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Supreme Court considers violent games rules case (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11671196?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter)

The highest court in the US has heard arguments over whether children can be stopped from buying violent video games involving murder and sexual assault.

The Supreme Court case centres on a ban in California on selling or renting games to those under the age of 18.

Opponents of the measure says it breaches the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech.

But supporters say the law is necessary as violent games can cause harm to children.

Supreme Court justices appeared split on Tuesday over whether the restrictions are constitutional.

"We do not have a tradition in this country of telling children they should watch people actively hitting schoolgirls over the head with a shovel so they'll beg with mercy - being merciless and decapitating them - shooting people in the leg so they fall down," Chief Justice John Roberts said.

But other justices appeared to be worried the law, which was never put into effect, could have larger, damaging implications for the US constitution.

"I am concerned with the First Amendment, which says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech," said Justice Antonin Scalia.

He added: "It has never been understood that the freedom of speech did not include portrayals of violence. You are asking us to create a whole new prohibition which the American people never ratified when they ratified the First Amendment."

Paul Smith, a lawyer for the Entertainment Merchants Association, added there was no proof violent video games were any more damaging than television, books or movies.

"We have a history in this country of new mediums coming along and people vastly overreacting to them, thinking the sky is falling, our children are all going to be turned into criminals," he said.

'Morbid interests'

The 2005 California law prohibits the sale of violent video games to children "where a reasonable person would find that the violent content appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors, is patently offensive to prevailing community standards as to what is suitable for minors, and causes the game as a whole to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors".

Under the law, parents can still purchase violent video games for their children, but retailers caught selling the titles to minors can face a fine of up to $1,000 (£625) for each game.

After a legal challenge by industry groups, a district court and then the court of appeals stopped the law coming into effect.

Courts in six other states have also reached similar conclusions, striking down bans.

The Supreme Court, which will make a decision next year on the case, may have to decide if California is required to demonstrate "a direct causal link between violent video games and physical and psychological harm to minors" before stopping games being sold to them.

Outgoing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is supporting the legal case against the Entertainment Merchants Association, with a number of other trade groups and rights activist bodies involved.

There is already a nationwide voluntary system of game classification.

I'm on board with legal restrictions to children purchasing games without the acknowledgement of their parent or guardian.

I would want the board who actually decides such things to be actual developers and gamers though, not politicians or government officials.

The problem with even just having an M-rating label system is that then games get M-rated and not stocked at Walmart and the game does shit numbers.

Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor take turns being the hippest justices today. "Have you heard some of the lyrics about some of the rap songs?" Sotomayor asks in horror. Why not regulate them? Kagan, playing to the law clerks, asks Morazzini whether Mortal Kombat would be banned under the law, describing it as an "iconic game which I am sure half of the clerks who work for us spent considerable amounts of time in their adolescence playing."

Ten minutes into the argument, Morazzini is barely visible beneath all the blood spatter. He's been assailed for the statute's vagueness, its overbreadth, and for the state's failure to show that playing violent video games is any more likely to engender violence in children than watching Bugs Bunny. Justice Samuel Alito can't fathom how California can set a standard that is the same for a 17-year-old and a 10-year-old. Morazzini posits that the jury be told to imagine the "average minor." Scalia takes aim: "Is the average minor between zero and 18—is that 9 years old??" Joke power surge: 300 points.

Justice Clarence Thomas is conserving his energy.
[...]
Level 3: Scalia is in full sniper gear at the top of a deserted Capitol building. He tells Morazzini: "You are asking us to create a whole new prohibition which the American people never ratified when they ratified the First Amendment. … What's next after violence? Depictions of drinking? Smoking? Movies that show smoking can't be shown to children?" And suddenly Alito is there with the punch line: "Well, I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games? Did he enjoy them?" Nobody looks more surprised than Justice Alito that he has just brought the house down. Sudden-death orginalism smackdown: 3,000 points.

When Alito later says that video games represent a new medium that "couldn't have been envisioned when the First Amendment was adopted," Scalia looks as though he has been stabbed in the back with a rusty bayonet. Mastery of the first originalist defense of living constitutionalism: 5,000 points. Alito advances to the next level.
[...]
Level 6: Roberts asks whether Smith would object to a rule that said all the most violent videos "have to be on the top shelf out of the reach of children," noting they already do that with cigarettes. Smith replies that "cigarettes are not speech, your honor." Roberts snaps back: "I know that cigarettes are not speech, Mr. Smith." Silently adding "Because. You. Can't. Smoke. Speech."

