretty bad.....

You start the game off with a shovel a can of fuel and a lighter, your main objective is to go out and buy milk.....

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Weren't you able to torture people in Manhunt also?

 

EDIT: Yep, from wiki:

 

The controversy surrounding the game stems from the graphic manner in which the player executes enemies. The game has three 'levels' of executions, and the executions get bloodier as the levels of execution progress. Level 1 executions are quick and the least bloody of the three, while Level 2 executions are considerably more gory, and Level 3 kills are over-the-top fatalities. The levels of fatalities are based on the lock-on's color (white, yellow, or red). For example, if using the plastic bag and the lock-on is white, then the fatality is minor. The player just suffocates the enemy and nothing else. If the lock-on is yellow, the player slips the bag over his head and continuously knees the enemy in the head. If the lock-on is red, then the player strangles, punches, and snaps the enemy's neck while the enemy groans in pain and suffers from lack of oxygen. The game's graphic presentation of the executions are accentuated in a style reminiscent of a snuff film, and the game encourages players to execute enemies as brutally as possible.[14][16][17] In 2007, former Rockstar employee Jeff Williams wrote on his blog that the game wasn't unanimously revered among the developers either, saying that "there was almost a mutiny at the company over that game",[18] and the game "just made us all feel icky. It was all about the violence, and it was realistic violence. We all knew there was no way we could explain away that game. There was no way to rationalize it. We were crossing a line."[19]

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Have you ever played the game "Manhunt"? You play a convicted killer who was supposedly put to death, but goes out and kills some more...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhunt_(video_game)

 

It was pretty darn gruesome....

 

Still - I do agree with the court decision. It's not up to the state/country/lawyers/etc to regulate what you let kids get access to. It's called Parenting......

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I think all the Video Game violence started with "Custer's Revenge". This is the one where you dodge the arrows then go walk over with a blocky 5 pixel boner and hump the squaw.

 

I mean, aren't all the kids who grew up in the 80s in jail for raping Indian women?

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I think all the Video Game violence started with "Custer's Revenge". This is the one where you dodge the arrows then go walk over with a blocky 5 pixel boner and hump the squaw.

 

I mean, aren't all the kids who grew up in the 80s in jail for raping Indian women?

 

Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the Atari2600 was just as bad. You had to run from a guy with a giant blue chainsaw boner.

 

But really. There is no concrete evidence that Video Games harm the psyche of a child. If anything I'd make the argument that after a bad day at school coming home and blowing up Communist foot soldiers reduces stress. Penn and Teller did a 30 minute show on Video Game violence. They examined the studies, the claims, interviewed both sides, and performed a legitimate experiment. They took a 10 year old, had him play three hours of GTA, put a gun in his hand. The whole idea was to see if he would pull the trigger on a person. The kid looked at the gun, put it down and walked away.

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A study that I've read about that was conducted with some DOD personnel had to do with the desensitization towards violence via mechanics of certain first person shooters. Long story short, the study basically said the argument was null based on the fact that 100% of people without a mental disorder can still differentiate between reality and fantasy/virtual reality.

What was interesting was that the focus was put on, what I call, body-muting, which in games like Call of Duty and other similar FPS (where the player can kill literally hundreds or even thousands of bad guys in an hour or so) is prevalent. What made that significant was that people would literally stop caring about the fact that they were in fact shooting people, albeit "targets" or "enemies," without having any type of rise or moral conflict. However, extensive studies would show that people, while droned out while playing, were fully aware of consequences when not playing. Think Clockwork Orange (except with no negative change).

 

Having been a gamer for as long as I could imagine, I can honestly only think of a handful of games that I personally have found troubling. A lot of them don't even have to do with violence, but instead offends my other senses. There are all of those crazy Japanese hyper-sexual games which are just weird/creepy. A more recent one would have to be the new Duke Nukem, which I'm still trying to figure out. Showing forcible rape is always a bit troubling, and the fact that it wasn't even done for a purpose (which hardly makes it any better if there was some kind of value) is what bothers me in the end. But I also understand that is my own opinion, and my personal opinion, and the same applies to others, shouldn't be a legit reason for something to be banned. If I had kids, as pointed out by others, I would just suggest to my kids to try something else out that didn't involve something I was uncomfortable with personally.

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Postal The first one had a level where you molotoved a school marching band. absolutley insane idea but it had all the band sounds when you did it, cymbols, tuba, drums. funny.

 

screenshot01.jpg

 

Postal 2 was sick. You could piss in someones mouth and make them vomit. That one I had to get rid of. Creeped me out.

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And in Postal 2, let's not for get you could use a stun gun to knock someone out, then pour gas on them, light them on fire and then pee on them to put out the fire and they would crawl around on the ground screaming. Oh, and cat silencers, but that was kinda funny. Lol.

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And in Postal 2, let's not for get you could use a stun gun to knock someone out, then pour gas on them, light them on fire and then pee on them to put out the fire and they would crawl around on the ground screaming. Oh, and cat silencers, but that was kinda funny. Lol.

OMG I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THE CAT SILENCER!!!!!!

postal2_catsilencer.jpg

 

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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