The Supreme Court struck down a California law banning sales or rentals of violent video games to minors for violating free-speech rights This is a major decision as it is the first ruling in a video game case.
The law which would have also imposed strict video-game labeling requirements was declared unconstitutional. The forces behind the defeat of the law were the video game industry worth about $10 billion a year in sales as well as corporations like Disney. One of the Justices, Antonin Scalia, who opposed the law said, "Our cases hold that minors are entitled to a significant degree of First Amendment protection. Government has no free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which they may be exposed,".
One of the two that supported the law countered that, "The practices and beliefs of the founding generation establish that "the freedom of speech," as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors' parents or guardians. I would hold that the law at issue is not facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment, and reverse and remand for further proceedings."
I am having a bit of difficulty with this one. Every time I see a child playing these games they are generally games where limbs are being severed, blood squirting etc. The US military has a huge influence in the making of these games from what I understand. The law defined a violent game as one that depicts "killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being."
The problem I have is that we don't allow businesses to sell pornography to kids. We don't allow them to sell cigarettes and even force them to warn adults about the dangers of smoking. I am an opponent of the state interfering in individual rights and stuff but these games are violent and misogynistic, but they're are good for training children for military activity. We also have ratings for movies, children can't wander in to R rated movies.
I used to think that media doesn't influence or can't encourage violent behavior but they wouldn't spend billions of dollars a year in advertising, influencing what we buy and how we look if it didn't work, I don't believe that violent images in themselves are the cause, they are part of the sickness of capitalist society in general, but repeated exposure to children from day one does, in my opinion, have very negative effects that would include or culminate in violence. In so much of the media, the victims are women, this contributes to an attitude toward young women that is unhealthy.
I always found the US a country of paradoxes. It is very conservative at one end but also offers many freedoms compared to Britain say. I don't think head cops and judges are elected for example in Britain stuff like that. But here, an 18 year old woman can appear in a gang bang porno film but the law won't let her go buy a beer afterwards.
Life in America.
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