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Supreme Court: Video Games are Free Speech
DoctorArch
CurmudgeonRegistered User regular
CurmudgeonRegistered User regular
Linky:
Here's the link to the ruling itself (.pdf).
For those who don't know, Scalia is an entertaining writer, so you may get a kick out of reading the opinion yourself. I'll post back after I've combed through it.
The United States Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the video game industry and retailers in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (formerly known as Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association). The full opinion can be found is here. According to Justice Scalia, who wrote the opinion: "the act forbidding sale or rental of violent games to minors does not comport with the 1st Amendment." Alito concurred with the judgment, joined by the Chief Justice. Justices Thomas and Breyer dissent, in an opinion by Thomas - according to SCOTUSBlog. [DoctorArch ninja edit: This is incorrect, Thomas and Breyer both filed dissenting opinions, Breyer did not join Thomas's opinion]
The court had to decide if a state law restricting the sale of violent video games to minors violated the First Amendment right to free speech. The Ninth Circuit Court ruled in favor of the EMA, saying that the law violated the First Amendment.
The law was written by California State Senator (D-San Francisco) Leland Yee and signed into law by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005. The law was immediately challenged by the video game industry and retail advocacy groups in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. A judge put a permanent injunction on the law, ruling that it was unconstitutional because it violated rights protected by the First Amendment.
Here's the link to the ruling itself (.pdf).
For those who don't know, Scalia is an entertaining writer, so you may get a kick out of reading the opinion yourself. I'll post back after I've combed through it.
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Yeah, the part where he calls out Thomas is pretty funny (footnote 3).
Also, from the Wired article:
Because if there if there is anything parents love it is people telling them how to raise their children.
And Scalia... geez, what kind of fancy-pants high school did he go to? We watched movies in class, not read "The Odyssey" and "the Inferno".
That's just, like, your opinion, man...
The man is an affirmative action hire in the full conservative sense of the term.
The worst/saddest part about that case was Thomas being the lone dissenter saying basically "Who are judges to second guess school administrators in the best efforts at finding contraband" and "this decision means that every student now knows to hide contraband in their undergarments."
Not a supreme court case, but this one is awesome. Had to read it as part of a business law course.
I love this state.
I want to know how Superman was unethical for children. I guess all that truth, justice and American Way was too much for kids to handle.
Illegal alien vigilante in spandex wearing his underwear on the outside.
Having read Wertham's book I can guarantee that he had no idea what he was talking about.
No Im pretty sure Mortal Kombat and culture are like matter and anti matter.
I'm copy/pasting from the pdf opinion itself. Maybe that's why.
Eh, one is an ultraviolent revenge fantasy where you see graphic violence, and the other is a videogame where you can pull someone's spine out. Seems to me to be in the same level...
I mean, I might be alone in thinking that, but i think parents are those who ought to decide if a kid can or cannot play violent video games, same with what movies they can and can't watch. I mean, I'm pretty sure kids need to be accompanied by an adult if they want to see PG-13 movies, right? Why shouldn't it work more-or-less the same way with video games?
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I'll let you decide whether or not I'm joking.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Well, actually, i'd say that it's more valuable culturally because it survived longer than other works from the same time period. Some sort of cultural darwinism, you might say. Works that stay "relevant" in a way, that are studied for longer are more culturally valuable than those which were forgotten.
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How are we going to enforce that little gem? No wonder Breyer voted the minority opinion without joining the written dissent.
It's valuable because it was one of the first major works of literature to be written in the "vulgar tongue" instead of Latin.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Pornography is "obscene," and obscenity has a very, very narrow exception to First Amendment protections in the U.S. California, in this case, did not try to call video games obscene and base the law upon that classification, probably because they knew they would be laughed out of court as a result.
And yes, parents are those who ought to decide if a kid can or cannot play violent video games. That has not changed. Previous to the California law, game retailers already made sure that minors could not purchase Mature video games without a parent present. What this law did was criminalize the sale of video games to minors, which is a step to far. The video game rating system in the states is very similar to the movie rating system, in that they are both voluntary, and arose out an acknowledge need for ratings in order to prevent the government from legislating it.
dante's version of hell is referenced in modern culture a lot
sometimes without people realizing that's where it came from
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They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I'm not sure exactly what you're arguing here.
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I love how he spends most of his opinion espousing the sort of primitive, collectivist religious extremism which characterizes areas and / or times where dirty, ignorant people tried to brainwash and abuse their children in between dying of poxes or TB. If it was a capital crime to disobey your parents (which he cites as a point in his favor), it might be a good idea to pick and choose what you take from that culture, you trash.
There are few things I despise more than the American Taliban. Coming from a first world country in modern times and being taken in by such irrational and wicked ignorance is a gross moral failure.
Might not be a good metric, but it's the one that's used.
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They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I dunno I feel like something still being referenced after almost 700 years is a strong vote in favor of it being culturally relevant
do you have a better metric?
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The dangerous part is with Alito and the Chief Justice's concurrence as to the judgment. These two justices found that there was a vagueness issue that resulted in them voting against the law. IE that violent video games was not sufficiently defined to give fair warning and notice of what would violate the law. BUT Alito argues that the notion of obscene material should be expanded beyond the traditional tri partite test that Justice Brennan put forth, and was later adopted in Miller.
This is problematic for two reasons: This should have been an 8-1 or 9-0 opinion in favor of speech when instead only 5 felt that this was truly protected speech. (Thomas argument should have been the lone dissent. although an argument for parental rights, seems to go beyond the traditional parental rights espoused in that body of legal work, ie pierce v. society of sisters and meyers v. nebraska) Which means that the court is fracturing over the traditional categories of what constitutes UNPROTECTED categories of speech.
Second, Alito's move to expand the notion of obscenity has gained the Chief Justice's vote. Last year, in Stevens (The animal abuse case aka crush videos) Alito started his movement to expand the ideas of what constitutes obscene material by stating that the movies themselves are harmful and thus fall into obscene material, much like child pornography. In Stevens the Chief Justice declined to side with Alito. Now, it seems that the Chief Justice has moved somewhat towards Alito, signaling an openess to expanding what constitutes obscenity law.
I'll say more about Thomas when I can get my head around his dissent.
Uh.
You know what nevermind.
Because not only is it completely subjective, it's also completely pointless. If we want to protect the first amendment, it doesn't matter what our opinion of the value of any given piece of material is, it basically has to apply to everything. Adding a rider about how one thing is more valuable than another is both arrogant and counterproductive.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.