James Delahunty
1 Nov 2010 0:53
The U.S. Supreme Court is to hear arguments on Tuesday concerning a federal court's decision to throw out a ban on the sale of violent video games to minors in California.
The original legislation was first signed into law by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger back in 2005, but it was declared unconstitutional last year by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. It prohibited the sale of titles that depicted "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being" to anybody below the age of 18.
The federal court found that the law violated the minor's constitutional rights under the first and fourteenth amendment. It also found, as did other courts in other U.S. states, that there was insufficient evidence showing that violent games caused physical or psychological harm to minors.
"It's not so much a video game case as a First Amendment case," said George Rose, chief public policy officer at Activision Blizzard Inc. Other gaming companies and the ESA oppose such legislation, pointing out that the industry already takes steps to protect minors from content inappropriate for them.
Sales of games with an M (Mature) or AO (Adult Only) to minors are already prohibited under the industry's self-regulation. The Federal Trade Commission has commented that the games industry has done considerably better at preventing minors form buying content not intended for them than the film or music industry.
The FTC fopund that 20 percent of minors were able to buy games with an "M" rating in a study last year, down from 42 percent three years ago. In contrast, the study found that 72 percent of minors were able to buy music CDs that had an "explicit content" warning, 50 percent could buy R-rated and unrated DVDs and 28 percent were given tickets to R-rated movies at theaters.