Censorship in Illinois

#1 I'd like to see that study too.

The restriction seems similar to movies.
Young people require an older chaperone to buy or watch violent or sexual movies.

#2 I think the study is probably meaningless. I have no issue with a ban on sales of mature games to minors. We do have to be careful on where these nutty politicians go with things like censorship.

#3 I bet if it will ever be introduced it will work exactly like prohibition- violence/sex based games will be in much higher demand just because they will be prohibited.

#4 WTF is wrong with making it illegal to sell minors that kind of content? I hope it passes the legislature and other states follow.

#5 What I find interesting is that the games DO have a rating, just like movies, they're not supposed to be sold to minors to begin with.


Now you pass a law that say "No one under 18 is allowed to rent or purchase games with X rating" what you'll soon see is that people under 18 being allowed to PLAY the game will be illegal. So purchasing, renting or allowing someone to play a game that is rated as "violent or sexually explicit", who is under 18 will then become "Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor"

#6 It's a tough spot, i agree that this stuff is not right for kids, but also that censorship, as Michael says, is a dangerous thing.

About the studies,
i don't know if this is what the Illinois General Assembly is basing its findings on, but-

from www.rense.com/general32/brainc.htm:

Quote:
Even normal teens who said they frequently watched violent television and movies as well as regularly playing violent games had decreased [frontal lobe] activity when exposed to the violent video, Mathews said. Moreover, the brain changes were most apparent among "heavy users, meaning those who played for several hours every day," he said.

and from medicine.indiana.edu/iu_medicine/03_spring/articles/kidsMinds.html:

Quote:
Some might interpret this information as proof that violent media exposure causes changes in brain functioning, but what it really indicates is that more studies are needed, Dr. Kronenberger notes.

more on the Mathews study:
www.schillerinstitute.org/new_viol/videos_brain.html

#7 God forbid people just start taking responsibility for their actions. Isn't it possible that people just do screwed up things??? Why are the video games responsible? People have been murdering people for millenia without video games. Jeffery Dahmer didn't have an Xbox and neither did Jack the Ripper. Some people are just screwed up. As the population increases we will see at least a perportional number of these screwey crimes. And the media will make sure you hear about them, perpetuating them further.

#8 I agree Brain. Problem is when some maniac shoots up their school and then kills themself, the victims family has no one left to blame. They reach for something to attack in their grief. That being games, music, movies, internet, etc.

#9 Thats where the law needs to be enforced properly - the alcahol issue for example - its only illegal for minors to have 'public possession' of alcahol and to sell it to them - its not illegal for them to drink it. For example in TX its not illegal for a minor to consume alcahol in the presence of their guardian. Im sure in other states it varies, such as not even being able to consume it.

#10 [rant]
I agree to their intent (to limit the influence of games with violent/sexual content on minors), but their approach is waaaaay off. I mean, look at movies. The movie-making industry gets away by slapping a PG-13 label on these things. Also, Harold pointed a good point in this too.

IMHO, censorship isn't the right way to go. If they really want to stop the influence, they're attacking the wrong side. It'd be a lot more efficient to stop it from the producing side instead. I mean, think of it as client-server, the client being us minors. It's a lot easier to filter out a few servers than to individually limit a helluva lot of clients.
[/rant]

#11 @ Brian -
back atcha with "God forbid people just start taking responsibility for their actions.".

it's certainly ridiculous to lay the blame for violence at the feet of any one source, like video games, and the final responsibility for a person's actions definitely belongs to the person,
but it also seems a bit blind to pretend that that movies & video games are not role-models in society.

#12 @Brian, Michael: Yes, some people are just naturally screwed up. But by allowing the exposure of violent/sexual content to us minors, it's sorta encouraging it, don't you think? It's almost like providing them an outlet or training ground (at the extremes). Rather, how do you think they learn about shooting people in the first place? I heard At the very least, allowing minors to be exposed to this type of material does not help solve the problem.

