You know those people who don’t pay any attention to what’s going on in their neighborhood until someone threatens to knock down their house? I’m like that when it comes to politics. And those distant rumblings of heavy machinery I’ve been hearing for a little while are now too loud to ignore. I opened the door recently and found a wrecking ball outside. Now I’d kind of like to stop it.
A few years ago, Leland Yee (now a senator) wrote up a bill in California (Assembly Bill 1179) that would criminalize the sale of violent video games to anyone under 18. That is, the people who sell them — the clerks at the stores — would be punished. There are similar laws for the sale of pornography to minors. Um, what? M-rated games are made for adults, and I want mature games in mature hands, but there’s a difference between Xbox and X-rated. Games deserve the same free speech protection as books, movies, and music — buying one should not be a crime in this country.
Just one problem: That bill became a law.
Supreme!
Amazingly, this legislation got signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger in October 2005, only to be interpreted to be likely unconstitutional two months later. A judge said, you know, we can’t recommend you enforce this, because it probably violates First Amendment free-speech rights. But after an appeal, it jumped up a court, and then another. Now, after costing California several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees (that’s my tax dollars at work, reimbursing people for fighting a law that I didn’t want passed anyway), the lawsuit now known as Schwarzenegger v. EMA has finally found its way to the Supreme Court, which will hear the case later this year or early next.
I was tempted to be apathetic — “meh, all the other courts have said it’s a lemon, I’m sure the Supreme Court will follow suit.” But First Amendment or not, California is determined to keep smashing away at this thing until it gets its way, so I feel more compelled to be proactive. I want the Supreme Court to treat games with the same artistic respect books, movies, and music are given, to support the (what appear to me to be) glaringly obvious First Amendment issues that all the lower courts have cited, and if you don’t mind, please tell my state to go do something more productive with its time and my money from now on. And the only way they’ll know to do that is if I ask.
You may have noticed a new widget on my sidebar, calling for signatures on a petition. The Gamer Petition is being sponsored by the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) and it will be submitted alongside the official legal brief. It’s a show of support — your chance to say “I was one of the X number of American gamers who told the Supreme Court how I felt when I had their attention.”
Maybe you hear rumblings of wrecking balls too. If you’re concerned the way I am, I invite you to read up on it — don’t be one of those people who opposes things without looking into them, as we have plenty of those folks on the other side of the fence already — and see if you want to lend your voice to the cause too. The EMA has a good FAQ about the lawsuit and Media Coalition has links to all the paperwork and a timeline, but if you read nothing else, read the law in question, AB1179/Chapter 638 itself. And remember — that’s not proposed, that exists as law right now. I want the Supreme Court to make it go away.
I won’t bury you in politics on this blog, but I am intrigued by this and will update now and then. I’ve invited someone from the ECA chime in and explain it better than I can so look for that interview sometime next month. In the meantime, GamePolitics is where I usually look for this kind of information, so you might want to check there too.
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