7
   

Supreme Court to hear case on violent video games

 
 
Reply Sun 31 Oct, 2010 10:09 am
October 29, 2010
Supreme Court to hear case on violent video games
By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices will meet Resident Evil 4 on Tuesday in a divisive free-speech case that's rated M for mature.

Eleven states, including Florida and Texas, have joined California in urging the court to uphold a law that bans the sale of violent video games to minors younger than 18. These states say that young people need moral and psychological protection.

But in an intriguing political split, eight states — including Washington and South Carolina — want California's law buried. The interstate conflict foreshadows a provocative debate Tuesday, though the judicial odds seem to favor unfettered video gaming.

"I'd be surprised if the court ... upholds the California statute," said Peter Edelman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. "Maybe the court won't be unanimous, but it would be a major departure if they hold it constitutional."

The hourlong oral argument Tuesday morning and subsequent court decision will move beyond the $10 billion-a-year video game industry. If the Supreme Court sides with California's law, the ruling could invite restrictions on books, movies and the Internet in general.

Kibitzers abound, reflecting the case's high visibility, and most side with the video game industry. Of 32 amicus briefs filed, 28 submitted by the likes of the motion picture industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund oppose California's law.

"Restricting access to video games would ... deprive game developers and those who play their games of a critical instrument for expressing and exercising their creativity," Theodore Olson, who was the solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration, declared in a brief filed for Microsoft.

Microsoft, among many others, has money as well as principles at stake. The Washington-based corporate giant developed the Xbox and Xbox 360 video game consoles. It also developed big-selling video games, such as Halo, that could feel the chill from the case called Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association.

Schwarzenegger is California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made his Hollywood bones starring in ultra-violent make-believe flicks such as "Conan the Barbarian" and "The Terminator" series. Now, though, he's the titular defender of the state law that passed in 2005 but has never taken effect.

The law prohibits selling minors games that depict "killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being" under certain conditions.

The ban would cover games that lack "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value," are "patently offensive to prevailing standards" for what minors should see and appeal to a "deviant or morbid interest" of minors.

"You can see the effort to put this into the framework of selling pornography to children," Edelman noted.

As one example, California's attorneys cited a game called Postal 2.

"In (one) scene, the player hits a woman in the face with a shovel, causing blood to gush from her face," California's legal brief recounts. "As she cries out and kneels down, the player hits her twice more with the shovel, this time decapitating her. The player then proceeds to hit the headless corpse several more times, each time propelling the headless corpse through the air while it continues to bleed."

Supreme Court justices weren't given copies of Postal 2, though the Entertainment Merchants Association provided the court with six games, including Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Full Spectrum Warrior and Resident Evil 4.

In Resident Evil 4, players try to save the president's daughter from enemy hordes that defy belief. Many must die, in various and sundry ways, for the player to win.

"They aren't zombies," the hero says, describing his horrid foes. "Then what are they?"

The video game makers want the justices to consider the games in their entirety, so they submitted videotapes of more than two-and-a-half hours of excerpted game play. California, by contrast, provided five-minute excerpts of raw gore. Officials consider it sufficient to demonstrate why parental control is warranted.

"The (law) ensures that parents, who have primary responsibility for the well-being of minors, have an opportunity to involve themselves in deciding what level of video game violence is suitable for a particular minor," California's primary legal brief says.

Proponents of the California law cite studies that link video game exposure to, as state officials put it, "an increase in aggressive thoughts and behavior, anti-social behavior and desensitization to violence in both minors and adults." The social science link to misbehavior, though, is no longer the centerpiece of California's argument.

Until now, neither the Supreme Court nor lower appellate courts have looked kindly on laws restricting similar speech.

For instance, an appellate court struck down an Indianapolis law that required parental supervision at video arcades in 2001. Last April, by an emphatic 8-1, the Supreme Court struck down a federal statute that penalized videos that depicted animal cruelty.

