Sign The Gamer Petition
Do you agree that games deserve First Amendment protection, that they qualify for freedom of speech protection?
If you do, and you are an American gamer, I urge you to visit the ECA website and sign The Gamer Petition.
We, the undersigned American video game consumers, purchase, rent and play video games the way we do other entertainment content such as movies and music. We respectfully request that you hold that video games are indeed free speech, protected under the First Amendment, like other entertainment media.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Schwarzenegger v EMA, which is a lawsuit about the latest in a long string of state-level legislation against videogame regulation. Every time this has come up, courts have struck down the laws as unconstitutional. This time, the appeals have made it to the Supreme Court, and if they decide against games and in favor of the law, it would have huge negative implications for the industry — and for gamers.
The petition will be attached to the amicus brief that the ECA is submitting to the court.
It’s no secret that I am not a fan of some of the excesses of industry content. But I also believe that the way for games to mature as a medium is for them to grow their way to it. That will be made much harder if we end up laboring under arbitrary or pointless restrictions the way comics did for so long. Or if the stigma of regulation means that publishers become averse to games that tackle adult topics with adult sophistication. Or if we have to make builds that vary state to state (a scenario envisioned by the CEO of EA).
So I was happy to sign the petition. I want games to be treated like books, because I want them to aspire to the historical level of impact and quality that books have had.
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Link in your post seems to be dead this morning. I guess I’ll try back another day unless somehow you have an error in your link.
The link worked fine for me just now. And while I’m usually deeply suspicious of industry groups pretending to be consumer groups (“astroturf”), I’ve deviated from policy in this instance. The Court is listing badly to the right with a number of ill-considered decisions, and it will be a tragedy if it winds up easier to obtain an assault weapon than a first-person shooter.
“it will be a tragedy if it winds up easier to obtain an assault weapon than a first-person shooter”
QFT.
Link worked fine for me, too.
ECA is a definitely a consumer advocacy group. I know the founder. Early on, when we were looking at fundraising strategies, Hal expressed concern that corporate money would cast doubt on the objectivity of our organization. That’s not really a problem for us, but it is for ECA, which is why they “don’t accept funding from the industry.” See here.
I’m inclined to take your word on it, Morgan, especially after browsing the forums. While there seems to be a significant number of designers and developers in the organization, this is a field where the lines between ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’ are delightfully blurred at the edges. Game makers are almost always passionate gamers, and the most passionate gamers often end up slipping into production via the modding community or UGC systems.
Well if they rule against free speech via media after the Citizens United ruling, someone is going to have to write a whole volume of books to explain the inconsistency that a corporation can spend money on campaign “issue” ads as free speech while simultaneously restricting what can be put into a product or service they actually developed for revenue. The game lives or dies in the court of public opinion, if it is too distasteful for broad appeal, that takes care of itself.
The “violence” argument always gets pulled up, and while this could be gone on about at length in some more appropriate venue, its never a good idea to legally restrict whatever is *GASP* unpopular(!) from access to a medium. It is plenty hard enough finding such material with just the monetary pressure and people can always choose to tune it out!
Now, I’m also going to admonish the corporate side of this a bit and say that ActiBlizzendi can excuse themselves from taking a free speech position as well as any other company with a mind to demand privacy concessions for access to community services (including tech support, account issues, feedback, etc).
I’m absolutely on board with the idea that forums are private property. I’m absolutely on board with the idea that if I’m disruptive at my neighborhood family restaurant, they can kick me out. I’m not on board with the idea that I need to present my RealID to the hostess at the restaurant to be seated in the first place.
I’m not in America, so I’ve not been keeping fully up to speed on this, but from what I saw about this some time ago, weren’t they just wanting to make it illegal to sell computer games to people who were under the age that the ratings board had set as the threshold?
I don’t understand how this constitutes an attack on free speech. They aren’t saying you cannot make and/or sell these games, they’re just saying “You can’t sell horribly violent computer games to under-age kids”.
Or have I missed the point?
