ANOTHER N.Y. Game Bill - Democratic Proposal Could Turn Retailers into Felons

[...] ANOTHER N.Y. Game Bill - Democratic Proposal Could Turn Retailers into Felons [GamePolitics] [...]

would you please get back to work and go after the real problems in america?

Why is it that all politicians have lost the idea of what this nation is based on. Why is it every time I turn around it seems like some senate or other governmental group is passing some law that only limits our freedoms. We pride ourselves as living in a free country and we aren't even free. This is bigger than some video game bill because it seems half of the laws are unconstituational anymore. Where in the constituation does it say that the government has thet right to tell parents how to raise their kids? There are many things wrong with our government, and i'm starting to realize that we need some major changes.

The way I read it, PC/Mac GAMES are covered under this law, but the HARDWARE is not.

So you could still go to jail for selling an M-rated PC game to a minor, but personal computers are exempt fro the hardware restictions.


From the text of the bill (link in article):

(A) "VIDEO GAME" MEANS AN INTERACTIVE ELECTRONIC AMUSEMENT DEVICE, DISK, CARTRIDGE OR OTHER OBJECT THAT UTILIZES A COMPUTER, MICROPROCESSOR OR SIMILAR ELECTRONIC CIRCUITRY AND ITS OWN MONITOR, A TELEVISION SET OR A COMPUTER MONITOR, AND SUCH DEVICE OR OBJECT IS DESIGNED TO ALLOW A PERSON TO MANIPULATE THE IMAGES PRESENTED BY SUCH DEVICE OR OBJECT.

(B) "VIDEO GAME CONSOLE" MEANS AN INTERACTIVE ELECTRONIC AMUSEMENT DEVICE THAT USES A DEDICATED COMPUTER, MICROPROCESSOR OR SIMILAR ELECTRONIC CIRCUITRY AND ITS OWN MONITOR, A TELEVISION SET OR A COMPUTER MONITOR TO ENABLE A PERSON TO INTERACT WITH A VIDEO GAME. SUCH TERMS SHALL NOT INCLUDE A PERSONAL COMPUTER, NOR SHALL THEY INCLUDE A HANDHELD DEVICE IN WHICH SUCH ENTIRE DEVICE, INCLUDING THE VIEWING SCREEN, IS DESIGNED TO BE HELD IN ONE`S HAND.

[...] NY Assembly Calls Senate’s Pointless Video Game Ban Bill And Raises It Last week, the New York state Senate passed a bill that would ban the sale of certain video games to minors, ignoring the small matter of unconstitutionality that’s seen the laws struck down by the courts in other places that have passed them. Now, the State Assembly is working on its own video-game ban law, and it goes even further than the Senate version by making retailers that sell games with “depraved violence and indecent images” to minors subject to felony charges. The bill also requires video game consoles sold in the state to feature some sort of parental-control technology (which GamePolitics notes the current major consoles already have), and it would give the state’s attorney general the power to stop sales of machines without it. For some unexplained reason, computers and handheld devices are exempted from this part of the law, when it would seem that they pose just as big a “threat” to the youth of New York as consoles. Perhaps the biggest change is that this bill includes a severability clause, which says that if a court finds any part of the law unconstitutional, only that portion will be struck down, rather than the entire law. That sounds like little more than an attempt to skirt the Constitution by lawmakers who know the law will fall foul of it, but all it really does is increase the amount of taxpayer money the state’s going to have to waste defending the law in court before it’s inevitably struck down. [...]

You see, I'm not against the fact of protecting the kids but damn, jail time for selling a rated M game to a minor. The true problem in the states is that they are searching for anything that could "corrupt their kids" but they are blind to the fact anybody can buy a gun.

@Blake Gripling aka LPG-Unit : "And to think they were exempting handheld devices (such as the Playstation Portable) and PCs from this half-baked bill - why not battle the more serious problems of our society, like drugs, racism and stuff? "

And remember all the bad press and the nickname "Playstation Pornable"? Why is that exempted instead of hit even harder. It's a gateway to porn doncha know.

