{"id":40804,"date":"2011-06-28T20:20:42","date_gmt":"2011-06-29T00:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=40804"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:50:27","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:50:27","slug":"the-next-sound-you-hear-the-next-sight-you-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/fe-911-2\/the-next-sound-you-hear-the-next-sight-you-see\/","title":{"rendered":"The Next Sound You Hear, the Next Sight You See"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes. It has happened. Yesterday, by\u00a0a\u00a0margin of 7 to 2, Justices of the US Supreme Court ruled that violent video games are considered\u00a0protected speech.<\/a> The case in question,\u00a0Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, <\/em>was based on a California law also known by the dry title of Civil Code 1746\u20131746.5, signed in 2005, prohibiting sale of violent video games to minors,\u00a0and imposing fines of up to $1,000 for violators.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association<\/em>, filed by the state of California, posed these questions: Does the First Amendment bar a state from restricting the sale of violent video games to minors?\u00a0Can a state ban the sale of violent video games to minors, and if so, must the state prove that violent video games directly cause physical and psychological harm to minors for the ban to be constitutional?<\/p>\n

The state defined \u201cviolent video game\u201d\u00a0as one which the range of options available to a player include killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being.\u00a0The game displays acts that a reasonable person would find appeal to minors with deviant or morbid interests, and is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the community as to what is suitable for minors.\u00a0The game lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors, and enables the player to virtually inflict serious injury upon images of human beings or characters with substantially human characteristics in a manner which is especially heinous, cruel or depraved.\u00a0The game involves torture or serious physical abuse to the victim\u00a0by gratuitous violence beyond that necessary to commit the killing, needless mutilation of the victim’s body, and helplessness of the victim.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Before the bill was even signed into law,\u00a0the Entertainment Merchants Association and the Entertainment Software Association filed suit in court, citing\u00a0the law’s\u00a0unconstitutionality. In making its appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court, the state’s interest was to prevent violent, aggressive and antisocial behavior and\u00a0psychological or neurological harm to minors who play violent video games, and cited as precedent the 1968 Supreme Court Case of Ginsberg v. New York. <\/em>This was a case\u00a0in which\u00a0the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that in matters of obscenity, the state can\u00a0and should\u00a0protect minors. In the Schwarzenegger\u00a0case, the Supreme Court ruled against the state and concurred with the decision of lower courts.\u00a0Their\u00a0decision was based on the\u00a0premise that\u00a0video games, regardless of their violent content,\u00a0are entertainment, which is protected by the First Amendment.\u00a0Therefore, sexual and violent content are to be viewed differently. Violent content is free speech. Sexual content is not.<\/p>\n

In its reasoning, the court also cited that America has a long tradition of limiting depictions of sexual acts, but has never been as restrictive about violence. The court also noted\u00a0that as new technologies are invented, states cannot target them for restriction because of concern about the potential influence on children. The interactive nature of video games\u00a0was equated to the effect of\u00a0a compelling book, and the\u00a0scientific findings on the effect of violent video games on children\u00a0doesn’t support censorship.<\/p>\n

The court’s ruling\u00a0dismisses current and previous research that violent video games pose a threat to children,\u00a0suggesting that\u00a0the research\u00a0doesn’t prove these games cause children to act aggressively.\u00a0The ruling also leaves unanswered questions about our double standards\u00a0regarding sex and violence, particularly when it comes to laws protecting children from ‘harm’.\u00a0 Coming in on the heels of a congressman who lost his job because he did not pay heed to the impact his\u00a0sexual Twitter feed\u00a0had on the web, shows that in this Information Age, we continue to wade blindly into interesting and uncharted territory, making decisions based on an incomplete knowledge of the medium in question.<\/p>\n

The effect of new media, including on-line gaming,\u00a0Twitter feeds and social networking,\u00a0is a subject worth our consideration, principally\u00a0because of\u00a0our interactivity.\u00a0The power of\u00a0virtual images, virtual communications\u00a0and the effects they have on us as consumers are still to be\u00a0studied for their\u00a0social and\u00a0psychological effect.\u00a0As for violent images before young people,\u00a0opinions are mixed. There is still not enough known. Yet there are historic precedents cited\u00a0in the Supreme Court and elsewhere that showed today’s level of concern\u00a0over violent internet games was similarly experienced in the early 20th century with the advent of the telephone and its potential intrusion on individual privacy. But are these two\u00a0forms of technology the same?<\/p>\n

In an\u00a0article written in 2009\u00a0by developmental psychologist Douglas A. Gentile<\/a> called “Video Games Affect the Brain — for Better and Worse”<\/a> the author, who monitors the effect of new media on children,\u00a0found that\u00a0in continuing play with violent video games, young people become desensitized to violence. There is a dopamine ‘reward’ to the male brain which is also tied to feelings of motivation and ‘winning’.\u00a0\u00a0Our brains suppress\u00a0emotional responses when\u00a0we perpetrate violence on the ‘villains’ in our video games.<\/p>\n

I am personally not against video games as a whole. There are many games out there which are actually good for young people, promote social and perception skills, teamwork and cooperation, and are actually fun, and there is a\u00a0rating system still in effect for video games in California similar to the motion picture ratings determining the level of viewing appropriate\u00a0by children, young people and adults. So parents still have guidance in purchasing video games for their kids.<\/p>\n

Doesn’t this all seem fitting subject matter for\u00a0the heavy basket of issues that is Pluto in Capricorn? In\u00a0our short\u00a0existence as a nation,\u00a0America has had a long history with violence. With\u00a0this history,\u00a0easy access to guns and weaponry,\u00a0and our society always on the edge of exploding with violence, violence is\u00a0a primary\u00a0expression of\u00a0our culture. It’s\u00a0our tradition; a founding principle.\u00a0Our evolution out of that violence is slowed longer still by our need to\u00a0use and carry\u00a0arms, and today our violent impulses, even the virtual ones,\u00a0have sanction in the halls of Congress, the Constitution and the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Maybe\u00a0we owe it to ourselves to monitor and observe\u00a0the traditions and standards used by our government to determine what is harmful, violent and obscene. Are we ready to take a deeper look? Will the next sound you hear, the next sight you see — a naked penis on your Blackberry or a virtual decapitation on your XBox — be too much for you or your child to handle? Would you trust the Supreme Court, or for that matter any government, to\u00a0determine whether it is or not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes. It has happened. Yesterday, by\u00a0a\u00a0margin of 7 to 2, Justices of the US Supreme Court ruled that violent video games are considered\u00a0protected speech. The case in question,\u00a0Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, was based on a California law also known by the dry title of Civil Code 1746\u20131746.5, signed in 2005, prohibiting sale of violent … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40804"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}