"Most of what we say to one another lacks 'religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value,' let alone serious value," Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. noted in the animal cruelty case, "but it is still sheltered from government regulation."


Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/29/102854/supreme-court-to-hear-case-on.html#ixzz13xACWxmW
  • Topic Stats
  • Top Replies
  • Link to this Topic
Type: Discussion • Score: 7 • Views: 1,708 • Replies: 11

 
engineer
 
  2  
Reply Sun 31 Oct, 2010 10:15 am
@BumbleBeeBoogie,
Very interesting implications here. If you overturn this law, then are you allowed to have laws that restrict minor attendance to R, NC-17 and X rated films? If you uphold the law, do you have Best Buy carding minors? What about rentals? What about parents who buy restricted titles for their children? How about non-parents? Is that like providing alcohol to minors? Who decides if the title is restricted? Right now, the video game industry does this and tends to rate very harshly. Would that change if there were restrictions? Maybe that mature title is really a teen.
dyslexia
 
  1  
Reply Sun 31 Oct, 2010 10:41 am
@BumbleBeeBoogie,
(California)
Quote:
state law that passed in 2005 but has never taken effect.
so why has this passed law never taken effect?
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  2  
Reply Sun 31 Oct, 2010 11:01 am
@BumbleBeeBoogie,
California-State Assembly Bill 1179

Status last updated October 4th, 2005

In the waning hours of the 2005 legislative session, the California Assembly passed AB 1179 which requires "violent" video games imported or distributed in California be labeled with a 2x2 inch "18" on the front of the package and prohibits the sale or rental of such games to persons under the age of 18. This was a follow-on bill from Leland Yee's earlier AB 450. The IGDA encouraged CA-based members to write the governor, urging him to veto the bill.

Relevant links:

* Article: Game Violence AB 1179 Approved In California
* Article: IEMA Steps Up California Game Bill Response, Urges Veto
* Article: IEMA Responds To AB1179 California Games Bill
* Call-to-Action: IGDA letter to members
* Legislative info: Assembly Bill 1179
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  2  
Reply Sun 31 Oct, 2010 11:14 am
@BumbleBeeBoogie,
April 26, 2010
Supreme Court to review ban on sale of violent video games to minors
By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review a challenge to California's ban on the sale of violent video games to minors.

Hot on the heels of overturning a congressional ban on videos depicting animal cruelty, justices said they would consider the constitutionality of California's 2005 law sometime during the next term that starts in October. A federal judge has previously blocked the state law from taking effect.

"The public agrees (that) video games should be provided the same protections as books, movies and music," Entertainment Software Association President Michael D. Gallagher said Monday, adding that "we look forward to ... vigorously defending the works of our industry's creators, storytellers and innovators."

The law's author, California State Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, likewise said he was "pleased" with the upcoming court review.

"The Supreme Court has never heard a case dealing with violent video games," Yee noted, so "states are now certain to receive direction on how to proceed with this important issue."

The closely watched free-speech case is likely to become one of the first to be heard by the newest Supreme Court justice, who is expected to be nominated by President Barack Obama in coming weeks.

The court's newest member will replace Justice John Paul Stevens, who joined an eight-member majority last week in overturning the congressional ban on videos depicting animal cruelty. That 8-1 decision, with its expansive view of the First Amendment, suggests justices could be skeptical as they review California's law.

"The First Amendment's guarantee of free speech does not extend only to categories of speech that survive an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits," Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority last week.

The California law now in question prohibits the sale of video games to minors under 18 "where a reasonable person would find that the violent content appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors." As with laws governing obscenity, the state statute exempts games that have "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

At least nine other states and localities have enacted similar restrictions, including Washington, Minnesota and Illinois. In California, retailers are subject to $1,000 fines for each violation.

"This court should...permit states to treat extremely violent material the same as sexually explicit material," California Attorney General Jerry Brown argued in a legal brief, adding that "the First Amendment rights of minors are not coextensive with those of adults."