With the severability clause in place won't that simply double the states legal bill? I mean if both parts of the law that are unconstitutional have to be attacked then aren't you in effect passing 2 bad laws instead of 1?

what do these people think will actually happen if these games are outright banned from being sold to minors? i speaking generally here too. do these politicians think that all the worlds problems will suddenly disappear? that people will not murder one another? that these school shootings will stop? that pigs will fly? passing legisation like this will produce nothing. i think they need to spend our tax dollars on something that will actually reel in results. there are far more important things that dont get the attention they need nowadays and this sort of crap is a waste of time.

if some kid is sold an M rated game then i would not consider the retailer a criminal or such for doing so. these kids have to get the money to buy them somehow. unless they are stealing them which is a whole nother issue. the source of the money is obviously from the parents. if these parents make stupid decisions like leaving money unmonitored in the hands of someone who is not mature enough to use it, well, they can expect their kids to follow their example and do stupid things too.

*sigh*, not another game legislation... Nowadays legislations, how sad... With rotten brains and 0% common sense. Sad.

Blake: "And to think they were exempting handheld devices (such as the Playstation Portable) and PCs from this half-baked bill - why not battle the more serious problems of our society, like drugs, racism and stuff?"

Yeah. Because when I think of government endeavors that HAVEN'T been huge, ineffective wastes of tax dollars that scapegoat people who aren't hurting anybody, the FIRST thing that leaps to mind is the drug war.

Verbinator: "Random thought: We’ve always accused these lawmakers of passing these grandstanding laws to make it look like they are pro-family, etc. What if there were a darker ulterior motive?"

If? The real question is "what." Short answer is total power.

Politicians want control over what you read and hear for a number of reasons. First, they want to control dissenting viewpoints to help ensure they stay in power (see also: national Democrats wanting to bring back the archaic "fairness doctrine" to censor talk radio, which is predominately right wing). They also want to shut down things which generally challenge their power. In the case of the radical left, they would like to restrict/banish religion from the public sphere because belief in God competes with the authority of the state. Or in the case of the radical right, they wish to marginalize secular speech as it challenges the authority of the church.

To do this, they need to find a back door into the First Amendment and get a foot in it. If they can manage to get one law to stick, they have precedent to add more and more laws until the First Amendment is useless. To see how this works, look into the history of how the War on Drugs™, abuse of the interstate commerce clause, and so on have all but killed private property rights and the Fourth Amendment. Think of it as death by a thousand paper cuts.

Last, but certainly not least, elitist politicians in New York seem obsessed with creating a total nanny state (aka: parens patriae) as if the people are too stupid to take care of themselves. Their track record alone speaks volumes to this. They've nearly banned guns, not to prevent crime, but to leave their subjects helpless without the State's protection. NYC has banned trans-fat and want to regulate diet in general (are they going to ration out pre-chewed food next?). They've banned aluminum baseball bats as if their subjects are incompetent children in need of a little-league coach. There's that ban on iPods on public streets/sidewalks (maybe they should hire millions of nannies to walk around and hold everybody's hand?). And there's a thousand petty laws where those came from.

The more powers they get to "protect" the public just justifies creating even more powers as the public becomes more and more dependent on the state. Give them an inch, and eventually they'll wrap you in foam padding to keep you from hurting yourself..

Random thought: We've always accused these lawmakers of passing these grandstanding laws to make it look like they are pro-family, etc. What if there were a darker ulterior motive? What if the real motive was to be the first governing body to enact an anti-game law that isn't struck down by Constitutional conflicts ... a spitting contest, in essence.

Valthun: "I remember being able to sell alcohol when I was 16, I could drop a bottle onto a tray, however I could not actually pour the beer. I would have to be 18 to do that."

Uh, yeah, here's the thing, though: the law is unambiguous on selling alcohol to people under a certain age.

This bill is EXTREMELY ambiguous on what games can be sold to people of which age.

For starters, it doesn't specify "M-rated", it creates its own standard for what constitutes a game that can't be sold to minors, and is completely independent of ESRB ratings and content descriptions.

