Justices shoot down violent video game ban
Last Updated 11:24 a.m. ET
In a ringing endorsement of free speech and new technology, the U.S. Supreme Court this morning struck down a California law that restricts the sale or rental of violent video games to minors.
"Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion. The ruling was 7-2.
Opinion: Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (08-1448) (pdf)
The Supreme Court's ruling unambiguously reaffirms that video games, which have become increasingly complex and in some cases more expensive to produce than movies, also qualify for full First Amendment protection.
Scalia noted that books often viewed as suitable for high school students are full of violent material. "Certainly the books we give children to read--or read to them when they are younger--contain no shortage of gore: Grimm's Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed. As her just deserts for trying to poison Snow White, the wicked queen is made to dance in red hot slippers 'till she fell dead on the floor, a sad example of envy and jealousy.'"
California is one of a string of states that enacted similar laws restricting minors' rights to buy violent video games - legislation that has been repeatedly rejected by lower courts. Laws in Illinois and Michigan were blocked by federal judges on First Amendment grounds in 2005, and earlier laws in Indianapolis and Missouri's St. Louis County were also shot down.
Although California's law doesn't target a specific game by name, government lawyers did single out Postal 2, which allows players to go on murderous rampages, by name. And the Federal Trade Commission has previously targeted the makers of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" for having sexually-explicit content.
The California law slaps anyone who sells or rents a "violent video game" to a minor with a $1,000 fine. That was defined as a game in which the player has the option of "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being" in offensive ways. Parents or guardians are still permitted to buy those games for minors.
Then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the video game law in October 2005, but a federal judge blocked it from taking effect a few months later. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision.
In May 2009, the state of California asked the Supreme Court to overturn those decisions, saying they were incorrectly decided.
"Like other forms of unprotected speech recognized to date, the extremely violent video games at issue here serve 'no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to the truth' that the government must be allowed to regulate their dissemination to minors based upon content, without running afoul of the First Amendment," California said at the time, quoting a famous 1942 Supreme Court opinion.
The Video Software Dealers Association, which subsequently changed its name to Entertainment Merchants Association, argued that the state is unreasonably trying to extend obscenity regulations - aimed at explicit pornography - to computer software.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer dissented from today's ruling. Thomas said the original view of the First Amendment at the time the Bill of Rights was enacted "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."
Breyer's dissent took a different approach. He wrote: "California's law imposes no more than a modest restriction on expression. The statute prevents no one from playing a video game, it prevents no adult from buying a video game, and it prevents no child or adolescent from obtaining a game provided a parent is willing to help."
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For example? I know of no such games, apart from amateur fan mods created by rather sick individuals. If there were no consequences, it would hardly be "interactive" which is the main point. I suppose you're one of the folks who still think players get points for shooting cops and running down hookers. Doing so is discouraged and results in more cops and eventually federal SWAT forces coming after them.
Even wiser words from about 2180 years ago:
"The soul of man does violence to itself, first of all, when it becomes an abscess and, as it were, a tumour on the universe, so far as it can. For to be vexed at anything which happens is a separation of ourselves from nature, in some part of which the natures of all other things are contained. In the next place, the soul does violence to itself when it turns away from any man, or even moves towards him with the intention of injuring, such as are the souls of those who are angry. In the third place, the soul does violence to itself when it is overpowered by pleasure or by pain. Fourthly, when it plays a part, and does or says anything insincerely and untruly. Fifthly, when it allows any act of its own and any movement to be without an aim, and does anything thoughtlessly and without considering what it is, it being right that even the smallest things be done with reference to an end; and the end of rational animals is to follow the reason and the law of the most ancient city and polity."
If we take guns awasy from law abiding citizens, only the criminals would have guns and they would be even freer to use them to commit crimes.
Oh please, save your bullcrap for someone else.
When you grow up with guns being the solution to all your problems, what do you expect?
Where I live, we have very strict gun laws. I don't know of anyone that has a gun. Most people do not have a gun. Most people do not WANT a gun. And most criminals do not have guns. In America, if the criminals don't have a gun, they can just break into any home and they've got one! What little gun crime we have, the gun is traced back to the U.S. If every American wasn't allowed to own a gun, we would have even less gun crime!
I can't count how many times I have read about a "law abiding citizen" going on a rampage and killing dozens of people. They were not considered a CRIMINAL before this happened. There are thousands of mentally unstable CITIZENS walking around out there with guns.
Also, when you have laws that state that children of any age can own a gun, with a parent's permission, you've got some serious problems. Especially when you have so many stupid parents.