Our sick, sad world....
Jun. 14th, 2003 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grinninfooleThis is from an email update I got from the CBLDF the other day. It's most good news. Here's the gist of it is that the Eighth Circuit Court of
Appeals overturned a St. Louis County decision supporting a law outlawing violent video games for minors without parental consent.
"An important aspect of the Eighth Circuit decision is that it
affirmed video games as protected speech. The court wrote, 'If
the first amendment is versatile enough to `shield [the] painting
of Jackson Pollock, music of Arnold Schoenberg, or Jabberwocky verse
of Lewis Carroll,'.we see no reason why the pictures, graphic
design, concept art, sounds, music, stories, and narrative present in
video games are not entitled to a similar protection.' The court
added, 'We note, moreover, that there is no justification for
disqualifying video games as speech simply because they are
constructed to be interactive; indeed, literature is most successful
when it `draws the reader into the story, makes him identify with
the characters, invites him to judge them and quarrel with them, to
experience their joys and sufferings as the reader's own.'"
I really couldn't put the case for art any better. This is why I'm a first amendment absolutist. People can tell whatever stories they like--only the good ones will survive.
The court didn't stop there, though, and here's the bit that just makes me shake my head at us all as Americans.
"The Court also quashed the argument that video game violence is
obscene for minors. 'We reject the County's suggestion that
we should find that the `graphically violent' video games in
this case are obscene as to minors and therefore entitled to less
protection. It is true that obscenity is one of the few categories
of speech historically unprotected by the first amendment. But
we have previously observed that '[m]aterial that contains violence
but not depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct cannot be
obscene.' Simply put, depictions of violence cannot fall within
the legal definition of obscenity for either minors or adults."
This is hardly a new idea--George Carlin, for one, alerted me to the absurdity of this when I was just a boy. Yet, I read this a realize that, hey, it's not just a sardonic observation, a deep truth about our culture, or even just the root of our sickness: it's the law.
At times, the appeal of Enlightenment rationalism is so very, very obvious.
Appeals overturned a St. Louis County decision supporting a law outlawing violent video games for minors without parental consent.
"An important aspect of the Eighth Circuit decision is that it
affirmed video games as protected speech. The court wrote, 'If
the first amendment is versatile enough to `shield [the] painting
of Jackson Pollock, music of Arnold Schoenberg, or Jabberwocky verse
of Lewis Carroll,'.we see no reason why the pictures, graphic
design, concept art, sounds, music, stories, and narrative present in
video games are not entitled to a similar protection.' The court
added, 'We note, moreover, that there is no justification for
disqualifying video games as speech simply because they are
constructed to be interactive; indeed, literature is most successful
when it `draws the reader into the story, makes him identify with
the characters, invites him to judge them and quarrel with them, to
experience their joys and sufferings as the reader's own.'"
I really couldn't put the case for art any better. This is why I'm a first amendment absolutist. People can tell whatever stories they like--only the good ones will survive.
The court didn't stop there, though, and here's the bit that just makes me shake my head at us all as Americans.
"The Court also quashed the argument that video game violence is
obscene for minors. 'We reject the County's suggestion that
we should find that the `graphically violent' video games in
this case are obscene as to minors and therefore entitled to less
protection. It is true that obscenity is one of the few categories
of speech historically unprotected by the first amendment. But
we have previously observed that '[m]aterial that contains violence
but not depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct cannot be
obscene.' Simply put, depictions of violence cannot fall within
the legal definition of obscenity for either minors or adults."
This is hardly a new idea--George Carlin, for one, alerted me to the absurdity of this when I was just a boy. Yet, I read this a realize that, hey, it's not just a sardonic observation, a deep truth about our culture, or even just the root of our sickness: it's the law.
At times, the appeal of Enlightenment rationalism is so very, very obvious.