If that’s the essence of the argument then I really don’t see the problem, guns, alcohol, pornography and violent media shouldn’t really be in the hands of young kids. Once you’re over the age of consent, go nuts as far as I’m concerned (except for the firearms thing, we’ll just have to agree to disagree there).
Over here in Australia we’re desperately trying to get them to give us an 18+ rating so that games don’t get hamstrung or banned just to fit in with our censors view of what is right for a child to view.
Please no flaming, I’m seriously trying to work out what the issue is.
9squirrels — In a nutshell, the State of California tried to expand the legal definition of ‘obscenity’ to cover violent video games. ‘Obscenity’ in the United States is a specific legal category of speech that has no First Amendment protection, and is almost always applied to pornography (and not even all pornography — erotica with significant artistic merit is not legally obscene and has First Amendment protection under American law).
Once the precedent is established that games can be categorized as obscene, it becomes much easier to restrict or ban them, not just for sale to minors, but to everybody. That might not happen in California, but in Texas? Texas law takes it upon itself to limit the number of adult toys you can keep in your nightstand. They wouldn’t bat an eye at caving to populist hysteria over video games, despite being a hub for the industry.
California can still restrict video game sales if they lose, but they have to meet a much stricter legal standard. It’s very difficult in the U.S. for the government to block any form of protected speech.
The difference between this and previous rulings is the rallying cry of “what about the children?”. It hasn’t swayed the appeals courts, who have ruled twice against the state. With luck, it won’t sway the Supreme Court either.
I’ve looked at Australian attempts to censor games and the Internet, and I think there’s one or two politicians down under who need a swift kick. But maybe that’s just the violent videogames talking.
If you as a parent deem something dangerous to your child, then try communicating with them or monitor their activities to ensure they stay away from them. The problem with outsourcing parental responsibilities to another authority is that you lose control over how those responsibilities are carried out. The desire to protect children from material that is voluntarily consumed doesn’t trump the expressive rights of those who use certain media.
Any body cooperating with the industry to provide information to consumers/parents such that they can make informed choices about their entertainment purchases should be enough protection to allow a concerned parent the control they need. Moralists and those feigning concern for children to suit their political agendas could then direct their ire at the lazy parents who don’t seem to care even when provided with the tools they need.
Say, ECA, when *you’re* ready to have the First Amendment apply within all your games and on all your forums, then I could consider signing this.petition.
I don’t believe in having only game gods get to have freedom of expression and I don’t see why I would need to cross the street to solidarize for you on your publishers’ rights when you have no interest in avatar rights.
As for the “lazy parents” bullshit, sorry, but that doesn’t cut it. It is impossible for a parent, especially one who works, to police every aspect of their online/mobile phone/video game time, especially if they go over to other childrens’ homes
There’s nothing wrong with conceding that games cause indifference to violence, and in some cases violence, too. The gaming industry fights mightily against these obvious connections, but they’ll go the way of the movie industry.
“I’m absolutely on board with the idea that if I’m disruptive at my neighborhood family restaurant, they can kick me out.”
This sort of tiresome “you’re in my living room” stuff has to go. Games are not living rooms, they are not family restaurants, and when people are booted or restricted in them, it’s seldom because they’ve *actually* done something that would require a booting or calling the police in real life. So that’s fake. Games are notorious for making up rules like “you can’t talk about other games” or “you can’t criticize anything about the game company” or “you can’t disaparage other players” etc. etc. And that’s wrong.
Imagine if in a RL restaurant you could be expelled *and* have all your property confiscated and banned from re-entry merely for saying the food was better in another place, or that the food was undercooked, or that the toddlers at the next table were annoying. THAT is what games are like.
I would agree that residents of virtuals worlds (game or social) have natural rights that are being constantly abridged by the companies running the games. We could no doubt have a spirited discussion on where the limits of those rights should be in regard to defamation and harassment.
But freedom of speech for designers and publishers is a necessary precondition for freedom of speech for players. If the government has the power to exercise restraint on content as ‘obscene’ (the practical result of the California law), it could exercise the same power on user-generated content, including ‘trivial’ UGC such as chat, character names, etc. I don’t see that as a step forward for avatar rights.
