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Indianapolis Restricts Display Of Violent Games
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jul 18, 2000 05:09 PM
from the but-I'll-know-it-when-I-see-it dept.
from the but-I'll-know-it-when-I-see-it dept.
Darren M. writes: "This CNN article talks about a new law passed in Indianapolis. Apparently, starting the 1st of September, arcades will be required to place games with violence or strong sexuality away from non-violent games, separated by a wall or curtain. They will also be required to only allow persons 18 and over to play them. I cannot imagine how this is constitutional." This seems like a thin excuse to harden and extend the age stratification that passes in many areas of life for "common sense." Remind anyone of jamie's story about age restriction on Soldier of Fortune in British Columbia?
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Indianapolis Restricts Display Of Violent Games
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Then Get a Problem (Score:3)
Why this law will fail... (Score:3)
That being out of the way, I belive that this law is probably doomed to a quick death. Simply put, it will kill arcades throughout the city. Games like Mortal Kombat and its ilk are the bread and butter of these places. Denying the vast majority of the customers access to those machines will seriously hurt the bottom line.
Even should that first supposition be wrong, having a roped off section behind a curtain with a big bouncer not allowing kids in is sure going to be a great draw for families, isn't it? Who in their right minds would have their kid's birthday party in a place like that? Even those who don't play those games will be effected by this asinine piece of legislation.
Personally, if I were an Indianapolis arcade owner, I'd tell the city to frag themselves and move to the suburbs out of the way. Consider the lost tax revenue plus the cost of enforcing the law would be rediculous. There's no way that the city can reasonably expect this law to stay on the books without it having a negative and demonstratable effect on the city. This law is doomed to failure, and anyone with half a clue should have been able to figure it out.
If I were an Indianapolis resident, I'd seriously thinking about a recall petition.
Violence bad, personal freedom good (Score:3)
Personally, I don't dispute this. Children exposed to violence at an early age probably turn out to be a little more screwed up than others.
However, the question is whether you are willing to gradually give up more and more personal freedoms and allow censorship in order to prevent this from happening. I am not. You can either decide to take personal responsibility for protecting your children from that which you feel they should be protected from, or let the government dictate to you how things should be. As everyone knows, freedom of speech is not meant to protect popular ideas. It it to protect the unpopular ones -- or in this case, the politically incorrect ones.
The games are put behind a curtain? Doesn't that seem a little ominous to anyone else?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Ooh, great. (Score:5)
kwsNI
Re:Once again... (Score:3)
The Spartans also had a problem with slave revolts. They're slaves wern't happy, and in fact the only thing that kept them under control for the most part was the massive standing army Sparta kept at home. So for politcal reasons they didn't embrace the Athenian strategy. That is not to say that the Spartans didn't play a crucial role in the war. Their most famous battle is Thermopylae, a narrow passage near the sea where 3000 allied greek soliders (300 Spartan hoplites, 700 from other allies, and about 2000 support personal, archers ect...) held off Xerxe's entire army (over 100,000 men, 1,000,000 by some accounts) for 3 days. It could be thought of as the Alamo of ancient greece. Anyway the death toll was astounding, Xerxes lost something on the order of 10k men. Anyway that holding action disrupted Xerxes supply chain and ruined the tight integration between his land and naval forces (the navy could not operate with out the land forces) and likely supplied the edge Athens needed to spank the Persian navy soundly at Salamis and elsewhere.
A couple of good books I recomend about the Persian wars are:
The Greco-Persian Wars [amazon.com] by Peter Green.
and
The Gates of Fire [amazon.com] by Stephen Pressfeild.
The Gates of Fire is a fictional account of the Spartans involvment at Thermopylea, takes a few liberties but overall is a very good piece of historical fiction. I recomend reading Green's book first (it reads like a novel not a text book) for an overall picture of the war and then reading Gates of Fire for a first person perspective of warfare in ancient times. History was never more exciting
I should also note that shortly after the wars, Athens essentially started extracting protection money from her naval allies and sacked a few island cities that refused to pay dues to her defense coalition. This growing Athenian empire is what led to Sparta and Athens fighting (with Athens losing) about 100 yrs later.
A solution to all our problems... (Score:5)
Fundamentally, I have no problem with restricting access to certain materials for children. However, I'd love to see our imperfect system replaced with one which truly reflects the philosophies of the child's parent.
