The New York Assembly passed a bill on the 30th of May which would make selling or renting video games with mature content to minors a Class E felony. This is about the tenth time a US non-federal legislature has passed such a bill, and each and every one has been struck down by a Federal judge on first amendment grounds, because it is - basically - censorship.
Making this a class E felony makes video game boobies and pixellated mutilation fall into the same class as riot in the first degree, criminal anarchy, first degree aggravated harassment, bigamy, incest and wiretapping.
US citizens in the audience, I'd like you to think about three things. The people proposing these bills know they are unconstitutional, but they burn your money on them anyway. The fact that these bills cost a lot of your money to draft, pass and strike down is actually not the most important issue here.
The key things I want you to think about are why this is happening and where it is going. Let's reiterate, the people behind these bills know they violate US First Amendment guarantees. That didn't stop the New York Assembly proposing their own bill after hundreds of thousands of tax dollars were spent on the others which were passed and then struck down in other legislatures. 130 members voted for this, and ten voted against. Is this your assembly? Do you know who voted which way?
The architects of this bill embedded a severability clause to try to get a part of it to pass the inevitable constitutional challenge due to their foreknowledge of the unconstitutional nature of the bill. And you know what? That's not going to work either, but hey. You voted for these people and it's your money they're spending, right?
If your local congressman or senator sat there and set fire to a big pile of tax money, including your own, and said "Sure, this isn't legal - whatcha gonna do?" you wouldn't sit still for that.
Well, that's more or less what's going on and you are sitting still, by and large.
Nine straight failures now, and we're on the tenth attempt. Do you think that after this one fails, the legislators will sit back and say, "Okay, that's enough. We're done now."
No, I didn't think so. So, ask yourselves why. Why are bare breasts classed with evisceration? Why burn all this money to repeatedly fail to push past the First Amendment protections? What does that say about us, as a species, and about the USA as a culture? Who is getting what out of this exactly, and where does it stop?
Does it stop before it gets to virtual worlds? Hell no. Some virtual worlds are video games, and to most people they all are.
Pick up your newsfeeds and read, you'll see signs of the same things, whether you're in ActiveWorlds, or Second Life, or other virtual worlds. Virtual worlds are easier to pressure, because they're platforms that are poorly understood by lawmakers, and federal judges generally. Maybe you're seeing signs of that already.
So, the questions you need to answer for yourself are why are these bills being drafted, and where is all this going. Those are questions that you, as a US citizen need to answer for yourself.
Where does it all stop? Well, that's your decision to make, isn't it?
1. The fundamental problem here is that America is a rogue nation with a corrupt political system. By design, it is flawed and skewed towards people who are old and moneyed. As anyone will tell you, it's normal for people to become more conservative as they age. And people live so LONG nowadays. Perhaps too long.
Maybe we are shooting ourselves in the foot by following our survival instincts to unnatural extremes and unnecessarily prolonging the lives of everyone.
Posted at 8:43AM on Jun 1st 2007 by eggy lippmann