I already mentioned that you could qualify Lego Star Wars as a game containing dismemberment. What about The Sims? I'd say some of the things you can do in that game could EASILY fall under "physical torture of a human being".

All alcoholic beverages contain alcohol, and all beverages containing alcohol are alcoholic beverages.

Not all M-rated games contain "depraved violence" as defined in this bill, and not all games containing "depraved violence" as defined in this bill will be M-rated.

You don't need to be familiar with a specific alcoholic beverage to know who it is and isn't legal to sell it to. Under this bill as written, you DO need to be familiar with a specific video game to know who it is and isn't legal to sell it to.

@David

I don't understand why you are so afraid of the Supreme Court. First off, the Court only hears a fraction of all issues that are submitted - a very small fraction. Secondly, they usually hear the cases where there is a conflict of opinion in the lower courts. So far, every single video game bill has been thrown out, and ruled unconstitutional. I don't know why the Court would even vote to hear a case like this when the rulings are pretty unanimious (100%). Also, and this is a major key, the fact that lawmakers who propose these laws aren't serious about them. They are only interested in using the bills for political reasons. That's why when the bills are making their way through the legislatures, the politicians release press release after press release boasting and bragging about the bills, yet when the bills are defeated, it's the end of the story. No more press releases, no more talk about the bill, and rarely do the lawmakers even attempt to appeal the decision (they may claim to do so, but they either don't appeal, or make a very half-ass attempt - Illinois video game bill for example), especially since it winds up costing hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of taxpayer dollars to defend. There are a lot more important issues to address where the money can be used properly, rather than have it squandered to do something that will be thrown out anyway, and lawmakers are now being chided for wasting taxpayer dollars (again, I give you the Illinois video game bill example, where newspapers showed how the governor wasted nearly a million dollars for no good reason, and how members of his staff were being grilled about it recently).

The fact that the Supreme Court only hears a fraction of all cases submitted, along with the fact that there is no conflict of lower court opinion whatsoever, and mixed with another fact that the sponsors of such bills aren't really serious about their own bill, makes it quite unlikely that the Supreme Court would even vote to hear the case, let alone rule in favor of regulating video games.

David says:
"There are at least two constitutional doorways through which this legislation could walk.

The first is that the courts have long allowed restrictions to the rights of minors that they would not otherwise have allowed to the rights of adults.

The second is that -some- video games could certainly be considered obscene. The existing Supreme Court president allows community standards to decide this issue. "

David, you're not up on current events. Past legislation in other states have already tried BOTH of these constitutional paths and been shot down.

In the first case, there's a Supreme Court ruling that already says that minors have a right to access of free speech except in the case of obscenity. This includes violence because the Supreme Court has already ruled that shielding a minor from any and all violent imagery until they were 18 would do more harm to them. Lower courts have also ruled that video games can not be restricted because they contain the merits of any other work of fiction. Lawyers did try to argue that the violent games cause "imminent harm" by turning kids into psychopaths, but the "science" behind this does not prove a causative link between virtual violence and real world violence as well as being junk science.

In the second scenario, the Louisiana bill that massacre-chasing Jack Thompson helped author tried to apply the Miller test (i.e. community standards) to video games and classify them as obscene. That one got flushed into the bayou with a very strongly worded rebuke from the presiding judge.

This New York bill is no different than a slew of other bills that have already been shot down by the courts. In this case, precedent is clearly on the side of the ESRB.

"The courts have long held that the rights of minors are not equal to those of adults. They have ruled that the rights of minors may be restricted."

You're half-right. While the rights of minors may be restricted in some cases, there must be a very good reason for them to do so. No precedent exists for the constitutionality of restrictions passed just out of a general concern. There must be a compelling reason, and even then, it can only survive if there is no less restrictive alternative.


"But if a law’s proponents could provide proof to the courts that violent video games were more desensitizing to violence and harmful to children than other medium, (films, books, etc) they may be able to manage this constitutional hurdle."

