Quote: "Perhaps next they think the teachings of Islam is dangerous to our youth and they ban sale of the Quran to children."
Very well said. The "snowball effect" has been seen before in legislation on a number of occasions and we shouldn't be willing to hand over freedoms of any kind for any reason, ESPECIALLY our 1st ammendment right to free speech, which in my opinion is the most important right we as citizens have. That's why I'm so fired up over this.
Quote: "Geez get over it! 'Chilling effect on our industry'?!? It's been like that in the UK since forever (it's a crime to sell films or games to someone under the certificate age). GTA is an 18, if you are under 18, you can't buy it. Same with films, Fight Club, American Beauty, whatever. Under 18, can't buy them."
Well, the problem Chris is that this law isn't regulating ANY OTHER FORM of media whatsoever, not here anyway. It's an unjust bias against our industry.
Quote: "Why does everything have to be treated equal? Why not let videogames set a precedent? Would you rather videogame law take the longest route? I don't understand."
Because that's really just not how the US legislation system works, and the proponents of this bill have no intention of sacking other forms of media in the same way. They view video games as a scurge, a brain-rotting violence-inducing menace that needs to be stopped. Remember when we were kids in the 1980's and heavy metal music was put on trial? This is basically the exact same thing. This legislation is designed specifically to attack video games, and only games. There is no pre-concieved plot to set a precedent for other forms of media. They believe that because a game has a much higher level of interactivity than any other form of media, then it *must* be the case that games induce violence and drive kids to kill people.
This is not even close to being a fact. A person whose mentally unstable might be influenced by violence in a game to run around stealing cars and shooting cops, but any kid of sound mind who is taught the difference between right and wrong will know that games are just "make believe" and shouldn't force you to do anything evil or stupid. Did kids get "influenced" by Huckleberry Fin to go rafting on the Mississippi river? It's a children's story, and the protagonist is doing something extremely dangerous (ask Jeff Buckley how dangerous that river is), and parents read this to 4-year-olds as a bedtime story.
Another reason this bill should make everyone weary, as Jerico pointed out, is because it makes no effort to define what "depraved violence" means. Most Americans are pretty weary about "open-ended policy," like, for instance, the Patriot Act. Without precisely-defined terminology, it leaves legislators open to interpret bills as they see fit and enforcers to react to those bills in their own ways. This is extremely dangerous because each politician (and each law enforcement agent) will have his or her own definition of how the bill should be defined. Without a definition of "depraved violence," they can say it means whatever they want it to mean. Heck, I just released a commercial game, and your character can drown, or be crushed to death, or have spikes driven through him, or be burned alive in a fire. Even though it's far less violent than many other games, an official might deem that Eternal Equinox contains "deprived violence." It's a slippery slope. We've seen loosely-defined laws come about in the United States before, and never have any of them proved to do anything more than shun our freedoms and lessen the value of the Bill of Rights.
"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
