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Debate: Ban on sale of violent video games to minors
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*'''Violent game ban puts children above corporations.''' Leland Yee, a California state senator who wrote the law, said in a statement that “the Supreme Court once again put the interests of corporate America before the interests of our children. It is simply wrong that the video game industry can be allowed to put their profit margins over the rights of parents and the well-being of children.”[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/us/28scotus.html] | *'''Violent game ban puts children above corporations.''' Leland Yee, a California state senator who wrote the law, said in a statement that “the Supreme Court once again put the interests of corporate America before the interests of our children. It is simply wrong that the video game industry can be allowed to put their profit margins over the rights of parents and the well-being of children.”[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/us/28scotus.html] | ||
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+ | *'''Some games so offensive they are certainly harmful to youth.''' Justice Alito: “The objective of one game is to rape a mother and her daughters [...] players attempt to fire a rifle shot into the head of President Kennedy as his motorcade passes by the Texas School Book Depository.” He also added that children may soon play three-dimensional high-definition games wearing equipment that allows them to “feel the splatting blood from the blown-off head” of a victim.[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/us/28scotus.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2] | ||
Revision as of 02:15, 2 July 2011
Background and contextThe US Supreme Court ruled in June of 2011 against California's ban on the sale of violent video games to minors. The California law would have imposed $1,000 fines on stores that sold violent video games to anyone under 18. The ruling highlights what is a much larger, national and international debate regarding the effect of violent video games on youth, and the potential need, subsequently, for the regulation of their sale. The California law defined violent games as those 'in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being' in a way that was 'patently offensive,' appealed to minors’ 'deviant or morbid interests' and lacked 'serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.'"[1] Accepting that this description of violent video games may be true, the debate about banning them relates largely to the limits of free speech and government censorship. |
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