The current US system has two major flaws:
In order to allow parents to exert some degree of control over their children's intake of material, yet at the same time allow them to customize the access based on their personal views and reading of the child's maturing, I propose the following system for all media (TV, print, videogames, video, movies, etc.):
I know this is simplistic, but I do think there are some reasonable ideas that we could use to replace the current botched up system.
-Erik
18+ only == "Adult" business. Zoning laws apply. (Score:5)
Typical zoning laws do not all adult businesses in all but the worst part of town, in the industrial zoned areas, far out of the way of everything, and certainly far away from schools, malls, and kids. Arcades may be forced to get rid of the violent games or see their business licenses revoked.
If they boot the games, arcades may see their customer count dwindling. So wheather by zoning laws or simple fall off in profits, arcades could find themselves forced out of business.
See what a tiny piece of legislation can do?
Re:constitutional? Yes. (Score:4)
The issue here is not that the right to play violent video games is protected by the constitution but does not apply to children, but that there is no constitutional right to play violent video games. The vast majority of "rights" in this country have been constructed by the courts or the lawmakers based on the principles of the Bill of Rights and the ninth-amendment protection of "unenumerated rights."
Do, indeed, the constitution or the laws of the land mention anything about the freedom to play violent video games? No. The legal question is not whether children have constitutional rights, but whether a municipal government has the power to prevent children from accessing games it finds objectionable in a public place.
The inevitable lawsuit will be a very interesting one to watch, because the current standard for deciding if objectionable material can be restricted by government decree is whether the offending material is totally devoid of either artistic merit or social value. Certainly this is not the case with (most) violent video games, but it will be fun to see the city's arguments to the contrary!
Re:Instant Strikedown, just add lawsuit (Score:3)
change how people behave? Are you nuts? Have speed limits changed how people drive? For the most part, no. Not until they pull every speeder over, every time, and pull their license - and incarcerate for driving on suspended licenses, will behavioral changes occur.
Sorry, but you're wrong about this. When California raised its freeway limit from 55 mph to 65 mph four years ago, average speeds dutifully rose from 65mph to 75mph. Drivers, on average, drive at 10 mph over the limit. Even though only 1 in 700 minor driving offences (speeding etc.) are prosecuted, most drivers stay close enough to the limit. The threat of being caught is part but only part of why the vast majority of people obey the law.
Already happens in Australia (Score:3)
I don't know if this weak curtaining thing is mandated by Australian censorship -- sorry, classification -- laws or whether it is self imposed, but I suspect the former. There's no requirement for the game to be set apart from other games as mentioned in this particular law: the machines with the curtain rails poking out oddly from the body of the game stand right next to the ones with the exposed screens.
The article in question quotes someone as saying "the law's not going to do any good." Well, duh! It's political grandstanding, same as usual, and the only "good" it's meant to do is to increase the popularity of its proponents with the moral majority -- and it will work in its own small way. It's also yet another law in the ever increasing pile of the stuff that most Western democracies are miring themselves in. That fact, more than "restraint of free speech", is what I find offensive.
Ban Board Games! (Score:5)
I believe this law doesn't go far enough! We need to protect our children from board games which teach them that enough money will solve all your problems.
Consider Monopoly, for instance. The object of the game is to get as much money as possible and bankrupt the other players. Children see that it is okay to financially destroy other people! And look at the high amounts of money used when playing it. Exposed to routine use of those incredibly high sums, children will see the high sums of money in the drug trade as no big deal!
It doesn't end at board games either! Games like jumping rope and basketball teach children that it is okay to exclude the handicapped. That intolerance is unacceptable! Ban those games and let the eggheads figure out how to make hopscotch ADA compliant!
Don't Have a Problem With It (Score:3)
This is a suprise......Why? (Score:5)
And the problem is??? (Score:5)
If the community deems that these things are offensive, and should have a restricted audience, what's the problem? You're still even allowed to take your kids to the arcade, if you don't mind them playing. It merely moves the decision to play that sort of thing into the parents court theoretically, rather than letting possibly uninformed, immature kids make the decision on their own.
I have yet to see any strong advocacy movement on slashdot to allow children of all ages to see XXX porno freely. It's about the same issue.
There is a fairly long standing acceptance of movies being rated PG, meaning that a parent needs to guide the kids to see it. It's about the same issue. It's not really a constitutional issue as far as I can see.
The Constitution protects the expression of speech. And the game companies are still allowed to express the game however they want. They are merely being limited to who their audiece is, to a group that possibly is more mature, and better able to deal with it appropriately.