It's a strange morning. Testy exchanges and unlikely alliances. Scalia lines up with Kagan and the liberal ladies while an angry Breyer joins forces with an outraged Alito and Roberts. I count only three votes to uphold the California ban, which again raises the question of how the court scraped up the four votes to hear the appeal in the first place.

It doesn't look very good for the California violent video ban, but if video game manufacturers are smart, they'll get to work on Mortal Kombat 7: The Revenge of James Madison.

How many of them have seen Saw? Who cares? Worry about your own kids.

I listened to Ozzy, played AD&D and violent video games. I should be chopping up people, not wood.

I fully support jackass being available to every freshmen student in highschool world wide. Let natural selection work its magic, so in ten years we won't have this annoying video game discussion every 5 years.

I wrote an article for The Escapist about this shit when it was the Illinois version of the law. It's about time the SCOTUS took this one on, this is a "Judas Priest is killing our kids" scare and it's time to put it to rest.

We have a ratings system.  It should work the same way movies do.

I'm not an expert, but from what I've read about this it works pretty much the same.  The obvious difference is that reviewing a movie takes sitting down for two hours and watching it.  Reviewing a game with equal thoroughness takes playing it for two to six weeks.

But as far as the review process and standards are concerned, they are from my understanding pretty similar.  That is to say, the people making the game and movie only get told its final rating.  They don't know why it was given that rating, they get no explanation or details on the topic.  This applies to both movies and video games, from my understanding.  The fact that they aren't given any actual information is insane, but it's likely because...there are also, from my understanding, absolutely no solid guidelines or rules that they must abide by.  Which means ratings are entirely subjective based on the group of individuals that rated that particular product.  If they said exactly what the rating was earned for then people could dispute the ratings more easily, which they don't want.

This isn't the case at all, at least in the US where the ESRB rates games.  This page (http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_process.jsp) explains the process. Note that the 'specially trained game raters' mentioned are volunteers and aren't necessarily part of what would normally be described as the computer gaming demographic.

I wrote an article for The Escapist about this shit when it was the Illinois version of the law. It's about time the SCOTUS took this one on, this is a "Judas Priest is killing our kids" scare and it's time to put it to rest.

I just can't support something like this when a significant portion of the country thinks Harry Potter is deviant.

Let parents figure out what they want their kids to read, watch, or play.

Don't call the government. They muck everything up.  :uhrr:

That's exactly it.

Voluntary ratings are bad enough. They tend to turn into some form of censorship. Theaters won't book NC17 movies. Stores won't stock M games. Or whatever. Involuntary government enforcement? No thank you.

I also disagree with the overall notions that most of these ratings are based on. Serious significant and realistic violence is bad for kids and cartoon violence is a-ok. Naked women are PG13 and naked men are NC17. Two teenagers screwing is PG13, unless they're lesbian when it's R or gay men when it's NC17.

Let parents figure out what they want their kids to read, watch, or play.

Like many have said above, the only thing laws like these change is marketing and availability.  Perhaps that's what the watchdog groups are after.  

Thus, creative expression (one might say free speech) is curtailed, and shitty parents are still shitty parents who have deviant piles of shit for kids.

I agree which is why I prefer the PEGI system of rating rather than the ESRB system. PEGI tells you what things are in the game that you might want to consider before purchase - sex, strong language, gore etc rather than simply giving it an age rating - the age ratings are also there but the reasons for the rating are provided on the box.

But if you change the marketing and availability, you change the game design. If a studio is looking at an M rating that's enforceable by law, they'll cut the content back to a walmart-friendly level (or rather, be told by their publisher to do so, because EA sure the fuck doesn't want to lose it's cut). Just like movies have to, to keep things R. Thus, creative expression (one might say free speech) is curtailed, and shitty parents are still shitty parents who have deviant piles of shit for kids.

Just like movies have to, to keep things R. Thus, creative expression (one might say free speech) is curtailed, and shitty parents are still shitty parents who have deviant piles of shit for kids.

This would mean a lot more if the creative expression was in things other than blood splatter physics.

The flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz scared the shit out of me as a kid.

The flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz scared the shit out of me as a kid.

Pfft.  The Dark Crystal.  Now there is some shit that will cause your kids to never look at muppets the same way again.   Same thing with Watership Down and rabbits.