A point of pride for US Citizens are our political freedoms. While we may quibble about the value of one or two rights, as a whole we pride ourselves on our rights to write or say what we wish about whom we wish, defend ourselves, have a fair justice system, and support the underdog. I have some concerns about habitual restriction of some rights by our country, but I think that with enough public ridicule, lobbying, and voter support, we can keep our government from stomping all over us.
An acquaintance of mine, Sylvia Haegle (who happens to be a German citizen), once said that “The shackles of bondage are most often worn on the hands of those who forged them.” It is our failure to defend our liberties which leads to us becoming prisoners of our own policies.
With Sylvia’s quote in mind, I read of the effort of US politicians to devise a country-wide internet filtering program. This effort is being promoted under the legerdemain of “combating child pornography.”
Whenever any legislation is proposed “for the children”, my internal bulls–t meter begins ringing very loudly. This internal klaxon rings loudly when I hear of attempts to restrict computer games, too. Sure, the effort may actually be legit, but pushing it under the banner of “protecting children” is a sure-fire way to call for it to be examined very, very closely.
As an example, then, let’s look at how another country has used their ability to restrict the viewing habits of readers. The only country which has taken strong, pro-active moves in this direction — in part for the “protection of children” — is China. How have they used their internet filtering capabilities?
- Established an Internet Police Task Force numbering 30,000 law enforcement officials
- Blocked news from foreign news outlets which did not carry news favorable to the country
- Poisoned DNS caches of articles unfavorable to officials
- Blocked IP addresses of known seditionist sites
- Filtered out content containing controversial keywords
- Prevented access regarding certain religions
- Forced compliance from search engines to exclude results unfavorable to the government: either be blocked or comply
- Created a chilling effect on speech due to fear of reprisal and blocking
- Established an ad-hoc network of “Big Mamas” devoted to reporting suspected criminal or anti-government activity
Based on the fruits of their effort, I’d say the main by-product of China’s attempt at nation-wide Internet filtering is squashing speech with which the powers-that-be disagree. I strongly suspect our own efforts at filtering would be no more successful than theirs: easily bypassed by those with the least bit of technical acumen. However, by bypassing it you are breaking the law, even if what you are doing is not otherwise illegal.
Papers, please?
Said it before.. say it again.
There should be a rating system that must be followed.. i.e., stores cannot sell a MA game to a 14 year old. It should be illegal..
A porn site that does not register as an adult site should face punishment.. then child-proofing software can be more effective..
And then.. everything should be legal for adults as long as its subjects aren’t hurt (i.e. torture, child porn, etc..)
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
ESRB…
For various reasons, government enforcement of ESRB ratings on video games are, IMHO, a bad idea. I tried to find a great article written by my brother, Jay, on the topic, but came up empty. I hope he’ll stopby to comment.
As far as “punishment” for registration on adult sites… Sure, OK, I’ll buy it. You don’t want to allow kids in the Adult section of the video store any more than you want kids downloading snuff films. The question, though, is with an international registry of names, and a wild, wild Web spanning borders with dramatically varying standards of decency, how would you go about enforcing the law?
This Firewall idea, IMHO, is an attempt to police the victims (children) rather than police the perpetrators.
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Matthew P. Barnson
Absolutely not!
While we’re at it, let’s also make sure that every single CD or MP3 sold in America is submitted to a rating board before it can be sold. If the song drop the “F” bomb or has sexually explicit… or promotes violence… or hate… or is too suggestive of something controversial, it cannot legally be sold to anyone under the age of 18, under threat of imprisonment. Oh, and selling an UNRATED song is right out. Sorry if it takes six months for your song to actually pass through the board at this point because it is deluged with requests (and the cost starts rising up to $200 / song to try and cope with the overwhelming demand). Shoot, we may as well just jack it up to $2000 / song — the big music studios can EASILY afford that.
As far as requirements, we can just say “explicit lyrics.” That’ll work. What constitutes explicit may vary from day to day and who reviews your song, but there you have it.