The authors of many of these bills have tried to present such "evidence" to the court as justification for them. In each instance, the judges looked at the studies provided, and concluded that they were not enough to definitively prove that video games were harmful at all, let alone more harmful than other mediums. They were correct in saying this, as many of the studies which deal with media effects are inconclusive, the sample sizes are too small to be representative, and their conclusions often differ greatly from their data. Not one of these studies has demonstrated a causal link between violent games and violent behavior, and it is unlikely they ever will, for two reasons:

1:Unlike physiological effects (like from alcohol or tobacco, which games are unfortunately compared to), a cause-and-effect relationship is much harder to establish in psychology. The main difference is instead of the body, which responds in a fairly uniform manner to certain substances, psychological reactions to stimuli range across the board. Even if somebody who killed people did play video games, there are always other factors around them that may influence their behavior (home life, social pressures, mental illnesses). In no case have video games been demostrated to be the primary factor in an individual's actions.

2: It is fallacy to believe that games can cause harm to all or even most minors if millions play them in only a handful commit violent acts. As a matter of fact, even though sales of violent games have only increased annually since 1993, violent crime in that same period has gone down http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm. If these games do make minors less inhibited to causing physical harm, why are fewer minors doing so than before Doom was released?

This quote from a former U.S. Surgeon General sums up my position: "The effects of video games on youth have yet to be determined."

@David

Look at the past like 10 Video games laws that tried to be past only to be shot down in court. Everything that you have mentioned has been tried and all of it was shot down by the courts. Minors have been determined to have the same free speech rights as adults, anything deemed protected under the 1st amendment is in turn protected for both adults and minors. Pronography, is NOT considered a protected form of speech, thus why it is restricted from minors. the past video game laws have tried to deem violence as obscene in order to make the games no longer protected, however each and everytime the judges ruled that the violence is protected; the arguements made in order to restrict violence were considered not good enough to make it considered "Obscene"

furtharmore, all these laws also fail under 14th amendment grounds... the laws attempt to give reason to restrict video games but not other forms of media, but once again, the fail to present evidence to warrent the difference.

The reasons these laws all fail is because violent media is not even close to beign as bad as these politicans try to say they are... studies are either flawed or they are highly exagerated (saying more than they actually prove)... hell, one study done in a similar manner to as one of the video games studies ended up showing that the holy bible increase agression just much like video games (however both of studies are flawed and exagerated)... i also recall reading a study conducted in the UK which said that movies and Television were more damaging than video games when it comes to making poeple violent (apparently, the interactivity actually serves to detach players from the game and thus lower the effect, while the viewers of a movie tend to get more immersed and thus ioncrease the effect)... ofcourse the study only says movies are worst, and not that either media is bad enough that they could be restricted, both are still too weak in that regard.

Its true the supreme court is the final say on the matter, but so far 10 out 10 judges agree that such laws are unconstitutional... more then likely the supreme court will probably end up agreeing with the precedent that these judges are setting.... especially since with each state that attempts to pass such laws, the past precedent will increase in strength; it's only a matter of time until both these NY laws, the Massachusets law that trying to be passed, and the califronia law that has been on the verge of death for quite sometime are all struch down adding to the precedent... really, we are hoping for a supreme court rulling since that would bring the final end to all of this.

the reason all of these laws fail is because the evidence that vidoe games are harmful to minors is too weak... and the reason why the evidence is so weak is because it is simply not true that video games are very harmful to minors, the damaged caused by games is far too small; it does exist but only about as much as any other form of media, which in turn is too small to be restricted from free speech... in every case of poeple being violent who also play video games, there are other factors that are far stronger to turning those poeple violent; hell the only reason there is connection between violent poeple and violent games is because it is only natural that violent poeple would enjoy violent games, it's common sense.

Tangent:
"Kinda like being the ONLY state in the country with no “irreconcilable differences” option for divorce. Sorry, that’s the soc major in me talking."

My mother is a retired Family Law attorney (now working as a Superior Court Referee - like a Judge, but hired, not elected). One of the best uses of "irreconcilable differences" I ever heard was from a judge she was before on one case.

