There are many things wrong with the United States but sometimes the (relative) sanity of the court system shines as a bright spot. As Gamasutra reports, a US District Judge has ordered the state of Louisiana to pay the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) $91,000 in restitution for its backwards and wrong-headed attempt to censor video games (the law was drafted by Jack Thompson, everyone’s favorite clown) and the resulting legal bills that the ESA incurred in its successful attempt to overturn the law, which was eventually ruled unconstitutional.
This follows on the footheels of of a similar case in Michigan in which an anti-video-games law was ruled unconstitutional and the state was ordered to pay the ESA $182,349. I hope voters are paying attention. These legislators (who clearly hate the Constitution) are doing nothing but wasting taxpayer money when they pass laws that are pretty blatantly unconstitutional.
Movies are not government-regulated (barring child porn…the movie ratings you see are assigned by a private industry group that’s quite monopolistically abusive but it’s not the government). Music is not government-regulated (the warning stickers on albums in the US are put there by the RIAA, not the government). Books are not government-regulated. Paintings are not government-regulated. Why do some continue to believe that there’s a case to be made for censorship of video games when time after time the courts have affirmed Constitutional protection for the all of the other major mediums of creative content?
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April 16th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
MiniWuffy
****ing censorship
April 17th, 2007 at 7:41 am
Galleus
I suppose I had it coming listening to Fox News yesterday in the wake of the horrible events at Virginia Tech, but my blood boiled with rage when none other than J. Thompson was brought on and interviewed as an “expert.” His immediate linking of the events to Doom, Counter Strike, and the gamer “counter-culture” at large were a disgusting ploy at self-empowerment and, unfortunately, will probably work out for him. It pains me that ambulance-chasers like Thompson are still paraded about like experts any time there is some emotional tragedy, even as the victims are still being mourned and the survivors cared for in their hospital beds.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:05 am
Adam
Why? Perhaps because those other mediums are passive experiences, whereas games are inherently interactive ones, and that frightens people a lot more (the move from being preached to, to actually experimenting…)
May 9th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Andrew Crystall
Adam, except there is a medium with a far greater proven effect (especially on adolescents), and which is far more pervasive and which rejects even the most rudimentary forms of regulation.
Music, of course.