Games may “go the way of movies”… but are they going to go the way of movies in the modern market, or movies in the era of the Hayes Commission?
Yukon – Thanks for the clarification, makes a lot more sense now, and you all seem a lot less hysterical 🙂
Kerri – Oh don’t worry, I fully intend to communicate with my child concerning what he should and shouldn’t do (he’s not quite 2 yet though, so some of these topics will obviously have to wait). The problem is that saying it should be the responsibility of the parent alone is falling in to the trap of assuming you’re living in a perfect world. There are 2 major obstructions to this.
1 – There are shit parents out there who let their kids do whatever the hell they like. As a result they basically ruin the kids. A law restricting sale of material to minors will help restrict some items.
2 – Even if your child takes on board everything you’ve said, there’s still peer pressure, and if they can legally get their hands on the material, there’s a chance they’ll either be pressured into obtaining it in secret, or being exposed to it at friends houses with less strict parenting.
I’m not saying that putting in place legal restrictions will stop that, hell I got my hands on porn at high school, which was illegal. I’m just saying it’ll reduce the exposure to it. Yes, the parents should have ultimate responsibility for their child’s upbringing, but if they want their child to have access to something the child can’t legally obtain, there’s nothing to stop them from obtaining it on their behalf is there? If my kid is mature enough at 16/17 to play games rated 18 (assuming they ever sort that out over here) I’ll have no problems letting him play them, and obtaining them on his behalf.
That said, the legal restrictions as described by Yukon seem to go too far.
I hope they manage to block it.
I’m all for the freedom of speech for designers and publishers. I am an adult and I can handle whatever they can throw at me. I play both the happy, fun, educational games and the violent ones, it’s really my choice and the state has no right to limit freedom of speech as far as the gaming industry is concerned – so long as no real humans or animals are harmed in the making.
I’ll agree that media formats shouldn’t have double standards (the exception that sticks out, however, is accessibility such as publicly broadcast vs. purchased content or content delivery services). Do retailers enforce MPAA guidelines the way they do ESRB? I know when I worked in theatres, busting minors sneaking around was an enjoyable hobby :9.
Don’t list bad clearly bad analogies among the one I used to discredit it.
Don’t list clearly bad examples of behavior restriction alongside a legitimate one (disparaging other customers is probably the best reason for removing someone I can think of besides direct physical harm). I’ve never received punishment for behavior in game and only rarely for technically wandering into political speech when pointing out others’ divisive language style. I’m a frequent vocal dissenter on issues and I’ve never felt any kind of silencing pressure on me for that. If a company acts tyrannical and isn’t part of a barrier to social mobility (car insurance, for example), you can try not giving them any more of your money.
Again, I’ve never seen this alarmist picture you paint taking place. That’s not to say it has never happened, but I don’t see any sign of it being the dominant reason for account bans at all. The game companies are not taking away any property from you, by the way. They own the assets and you agreed to that being part of the terms. In the restaurant analogy, no you do not get to take the plates and glasses you ate off of with you.
Homework assignment:
Go into a retail department story, hang around the registers and tell people in the lines about the sales going on at other stores and how the selection and prices at some other place is way better.
Come back and let us know how long you lasted.
I see no reason games should be treated any differently than books and magazines, and while it’s hypocritical for gaming companies to demand their freedom of speech while denying it to gamers, they are most certainly free to do so. The constitution only states that the government may pass no law to limit freedom of speech.
Unfortunately, we’re never actually talking about freedom of speech when these idiotic cases come up. For instance, nobody would care if a gaming company decided to make a game that tried to ague that oh say Republican policies were foolish, they just don’t do it because to para-phrase Michael Jordan … Republicans buy video games too.
Nah, what this bill protects is a gaming company’s right to make a buck however they chose. A good cause perhaps, but hardly so noble as preserving freedom of speech.
Commerce and speech do not exist independently of each other.
