The Supreme Court has struck down a
California Wholesale Soccer
Jersey Supplier law that would have banned selling “violent” video games to
children, a case balancing free speech rights with consumer protection.The 7-2
ruling Monday is a victory for video game makers and sellers, who said the ban
— which had yet to go into effect — would extend too far. They say the existing
nationwide, industry-imposed, voluntary rating system is an adequate screen for
parents to judge the appropriateness of computer game content.
The state says it has a legal obligation to
protect children from graphic interactive images when the industry has failed
to do so.”As a means of assisting concerned parents it (the law) is seriously
overinclusive because it abridges the First Amendment rights of young people
whose parents (and aunts and uncles) think violent video games are a harmless
pastime,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia German
Soccer Jersey for the majority.Supreme Court sees video games as art,In
dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer framed the law’s intent differently.As a means
of assisting concerned parents it (the law) is seriously overinclusive because
it abridges the First Amendment rights of young people whose parents (and aunts
and uncles) think violent video games are a harmless pastime.”The First
Amendment does not disable government from helping parents make such a choice
here — a choice not to have their children buy extremely violent, interactive
games,” he wrote.At issue is how far constitutional protections of free speech
and expression, as well as due process, can be applied to youngsters. Critics
of the content-based restrictions say the government would in effect be engaged
in the censorship business, using “community standards” to evaluate artistic
and commercial content.
A federal Bayern
Soccer Jersey appeals court in San Francisco
last year tossed out the law before it took effect, after then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
signed it in 2005. He had applauded the high court’s decision to intervene. “We
have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to protect against the
effects of games that depict ultraviolent actions, just as we already do with
movies,” the governor said. The onetime actor made his name playing characters
engaged in similarly violent acts in such movies as “Terminator.”The
legislation was designed to strengthen the current industry-controlled rating
system, and would have placed an outright ban on the sale or rental to those
under 18 of games deemed excessively “violent.” As defined by California Robben
Jersey, such interactive games are those in which the player is given the
choice of “killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a
human being” in offensive ways. It also defined such games as those that would
“appeal to a deviant or morbid interest of children and are patently offensive
to prevailing community standards.”