Now, if you want to discuss the futility of a measure like this, I'm on board. I don't see this changing anything in terms of what kids play. Not significantly. I went to R movies long before I was 18, and I fully expect Indianapolis kids to skirt this with impunity. And I do feel for the arcade owners who have to deal with this stuff. It's a hassle for them, and they can't win either way. Either the customers will get pissed at them, or the law will be all over them.
It's a stupid law, I think. But far from a meaningful one.
Once again... (Score:5)
18- (Score:4)
Whew... (Score:3)
Or is British Columbia the only place in North America being overrun by retarded reality-based Japanese videogames?
More Prohibition.... (Score:4)
The Evil effects of videogames (Score:4)
Errr...
Re:Ooh, great. (Score:3)
/End Rant.
A first step...to where? (Score:3)
So I take it this guy is planning on going after TV next? All those cop shows and what not? Heck, he should watch some old cartoons. Maybe he'll go after our government and the "culture of violence" they practice that helps keep gas prices low.
Sorry, but I just can't help but laugh at people who say things like "We must attack the culture of violence." Shouldn't you be making peace with it?
This attitude (Which also comes into play with the drug war, Kill the Drugs, liquor and cigarettes) of trying to hide the bad things and act like they are not there, only adds to the "cool" factor of accessing them. The motivation for a teenager can be quite simple. q:"Why'd you do it?" a:"You told me not too." and attitudes like this play directly into it. These types of laws also help to marginalize certain individuals, and in this case, it is those individuals that perhaps shouldn't be marginalized any more than they already are.
--
Constitutional Right To Violence? (Score:4)
In a country were the average youth (especially minorities) is disenfranchised, ignored by their parents and has easy access to mind altering substances it is in my opinion a deadly combination to combine that with the current cocktail mix of easy access to firearms and constant daily diet of violence in all forms that children get.
That Americans are desensitized to violence is no longer news, but it amazes me when someone claims that a diet of gratuitious violence and entertainment that consists of 1, [dailyradar.com] 2
In my opinion until there is a movement to curtail the excessive amount of firepower in the community then moves like this are a stop gap measure on the journey to ridding our communities of violence. Yes, I know violence goes beyond violent video games and is more likely due to other factors (abuse at home, poverty, feelings of persecution, resentment) but the fact is that violent video games are not blameless. But two wrongs do not make a right (allow violent video games to minors since they have access to other violence), after all, the Columbine kids didn't play long games of Pokemon before going on their killing spree.
PS; If you've ever lived in a neighborhood were you go to sleep hearing gunshots and wakeup to sirens you'll know where I'm coming from. Lakewood, Atlanta, GA.
Re:Instant Strikedown, just add lawsuit (Score:5)
What amazes me is that people think that by obscuring or forbidding access to such things, we will remove their influence upon those who we assume are impressionable (i.e. children). Children may not see rated R movies alone, but they do. Children may not view pornography but they do (and did long before the Internet ever existed).
I don't think that the lawmakers are nearly as naive as you make them out to be. Of course they realise that many of the laws that are passed are not going to be directly effective. Not all laws are meant to be strictly enforced. Many are aimed at signalling what society believes to be acceptable behavior.
In this example, of course many kids will get around this law (I'm using "law" in a non-technical way: IANAL). But it sends a signal that Indiana doesn't believe that certain depictions of violence are appropriate for children. Even if the law is never enforced, the publicity surrounding the law will send a message about what society believes is civilized and what is not. This helps parents enforce these rules on their own children because it allows them to point to how most parents expects their children to behave. This does actually have a positive effect.
Anti-racism and other anti-discrimination laws are like this. There are actually very few prosecutions under these laws, but they send a strong signal that society doesn't believe racism, sexism, homophobia etc. are acceptable. Over time this can change how people behave.
Age matters not... (Score:3)
Re:Once again... (Score:5)
If they insist on doing this, why not go all the way, the Spartan way?
Background:
In ancient Sparta, boys and girls were inspected at birth. If any deformity was seen, infants were left on a hillside to die. At a young age, both male and female children were taken to live in government-run barracks. Boys were never given enouh to eat, and were taught that stealing was acceptable, provided they were not caught. They took a test at 18 --- Those who did well became warriors. They lived in the barracks, even after marrying, until 60, were allowed no material possessions, etc. etc. etc. Those who failed because part of the lower merchant class. Below them were the slaves, who did various agricultural chores.
Sound like fiction? Nope.
