US Supreme Court: "Games are free speech"

[Mister Pink]

"Like the protected books, plays, and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas—and even social messages—through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world). That suffices to confer First Amendment protection. Under our Constitution, “esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature . . . are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority."

 

 

The Supreme Court sided with the video game industry today, declaring a victor in the six-year legal match between the industry and the California lawmakers who wanted to make it a crime for anyone in the state to sell extremely violent games to kids....

 

 

....The debate about video games' effect on kids has raged since the '80s and intensified in the '90s with the creation of Doom and a spate of school shootings. After the turn of the century, states across America, including Illinois and Michigan, attempted to criminalize the sale of violent video games to minors. But each of these laws, usually promoted by Democrats, was found by the lower courts to violate the First Amendment, running afoul of the country's Constitutional protection for free speech.

California's attempt to criminalize violent games got further than others. The law was written by California assemblyman and child psychologist Leland Yee and signed into law by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. [Read California's law.]

 

Yee's law borrowed the language of the Miller Test, a set of criteria established by the Supreme Court in 1973 for determining if forms of speech are obscene and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. Short of establishing a class of obscene video games that would be illegal for any American, Yee's law would build on the Supreme Court precedent for allowing states to make the sale of certain kinds of pornographic content—adult magazines, for example—illegal when sold to children, while remaining legal if sold to adults.

 

Games violating Yee's law would be any that:

 

(A) Comes within all of the following descriptions:

(i) A reasonable person, considering the game as a whole, would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors.

(ii) It is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the community as to what is suitable for minors.

(iii) It causes the game, as a whole, to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

(B) Enables the player to virtually inflict serious injury upon images of human beings or characters with substantially human characteristics in a manner which is especially heinous, cruel, or depraved in that it involves torture or serious physical abuse to the victim.

 

Despite the support of the legislature and then-governor Schwarzenegger, the California law was nevertheless ruled unconstitutional by courts in California. Last year, however, the Supreme Court agreed to hear California's appeal, the state's final attempt to get their law through.

 

Full Article Here - Kokatu

 

This is certainly good news. It was extreme to try ban the sale of violent video games but it also tested the U.S. Supreme Court and at least we know there is some sort of protection or at least a landmark ruling we can refer to in debate over the violent video games debate.

 

What are your thoughts?

Edited June 28, 2011 by ThePinkFloydSound

[mrpain]

Woohoo! First gay rights, now this.

 

I'm glad people have finally realized that gaming is mainstream now.

[Rucke]

I took all that for granted already

 

I keep forgetting that some people don't.

[*MURDOC*]

Simply amazing.

[Luna Fortuna]

So games are going to be allowed to be sold to minors? Are we going to lose adult content? This is not good games with adult content should be rated and not sold to kids, they should be sold to adults and it left to them to decide whether their child should play.

Edited June 28, 2011 by Personguy

[*MURDOC*]

I'm not really sure that's what they're saying.

[Mister Pink]

By not making it a crime to sell violent video games to kids the supreme court has put the power of choice to parents.

 

It's also putting the law in to the parents hands. It shouldn't be up to the government to look after kids, it's the parents job.

 

So, as a parent, you can by your underage child GTA in California, basically

Edited June 28, 2011 by ThePinkFloydSound

[*MURDOC*]

Parents should monitor what their children are playing, if they are really that concerned.

[Mister Pink]

Exactly. I edited my post ^

[*MURDOC*]

Very good to hear, but still obviously some games shouldn't be played by kids... Postal?

It does depend on their age and level of maturity, and the way they perceive reality, but either way, it should be up to the parent to decide whether the child should be allowed to play it, just like films really.

[Luna Fortuna]

By not making it a crime to sell violent video games to kids the supreme court has put the power of choice to parents.

 

It's also putting the law in to the parents hands. It shouldn't be up to the government to look after kids, it's the parents job.

 

So, as a parent, you can by your underage child GTA in California, basically

But wouldn't that make it easier for kids to get it and play without their parents consent. Wouldn't only selling parents give them a more of a choice and make it easier to see what their children are playing. I suppose if kids really want to play these games they will get it some way or another.

[*MURDOC*]

 

Wouldn't only selling parents give them a more of a choice and make it easier to see what their children are playing.

But that would give less of a choice to "The people", as in "We the people".

 

This whole thing is about what is, and what isn't constitutional in the end.

[nlitement]

So games are going to be allowed to be sold to minors? Are we going to lose adult content? This is not good games with adult content should be rated and not sold to kids, they should be sold to adults and it left to them to decide whether their child should play.

It's not up to the legislators to babysit anybody, especially when there's already a de facto system where kid don't get R-18 or M-17 games due to in-store policies or whatever.

[*MURDOC*]

 

So games are going to be allowed to be sold to minors? Are we going to lose adult content? This is not good games with adult content should be rated and not sold to kids, they should be sold to adults and it left to them to decide whether their child should play.

It's not up to the legislators to babysit anybody, especially when there's already a de facto system where kid don't get R-18 or M-17 games due to in-store policies or whatever.

That's a good point, it doesn't need to be illegal, the store itself can choose whether they want to sell the game to underage customers or not, a choice which I'm sure will still be fairly common in most shops.

 

 

An employee should not be arrested for selling a M-rated game to a 16-year-old. At the most, I could see them being reprimanded, or losing their job, but that would be for breaking the stores rules.

[Xboxless]

I wonder if the fact that gaming is a billion dollar industry had anything to do with the ruling?

A little payoff?

 

 

That said, WOOT!! Finally some common sense and not "What about the children!?!?!?!?!" hysteria bullsh*t.

[vertical limit]

Some posts above me are very good.

 

 

It is the parents fault if their child played an R rated game that they bought to him.

The parents should watch their children play and buy him games when the legal guardian is present during the purchase.

 

 

That being said. I would allow my son to play GTa and tell him not to have "fun " with hookers well atleast when I am not there. If I don't let him play then I am hypocrite, when I should be an example to my child.

[Chinatown Wars]

Finally. Now i can walk to my Gamestop without a parent and get an M rated game (unless they decide to be dicks and not allow it...)

[*MURDOC*]

Depends on the shop.

[FireDragon]

GameStop won't sell you a game unless you're 18 with an ID

[illspirit]

Probably won't affect any major retailer policies. After all, most stores also tend to card for movies even though there was no threat of a law on the horizon for that.

 

That said, maybe they'll allow their cashiers to use a bit of common sense. I always laugh a little when they card me despite being covered in tattoos and carrying a pistol. Granted, the latter is concealed and all, but that just makes it funnier to me.

[Magic_Al]

Many people don't understand this idea: saying something should be legal is not the same as saying it's good. It's only saying government isn't supposed to control everything. If you don't have any freedom to make bad choices you don't have any freedom.

[tubbs51]

Silly politicians... they thought they could restrict the gaming industry

 

little do they know that Gaming is an art form to billions.

 

I realized on Monday how mainstream games are. and not just the social crap but the hardcore stuff... it was orientation at my new job and with 19 others in orientation and we had to find connections with each other between our hobbies and i'd say roughly 16 of them (17 if you include me) played games like GTA IV, Call of Duty, The Elder Scrolls, World of Warcraft, etc. and ages ranged from 17 to 4o in the age of the gamers.

 

Games are no longer restricted to a small group of "nerds, geeks, and social rejects" but rather Sports stars, Television stars, Movie stars, musical artists.... A lot of people are gamers.