If you haven't already heard, our 1st amendment rights have been under attack by the state of California since 2004 (and if you haven't...have you been living under a rock??). From the beginning: Senator Leland Yee was appalled by a scene in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and drafted a law to make it illegal for minors to purchase Violent/Obscene video games. This law had many other implications that would require 'ultra violent' video games (defined so broadly that Super Mario Bros. was pulled into the discussion at one point!) to be sold separately from all other games, similar to the way PlayBoy is sold separately from other magazines, and require an 2" x 2" sticker labeling the game as XXX or 18+ Only. This is serious censorship, and would bring all forms of entertainment into question. The Govenator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) signed the law into effect, but upon appeal, the courts ruled the law to be unconstitutional. Every appeal the state of California has made has also been ruled unconstitutional, but yesterday the struggle finally reached the Supreme Court. This is definitely something to keep an eye out for, especially since all other courts have sided with the first decision of unconstitutional...how could it have made it all the way to the supreme court?? For more info and up to date coverage check out the links below:
--Engadget Coverage
--G4TV Coverage
I find it most interesting that the T-101 signed this law into existence.
ReplyDelete*for the non fanboy readers...that was the model of terminator that Arnold played in the Terminator movies...