| Joelcool7 said: In the end I don't think Government has the right to tell parents that they can't let their child play an M-Rated game. But they sure as hell should be able to restrict legally the sale of M games to under age individuals. If a parent chooses to let their child play the game knowing the ESRB ratings tthen thats up to them. If the industry already self regulates why not allow the state to make it legally binding. Nothing will change as far as I know based on what I have been told. Its not like the state will take your kids away for letting them play GTA. Or am I totally misunderstanding the legislation? |
The law in question does not follow the rule you're setting out.
The concern most legal scholars have with the law is not that it will stop minors from playing or purchasing violent video games , but rather that this law leaves it up to the state to decide what games are and are not permissible for minors to purchase. In other words, a government employee or political appointee is going to have the final say on what is objectionable and what is not.
This is not unprecedented; in the early 70's the Court permitted similar regulations on "obscene" (essentially, pornographic) material. However, no Court has expanded the scope of that regulation in the thirty-plus years since, and that decision has been routinely criticized for its incredibly vague standard (note: the current California law nearly copy-pastes the language from that Court decision). Even the lower courts have hitherto recognized that restricting speech based on its content is almost always a no-go, which is why everyone was surprised that the Court took this csae in the first place.
Upholding the law would also throw constitutional law into turmoil. At the moment, any law which governs content must pass strict scrutiny, which means that it has to be the least restrictive means to achieve a compelling government interest. The government has to prove that both of those elements are true. In this case, what is the compelling interest? To the best of my knowledge, there has not been any concrete or reliable evidence correlating violent video games with increased violence in minors. And is this the least restrictive means to achieve the government's result? In light of how the game industry is already self-regulated, it appears that the answer is "no." But if the Court upholds this law, then "strict scrutiny" would suddenly be much less "strict" than it used to be. As an American, I find that deeply troubling...
But assuming that the state simply adopted the ESRB ratings wholesale, you also asked why the state should not have the power to make self-regulation legally binding. The answer is that the law imposes criminal fines and penalties, not merely community sanctions. This is especially troublesome because it's often unclear why a game received a certain ranking (remember when Oblivion's rating flipped post-release? Or Halo 3 got the M-rating? ).
It is the difference between "I should not eat the leftover Halloween candy" and "every time I eat the leftover Halloween candy, I have to pay $1,000." Movie theaters which let unaccompanied minors watch Rated R or NC-17 movies would not have to pay criminal fines. Retailers who sell crush videos to minors would not have to pay a fine. Why, then, should videogame retailers have to do so?
To summarize: the law does not simply give the ESRB's decisions legal weight, but instead invests the power to decide what stays and what goes in a government censor. That censor would have to work with a very vague guideline, one which has produced inconsistent results when examining obscenity cases. It would make videogames the only self-regulated industry that is liable to criminal penalties. And most disturbing of all for Americans, it would be a huge blow to freedom of speech, as it lowers the bar for what the government can censor.