The wife wanted a divorce, and claimed irreconcilable differences; the husband insisted that there weren't any irreconcilable differences, that they could work everything out.

The judge looked at the wife and asked, "So, you want a divorce?" She affirmed that, so the judge turned to the husband and asked, "You don't want a divorce, is that correct?" The husband affirmed that.

The judge nodded, and said, "That sounds like irreconcilable differences to me. Your divorce is granted."

Sometimes I hate living in New York. On some laws, we're insanely archaic, and on some, unrealistically progressive. Kinda like being the ONLY state in the country with no "irreconcilable differences" option for divorce. Sorry, that's the soc major in me talking.

Chuma said it first: what about retro console sales?

And what about internet sales from out of state into NY?

And Class E felony? *headdesk* We abolished the death penalty for all crimes, including capital murder. So violent video games can lead to a Class E felony?

Can we pass this story along to Countdown with Keith Olberman? I bet he'd have a field day with this.

The whole situation...just...*headdesk headdesk headdesk*

No one else sees the loophole?

Buy/rent the games/consoles outside the State of New York!

"Rapists, drunk drivers, and who put the lives and well-being of others at risk of actual harm (not theoretical harm) have the potential to get off easier." -

-- that's just legislators looking out for their own well being. Very unlikely that a legislator will be caught selling video games to minors, but a fair chance that some of them will be found guilty of drunk driving or rape.

[quote="David"]There are at least two constitutional doorways through which this legislation could walk.

The first is that the courts have long allowed restrictions to the rights of minors that they would not otherwise have allowed to the rights of adults.[/quote]

But only (to my knowledge) against things that are proven to be harmful to minors, which video games are not.

[quote]The second is that -some- video games could certainly be considered obscene. The existing Supreme Court president allows community standards to decide this issue.

See the Miller Test: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test[/quote]

What you said only applies to one branch of the Miller Test: "Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest..."

In order for something to fail against the Miller Test, all three branches of the test have to apply. This includes:

"Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law"

This law's definitions are arguably vague, but moving right along...

"Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary and/or artistic, political, or scientific value."

This is the important thing. No game I know of fails against that branch. People have tried to apply the Miller Test to violence in the past (and not just against games, I believe) but none of the attempts I heard of ever succeeded.

@ David

"There are at least two constitutional doorways through which this legislation could walk.

The first is that the courts have long allowed restrictions to the rights of minors that they would not otherwise have allowed to the rights of adults."

Many of these restrictions in media are self imposed and not government regulated. (music, movies, video games, comics, etc..)

"The second is that -some- video games could certainly be considered obscene. The existing Supreme Court president allows community standards to decide this issue.

See the Miller Test: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test"

If you can barely get the supreme court rule on what is obscene and what isn't with pornography theres absolutely no way they can hope for that ruling in video games when even some of the most violent games are barely rated R by movie standards.

"I do agree that this sort of law would be more constitutionally sound if it applied these standards to all forms of media. If pushed back by the courts on thouse grounds, look for following laws to restrict minors from purchasing all forms of media."

Fat chance of that happening, hollywood would be up their ass so quickly with lobbyists that every judge and politician would driving off in a new Ferrari. And the law would die on the spot.

"Someone above suggested the severability provision of this bill would be unconstitutional. They would be wrong. These sort of clauses are often seen in controversial legislation."

Those very bills get shot down faster than any media source can keep up. And it is very unconstitutional to make a law that the punishment doesn't fit the crime. They may as well have written down the death penalty.

"The bottom line is that the Supreme Court is the final decider as to what is constitutional and what is not. Some lesser courts may rule against this law. But I would be very surprised (shocked) were the current and overwhelmingly Republican Supreme Court to overturn a well designed law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors. (not that this specific law is a well designed test case, it’s not)"

We're counting on a supreme court decision sometime soon to set the final smack down precedent. Problem is that everything they throw at the industry is ruled unconstitutional before it even takes 2 steps.