The constitution was created to protect the rights of people, not corporations.
Corporations are comprised of, controlled, and operated by people. They are communities, human ecosystems established for economic purposes.
@morgan: A 10,000 watt amplifier aimed out the front of my window into your front door is just a bigger stereo.
Corporations are precisely that. So can I play Metallica at full volume when your children are sleeping at night? By your logic, that should be ok.
“It’s about power.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Season 7 Episode 1
Hrmmm… I’m pleased to eviscerate corporations (including the one I work for) at every available opportunity. However, the guy building his first game in his bedroom is obviously an individual deserving of First Amendment protection. If he incorporates, he’s still an individual with rights. If he hires a few buddies to help out, they all have rights… even though the corporation (which arguably should have no natural rights as an artificial legal construct) may “own” their creative output.
But if they throw a launch party next door and crank up “Enter Sandman”, you can still call the cops. Freedom of expression has limits, and that’s true of individuals as well as groups.
We just have to watch those limits vigilently because there are always individuals and groups seeking to cinch them down until the only things we can utter are pleasant greetings and praises to the heavens.
If corporations were merely an extension of people acting as people, they wouldn’t have or need special protection under the law that limit their liability.
Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand.
And when the constitution was framed, corporations as we know them now did not exist.
I find it an abomination that our fore fathers fought and died so we could have freedom from totalitarianism and we squander it trying to make sure corporations can sell adult games to kids.
People have rights. Not corporations. That what our laws say … or at least that’s what they used to say.
The modern stock corporation evolved from royal charters and then from early Christian monastic orders. Art Kleiner wrote in The Age of Heretics, “The stock company had no human body, but it was corporeal in every other sense. It was an engine for creating material. It could own property, outlive its human members, and borrow or lend money (a neat maneuver around the Christian law against usury).”
The corporation is entrusted by the public through law and government with certain rights and responsibilities that enable people to undertake ventures that are simply too risky for individuals to undertake alone. Corporations that do not respect that trust can be censured, penalized, or even completely dismantled. This has been true of corporations since ancient Rome.
Harvard University was the first corporation established in the United States—140 years before the nation was founded and 151 years before the Constitution was created. Our founding fathers erected a nation of laws, one which guaranteed the rights to life, liberty, and property (later renamed “the pursuit of happiness.”)
In the 223 years since our Constitution was adopted, our nation and the world in which we live has become far more complex than the founders could have ever dreamed. Perhaps millions of laws have been enacted across every area of interest and the business environment has undergone numerous revolutions. Law and government have adapted the corporation to these changes, but the corporation has never deviated from its purpose as an instrument of the people, as an instrument of enterprise.
Or as Ambrose Bierce famously put it in “The Devil’s Dictionary”…
… which I think has a more truthful ring to it than…
Which would have had painful consequences, had I been drinking a hot beverage as I read it.
Actually, no. Nonprofits are corporations, too, whose profits must be returned to further social purposes. The sole proprietorship is a type of corporation, one which grants freedom from corporate taxes in exchange for unlimited liability. In addition, courts often hold individuals working on behalf of corporations responsible for misdeeds, from fines to imprisonment.
Have there been abuses of the corporation? Yes, since the inception of the corporation. There have also been serious abuses of the Constitution. In Buck v. Bell of 1927, SCOTUS determined that compulsory sterilization of “imbeciles” is constitutional; the ruling has never been overturned. Any instrument of people is subject to the inherent fallibility of human hands. The purposes of these instruments, however, have never changed.
I’m reining in an essay on the subject, on the grounds that it takes us even further afield than we’ve already strayed. I can and do support corporations in those cases where I believe their interests align with that of the public. The California law is such a case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_personality
See Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad for US history of this peculiar concept.
This is an interesting debate, but the rise of the transnational elite is a more serious challenge to national sovereignty and governance by national law. There are several good articles on this from the United Nations. BP’s arrogance is an example of how far from good governance we are getting as a result of the transnational institutions and structures coming online since the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreements.