Why Don't NY State Senators Just Go Ahead And Hand The Money To Video Game Lawyers?

from the missed-a-day-in-civics-class dept

Tue, May 22nd 2007 9:04pm — Carlo Longino

About a month ago, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer said pushing an unconstitutional ban on selling certain video games to minors through the state's legislature was one of his top priorities. State senators there are doing their part, taking just four days to get the bill passed after it was introduced. Perhaps in their haste, the senators missed the fact that, as written, the law is certain to get struck down by the courts, just like they have everywhere else that's passed them. The measure moves on to the state assembly for consideration now, and hopefully lawmakers there will realize that all passing it will do is set taxpayers up for a big legal bill. But with so many brownie points on offer, and the memory of the Virginia Tech tragedy still fresh for bastardization in people's minds, that seems pretty unlikely.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

7 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Poster (profile), 22 May 2007 @ 9:34pm

I find it rather amusing that the bill came about because of the V-Tech Massacre game, despite the fact that there was no way to regulate it.

Can we sit lawmakers down and slap some sense into them in the form of a "Today's Technology for Idiots" book?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2007 @ 12:13am

Remember, being a law maker isn't about making good laws, it is about saying you make good laws so that you can engage in selfless self promotion.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lawl, 23 May 2007 @ 9:56am

Your right anonymous coward, its all about the brownie points and staying in office. Its like that on both sides of the political parties. I think what they are banking on is the whole VTech incident and using that and hoping people wont mind. Personally I think that it should be illegal to sell M rated games to minors, but its not the governments job to monitor what kids are playing. Its up to the parents to regulate what their kids are playing or watching on the TV. Parents seem to think that the television is a good substitude for parental interaction.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Matt Bennett, 23 May 2007 @ 2:28pm

Every time this subject comes up, I ask the same question, every time not answers it.

Why is it unconstitutional to ban minors from certain videogames, but it IS constitutional (supposedly) to ban them from certain magazines (i.e. porn)?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Jim Norton, 23 May 2007 @ 2:47pm
  
  Re:
  First, is it actually unconstitutional to prevent selling of porn to children, or is it simply illegal (ditto for video games, R-rated movies, etc)? Second, video games may contain lots of violence, but rarely contain hardcore pornography, unless they are specifically tailored to deliver it.
  
  Furthermore, the level of violence in most video games already exists on free television which is not regulated to that degree. So the precedent has been set. What's the point of regulating the consumption of video games to minors when you don't do the same to more readily accessible media like television?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Disagree, 24 May 2007 @ 7:43am

Re: Matt Bennett and Jim Norton
Matt: It's constitutional to restrict minors' access to porn because porn is "obscene" content, and obscenity is not protected speech under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court defines obscene to pretty much mean "sexually obscene." This is where video game laws run into trouble, since they're always opposing "violent" video games.

Jim: Clearly, you haven't been playing video games recently. Go play games like Postal and Grand Theft Auto. I guarantee that you will not find that level of violence OR obscenity in any television show (public or cable) or rated film.

Furthermore, games are different from television and film. The repetitive action and focus on honing skills makes them more of a learning tool than simply watching a TV series (where each episode is different and probably watched only once) or a movie. The U.S. military uses a console video game system to improve soldiers' shooting accuracy and instincts, for Pete's sake.

I think that the video game laws that have been proposed to date are unconstitutional, because they're overly broad and don't know what the heck they're trying to regulate. But I do think that access by minors to SOME of these games could and should be restricted under the same rationale we use to restrict minors' access to porn, alcohol, tobacco, and sex.

Oh, and the government also restricts the time slots in which radio and tv shows can broadcast content unsuitable to minors, so the whole video game thing really isn't as outrageous as you might think.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- FH, 24 May 2007 @ 2:18pm
  
  Re: Re: Matt Bennett and Jim Norton
  Actually they only regulate "family hour" in broadcast TV not cable and satellite.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]