For example, in Columbine, I quote wikipedia from this article about Michael Moore's documentary "Bowling for Columbine":

Quote:
The film title originates from the claim made by several witnesses that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two boys responsible for the Columbine High School massacre, attended their regularly scheduled bowling class early that morning, around 6:30am, before they committed the attacks at school starting about 11 AM (Some school and law officials contradict that claim.) Moore suggests that it is no more unreasonable to blame their actions on bowling than to blame them on violent video games, movies, and music (during the aftermath of the shooting, many used the opportunity to denounce Marilyn Manson and The Matrix, claiming a connection between violence in the media and violence in schools).

and also from this article as well (about the Columbine):

Quote:
Harris and Klebold were fans of violent video games such as "Doom" (in fact, Harris often created levels for the game; these were widely distributed, and can still occasionally be found on the Internet as the Harris levels. Rumors that the layout of these levels resembled that of Columbine High School circulated but have been debunked as documented on the Snopes urban legends website [3] (http://www.snopes.com/spoons/noose/doom.htm)). Some analysts argued that part of the killers' problem may have been a result of their constant exposure to violent imagery in such video games, as well as music, and movies, theorizing that their obsession with these forms of media may have led them to have trouble telling the difference between reality and fantasy. A lawsuit against several video game manufacturers was filed as a result by parents of some of the victims.

(No, I am not blaming it on Doom. The same thing probably would've happened if it were another video game)

I'm not trying to advocate Illinois's actions, but I'm also not saying we should all just sell violent video games to minors. I guess what really matters is how much we actually care about preventing things like this from happening again.

(continued)

#13 Here's another quote from an article on the MIT website, talking about video games in this age:

Quote:
Let me describe a typical study on this phenomenon with young children. A psychologist goes into a classroom and randomly divides the children into groups in which one group plays a violent video game, some Mortal Kombat or Doom type game. Another group, sort of a control group, plays a nonviolent game, some sort of puzzle game, and the third group may play no game at all. The children are then let loose on the playground where the psychologists observe their behavior - looking for aggressive behavior in particular. What they find is, after playing a Mortal Kombat style video game, kids, (especially boys) go out on the playground and they start doing martial arts moves. They pretend to be martial arts experts, and one of the important attractions of this kind of game for them is that it allows them, it even compels them to make sound effects.

If you think about it, "addicting" video games (the ones you play hours on end ;) )in general get you thinking about them almost 24/7. I know for a fact that recently I've been waking up thinking about Ragnarok Online. The same goes with other "addictiive" games i've played before.

Again, however, I don't agree with their method of preventing the exposure either.


Yeah i'm done ranting...hope i didn't step on anyone's toes >_<


[edit]
Oh yeah, and as to the Jeffery Dahmer and Jack the Ripper thing, yes, it's true they didn't have the luxuries of killing virtual people as we do today. But by providing us minors with an outlet where we can satisfy our primeval (sp?)hunger to kill people, I think we'll just keep wanting more and more.

It's like saying to a lil kid "Oh yeah, it's ok to kill that person on the screen because it's not real. Don't worry, nothing bad is going to happen to you." If you say that to him once or twice, sure, nothing's gonna happen. But if you keep doing that for 5 years, what's going to happen? How about 10? Sooner or later, you'll find out that he'll keep wanting more and more.

Take my lil bro for example. He was 3 when I made the mistake of letting him play Grand Theft Auto. Now everytime he wants to play (he's 7 now), he says "I wanna play Shooting Game!" That's why I totally cleaned out his account of GTA because I don't want him exposed. I've already seen what happened: Over the course of the years he's gotten to be quite the violent lil kid. He keeps going back to more and more violent video games, and now he even enjoys watching gun-crazy action movies as well. And that's all from a 7 year old. I wonder what he's gonna do 5 years from now if we don't at least try to stop this.
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Oh yeah, it's not like I want the video game industry to go down or something. I enjoy an occasional round of CS sometimes too.