Yee, a child psychologist, cited academic studies suggesting links between playing violent video games and aggressive behavior. Supporters of the law further cite specific game descriptions to justify the restrictions

"Girls attacked with a shovel will beg for mercy; the player can be merciless and decapitate them," Brown elaborated in his legal brief. "People shot in the leg will fall down and crawl; the player can then pour gasoline over them, set them on fire, and urinate on them."

Nonetheless, the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously struck down the California law.

"The state had wrongly chosen to ban the games without exploring less restrictive alternatives, such as working with parents and retailers," stated attorney Paul M. Smith, in a legal brief filed for the Entertainment Software Association and the Entertainment Merchants Association.

The video game merchants also maintain that even controversial games can explore important themes. The vividly violent games "Resident Evil 4" and "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3," for instance, contain "detailed plots and battles of good against evil," according to Smith.

The video game industry maintains its own rating system, including descriptors such as "crude humor" and "cartoon violence." The ratings help adults guide video game purchases by minors, which Smith argues is the proper form of protection.

The Ninth Circuit in its February 2009 decision determined the state law was the kind of speech restriction subject to "strict scrutiny," which means it must be narrowly tailored to meet a compelling government interest.

"We must distinguish the state's interest in protecting minors from actual psychological or neurological harm from the State's interest in controlling minors' thoughts," appellate Judge Consuelo Callahan wrote. "The latter is not legitimate."

The case is called Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association.


Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/26/92905/supreme-court-to-review-ban-on.html#ixzz13xQZaqLj
0 Replies
 
boomerang
 
  2  
Reply Sun 31 Oct, 2010 11:53 am
@BumbleBeeBoogie,
Schwarzenegger is behind this law? Seriously? Like he hasn't made millions off violence.

I think this is one of those laws that politicians make so they can look like they're doing something "for the children". I can't believe the Supreme Court is bothering with this nonsense.

This

Quote:
"Most of what we say to one another lacks 'religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value,' let alone serious value," Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. noted in the animal cruelty case, "but it is still sheltered from government regulation."


says it all.

dyslexia
 
  0  
Reply Sun 31 Oct, 2010 11:57 am
@boomerang,
well, obviously you're a misogynist and you hate children.
0 Replies
 
realjohnboy
 
  1  
Reply Sun 31 Oct, 2010 12:17 pm
@BumbleBeeBoogie,
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

October 29, 2010
Supreme Court to hear case on violent video games:

The ban would cover games that lack "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."


The Death Panel is back?
0 Replies
 
wandeljw
 
  2  
Reply Tue 2 Nov, 2010 11:21 am
A transcript of this morning's oral arguments in pdf format is already available on the supreme court's website:

http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/08-1448.pdf
djjd62
 
  3  
Reply Tue 2 Nov, 2010 11:33 am
the EB games i go to is very good about not selling to minors, if the suspect they won't sell, and they regularly inform parents and grandparents about the ratings
0 Replies
 
dyslexia
 
  1  
Reply Tue 2 Nov, 2010 11:54 am
@wandeljw,
so california wants to ban Bugs Bunny, movies and rap music. how ******* interesting, lots of violence in the bible too.
0 Replies
 
tsarstepan
 
  1  
Reply Tue 2 Nov, 2010 12:57 pm
@engineer,
Engineer: R, NC-17, and X rated films are not federally enforced rulings. The MPAA is an established institution that self polices the movie studios and movie distribution system.

So no matter what the court decides, it will not effect the attendance policies of movie theaters and video rental stores who voluntarily follow the MPAA suggested rating system.
http://www.mpaa.org/about/history
0 Replies
 
 

Related Topics

 
  1. Forums
  2. » Supreme Court to hear case on violent video games
Copyright © 2024 MadLab, LLC :: Terms of Service :: Privacy Policy :: Page generated in 0.04 seconds on 11/04/2024 at 09:14:58