While we’re at it, let’s make the MPAA rating system legally mandated, because it’s obviously way too broken as a voluntary system as it is. I mean, there are twelve-year olds seeing PG-13 movies because their parents are too stupid to realize that PG-13 means that the ratings board has already determined that the movie is too intense for their twelve-year-old. And lets lock up any cashier for a month if they sell a ticket to a rated “R” movie without carding the person. If they cashiers themselves are juveniles, we can send them to juvie hall instead.
And books! Holy cow, do you realize that children are able to check out books from the ADULT section of the library? We need to paste big warning labels on every single book, and make it a crime punishable by fining and imprisonment of the librarian for letting a kid out of the library with unsuitable literature! That Bible especially, there’s lots of sex and violence in that book! Bookstores, libraries, Amazon.com… people who loan out books to others… we need to lock all of them in jail if they let our youth look at something they shouldn’t! Now, it’ll take maybe twenty years for all the backlog of existing literature can be rated. There will be a cost, so we’ll have the publishers front that. Now, if they choose not to submit a work because it’s no longer making money for them, in favor of a new book… that’s fine. But they will no longer be able to sell a book that has no rating, because it COULD have mature content.
Let’s not stop there. Paintings… if you sell your own artwork, you have to get it registered with a ratings board before you can even display them. Live performances… plays and concerts will have to be pre-approved in order to legally perform, or face stiff fines (which they will also face if they deviate in any “substantial” – see definition of “substantial” in paragraph 97B – way from the material submitted to the board). Shoot, even blog entries ought to be registered and rated before getting posted, because they might contain material inappropriate for minors!
Because we know that the government knows best for our children. If the government takes charge of all this, we know they won’t screw it up.
Justin, do you realize that “MA” is effectively a “banning” rating because most stores refuse to carry games of this rating? And that the only laws governing videogame content that have passed Constitutional muster were those that simply extended the existing pornography laws that already exist for other media (and the video game industry has actually supported those laws?)
There’s a BIG OL’ can of worms that gets opened up when you start putting restrictions on the First Amendment and trying to define what sort of expression should and should not be made illegal and to whom. There are several problems that crop up, only the chief of which are the following:
#1 – The definition of what is legal and illegal. Not only is this fuzzy and subject to abuse, but it also opens things up for what the founding fathers really WERE worried about: What happens when anything protesting the current administration becomes “dangerous” and “subversive” and therefore illegal. (Don’t laugh – it’s already happened in Australia). Even the definition of what constitutes a “game” can be fuzzy. Then people start getting arrested for crimes they didn’t realize they were committing.
#2 – Enforcement becomes prohibitively expensive. Not only to the taxpayers, but also to content creators. Most games out there do not come from multi-billion dollar companies. In fact, with the advent of Flash and web-based games, most of the games coming out each month are coming from guys like us… web-savvy guys who have something to say and, in their case, some skills to turn it into a game. People who can NOT afford to get an ESRB rating. The result? No independent expression with the medium.
#3 – A “chilling effect” on a medium of expression. It’s bad enough that fear of an MA “kiss of death” rating might prohibit certain subject matter from being explored – leaving games (like comics in the U.S.) in a ghetto of kiddy material rather than being used to explore serious topics, which has finally started to happen.
#4 – Rating interactive content is… tricky at best, impossible at worst. My own experience playing Oblivion as an assassin who frolics through meadows picking flowers is substantially different from someone else’s that might involve grisly murders. And massively multiplayer games are designed to be played for YEARS — and the experience changes depending on who else is in the game with you! You are inevitably going to get some jerk who figures his way through the anti-profanity filter and says some really horrible and suggestive things. And that jerk is probably a 14-year old himself!
I think we can all agree that there are things that are unsuitable (for whatever reasons) for kids. I believe there are plenty of things unsuitable for grown-ups that are legally available out there, too. That’s not the question. But defining and understanding the issues involved are hard enough on their own. Attempting to put the force of law behind it is emptying an oil tanker onto a fire.
Some additional ranting on the subject if you are really bored: Congressman Matheson Defends Anti-Videogaming Law
Cool, I get to be a FELON now!
GamePolitics.com
EDIT by matthew: Fixed tpyo.
Not bad…
Philoctetes: “All right! Not bad, kid!” [To himself] “Not exactly what I had in mind, but not bad…” –Hercules
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Matthew P. Barnson