#14 @Brian - I agree with the view that video games are not to blame for a person's actions. HOWEVER, they DO influence a person whether for good or bad. If you dont think so you need to take off your blinders/get your head out of the ground and look around. People dress, talk, and yes, even act like people of characters they wish to emulate. Perhaps you have a son? Then take hip hop for example, we have all these half-wit sheep trying to dress in that disgusting hip hop 'style' and talking like they dont even have half a brain. Or perhaps you have a daughter and lets use sluttney spears as an example. Your daughter sees that and wants to dress and act like a whore also. The same can be said for exposure to movies, TV, and games. So just the thought that media had nothing to do with or doesnt influence peoples' actions is utterly asinine.
As a last note about this, its the ultimate responsibility of parents (most of which dont know their head from their ass now) to censor what their kids are exposed to. Individuals also need to be held accountable for their actions. But when parents dont care enough to censor material their children are exposed to, someone has to do it, and it'll be the gov't whether you like it or not - until people can pull their heads out of their asses and take care of their kids.

Just my 1, maybe 1.5 cents on the issue.

#15 I have tried to stay out of this discussion for the most part but feel pretty strongly against Nate's position.

It seems that Nate's position is that media influences people 100% all the time, and I do not believe this is true. Maybe that is because I am not a lemming.

Quote:People dress, talk, and yes, even act like people of characters they wish to emulate.

I can agree with this statement, but then Nate tries to emphasize his point by only pointing out people that in his opinion people emaulate but shouldn't. Which brings me to my next point.

Quote:But when parents dont care enough to censor material their children are exposed to, someone has to do it, and it'll be the gov't

This is the part I severely disagree with. It is not, in my opinion, the governments job to be the parents for children, it is not the governments job to tell me what I can watch, listen to, eat, or any of the other things that people want the government to do. It is not the governments job to say who is a good role model and who isn't. If I want to sit around watching violent action movies, listening to music with obscene lyrics, while smoking a carton of Lucky Strikes then by all means I am going to and it shouldn't be the governments job to concern itself with it.

I agree with Nate that the ultimate responsibilty falls on the parent but I don not believe the governments job should be instilling good moral fiber into children.

#16 Part of the problem is (as mentioned) bad parenting, but also the fact that the legal system lets people get away with sueing the game and media companies. If the judges also pulled their heads from their asses, they'd realise that most of these people are just out for what they can get and by awarding them thousands of pounds, they're making the situation worse.

Recently there have been a couple of court cases in the UK where the parents have been punished for failing to send their chidren to school. If there were more judges prepared to follow the 'spirit of the law' rather than the letter of it, I think we (UK) would be in slightly better shape.

Yes, I think developers have a responsibility not to develop games that glorify violence (or drugs or any other subject), but on the otherhand, we all have responsibilities to act sensibly and to instill those responsibilities into others.

Personally, I can't wait for GTA San Andreas to hit the PC, but I'm not going to get an urge to go out and gun down police officers and start car jacking people as they drive down the street.

#17 I know it's fun to cry censorship and all, but this really isn't censorship. The games can still be produced, transported and sold, the parents will just have to buy them for minors.

Pornography has been in this situation for years upon years, and the government hasn't flipped out and banned it altogether yet.

#18 @Mark
The jist of the original post wasn't crying censorship. It is the slippery slope that could, and in my opinion probably would, follow these things that will lead to censorship.

As for your pornography analogy, you sound like it you feel it is ok for games to be put on the same level as pornography, which personally I am not.

#19 I think it's perfectly fine for 'sexually explicit video games' to be considered pornography, yes. The fact that they aren't would seem to be a pretty big loophole.

#20 @Mark
That depends entirely on the definition of sexually explicit, what is sexually explicit to one person may not be to another. Also all mature rated games are not necessarily sexually explicit but they would get lumped into the treated like pornography category as well.