Now, the Spartans were fearsome and duly feared, being powerful, but, meanwhile, Athens had a relatively democratic structure with privilages, some rumblings of equality, etc. Probably horrible by today's standards, but liberal for the time.
Now, when the Persians attempt to invade Greece, the Greeks join forces and fight them off.
Persia invaded twice and was soundly defeated both times, but not because of Spartan military strength, but because of Athenian strategy, especially fighting Persian ships in a narrow straight to reduce the effect of numbers.
Which city-state gave us the ideas we use today? Athens. Which is the capital of modern-day Greece? Athens. Which is remembered for its cultural legacy and its great thinkers? Athens.
What do we get from Sparta? A word: Spartan
Think about which we *were* most like.
Think about where we're going.
Disturbing, no?
Feel free to moderate down this silly digression into historical analogies.
Re:And the problem is??? (Score:5)
If the industry decided, based on parent pressure, that this is a good idea, that is acceptable. If the government mandates it by law, it is government censorship, which is a very bad thing.
The reason it is a bad thing is because the government is then responsible for defining "violence", "sexuality", and "offensive". They can then whittle away as they choose at these definitions. They may even do it very, very slowly, so we don't feel oppressed.
That's why the first amendment must remain an absolute. It the whittle away, or slippery slope, theory of gradual opression of clueless masses.
Let the industry take care of this if they think it is necessary. The people can even boycott arcades that offend them. But this law needs to be ruled unconstitutional.
This has been needed for years... (Score:5)
This law is needed.
--Shoeboy
Digital versus Real violence. (Score:5)
I love violent video games. I grew up playing Street Fighter (in all it's incarnations), Final Fantasy, Doom, etc. Although I tend to dislike violence in games for the sake of violence, if it's a good game, *and* it's violent? Hell, I'm interested...
Now, that would mean that after uppercutting, shooting, stabbing, slicing, and kicking digital people my whole life, that I'd be desensitized to violence, right?
Wrong. On December 1st, 1999 in downtown Seattle, I was engaged in a peaceful march with locked-out steelworkers. As we marched, we chanted "Assembly Is A Right!" with peace signs in the air, and moved towards the "no protest zone". About two blocks outside of the designated zone, we found ourselves trapped by urban control vehicles and black-clad riot police. And then the tear gas came.
Oh, but this wasn't regular tear gas. They had run out of that stuff, this was military grade tear gas. It didn't make you cry. It fucked you up. Potentially, it could have killed somebody.
I did my best to evade the gas, running down alleys, kicking canisters back at the police. My adrenaline was pumping, so I wasn't doing much thinking, until I saw this guy sitting on the sidewalk...
He was around 55 to 60 years old, and he looked anything like a typical protestor. He looked homeless. He was sitting, slumped against a parking meter, almost completely comatose. He was spitting up a kind of mucous that definitely looked unnatural. People were trying to wash his eyes out with water, and see what was wrong with him. He either was having a major allergic reaction, or he had gotten a full-on dose of military grade (CN gas, I believe) tear gas.
I turned around, and saw a group of people running past me. Two more urban control vehicles had moved up to us, and I heard three or four loud bangs as more tear gas was being shot at us...
A canister fell right at my feet, and I ran down an alley faster than I ever have before. On the other side were people being pushed towards Pike's Market by riot police. Among them was a woman with a baby in a stroller, desparately asking a private security guard where she could go to be safe...
I started crying. Sobbing, really, like a little kid. The kind of uncontrollable sob you remember from when you were six, where even talking isn't an option. I don't know how long I was crying and wandering in and out of the police riot (as best I could), but eventually this young woman (and I wish I remembered her name) came over and calmed me down. We took some time to help people who were injured, but eventually decided it was time to find a way out of there.
We walked through Pike's Market in order to escape, and on the way out, I saw a woman with her hands out, sitting on the curb, bleeding from the mouth, her chin burnt from what I can only assume was a tear gas canister that had hit her directly in the face. The only thing I could do to stop myself from crying was to repeatedly hit a stop sign with my bare fist...
I grew up watching violent television, movies, playing violent video games. And when I was attacked with chemicals, when I saw people being beaten and terrorized, I couldn't take it. When I was finally confronted with real violence, Mortal Kombat didn't mean jack shit.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
The game industry is hurting itself (Score:4)
Yes, freedom of speech, blah, blah, blah, but repeatedly trying to push your luck is just plain stupid. I don't know if the developers of the aforementioned games were trying to profit from controversy, or if it was just an example of the juvenile attitude that the game biz is getting to be known for, but it showed poor judgement.