Can someone explain this california game law to me?

[Shibathedog]

I get that there are all these people/organizations against it. It supposedly violates first amendment rights. All these websites are making it out to be this huge terrible deal rallying support and whatnot and its going to the supreme court soon if I understand correctly. Of course there are some people for the bill as well. Basically everything I've read about it makes it out to be a huge fucking deal.

 

At the same time, all these sites seem to be remaining deliberately vague. It comes off as shady. The best explanation of the law I have read so far is "It criminalizes the sale of violent games to minors without enough proof to show it does any real harm. If video game sales to minors are regulated other mediums may be regulated as well." Is that really all there is to it? If it is...

 

Who gives a fuck? Isn't that a good thing? Less kids in my M rated games right? If a parent buys the game for their kid, they get in trouble. Hopefully there will be a report minor button or something. Maybe I'm just being insensitive because i'm over 18 and I can buy all the M rated games I want. (This sure would piss me off if I was under 18, but really, I think I would get over it, especially if I was one of those kids who was never exposed to it in the first place. As we all know M rated does not equal good game) About it leading to other mediums being regulated....So some minors can't watch R rated movies anymore? Who cares? how does this effect anything? Is this really a serious issue? What I have read says it bans violent games for MINORS not EVERYONE so no one is really being censored at all. It's not like they can't be made anymore, minors just can't play/watch it. It seems like it doesn't violate the first amendment at all, except for minors maybe. Minors don't have any fucking rights anyway though, so its like what else is new?

 

I even agree with the fact that it doesn't cause any serious harm, I really do. But really, unless someone can open my eyes to something I'm not seeing here, I basically see this as all run by publishing companies/developers. They are just pissed off that sales are going to go down because of it.

 

I also see that people are pissed because the government will basically be doing the parents job. Well apparently parents HAVEN'T been doing their fucking job. I'm tired of all this anti-game shit in the news. Maybe now people will yell LAW BREAKING SHITTY PARENTS! instead of THE GAME MADE THEM DO IT! INNOCENT PARENTS! (Never mind the fact that even IF the game did made them do it, who bought the kid the game? Oh shit! The parents!) Kid shoots up his school, Parents go to fucking jail. Good. They probably deserve it for being such shitty parents that their kid ended up shooting up a school. (I just didn't realize my kid was making pipe bombs in the garage! durr hurr! Seriously, there is no fucking excuse for that shit) I mean maybe this will help justify this anti-game crusade because people will say "Well lookie here there is a law behind this now!" but let's face facts, No one is going to take violent games/movies/any kind of content like this away from grown adults ever. It will never work. Minors are the only ones getting screwed here. If anyone is old enough to remember, this has basically happened with every entertainment medium there is in the past. It happened with TV, it happened with Movies, It happened with music, and this even happened with books! Guess what? They are ALL STILL AROUND and in fact are much MORE violent/inappropriate for children than they where when this was a big deal for those mediums. It seems like both sides win to me. Adults still get whatever they want, and the people who think its bad for kids, well kids supposedly won't get it anymore, so maybe IF they are right, it will help some. It will at least ease some of their endless bitching about it because they got something they wanted. Hell, maybe some kid will shoot up a school anyway and they will see they are wrong.

 

One more thing, It seems like with all these developers/publishers/related organizations/etc. so heavily backing the effort to block this, they are basically admitting they rely on the sales of their M-Rated/R-Rated content to minors. Just saying.