# Supreme Court rules against California ban on violent video game sales to minors
# A sub-point of majority opinion: Video games are art
# The court says games deserve First Amendment protections
# The fact that they are "interactive" does not change their nature, court says


http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/06/27/supreme.court.video.game.art/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Justice Scalia obviously saw me healing in Thid today. Pure art. A masterpiece...

Except when it wasn't.

Edit:

The more interesting part of Scalia's summation of the majority opinion (in my opinion):

California does not argue that it is empowered to prohibit selling offensively violent works to adults—and it is wise not to,
since that is but a hair’s breadth from the argument rejected in Stevens. Instead, it wishes to create a wholly new category of content-based regulation that is permissible only for speech directed at children. That is unprecedented and mistaken. “[M]inors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection, and only in relatively narrow and well-defined circumstances may government bar public dissemination of protected materials to them.” Erznoznik v. Jacksonville, 422 U. S. 205, 212–213 (1975) (citation omitted).

No doubt a State possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm, Ginsberg, supra, at 640–641; Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158, 165 (1944), but that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed. “Speech that is neither obscene as to youths nor subject to some other legitimate proscription cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them.” Erznoznik, supra, at 213–214.3

California’s argument would fare better if there were a longstanding tradition in this country of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence, but there is none."

Hm.. the old, "Nobody has done it before, so we are not going to do it either" argument. Wins almost every time. It would be indeed odd if a kid and/or his parents could become criminals for playing a game in California, but not get in trouble in Texas for the same game.

Sorta like gambling, ok to play poker in Oklahoma, but not in Texas. But only on Indian reservations. Wrongheaded I believe.

On the other hand, it does stop a State from doing what the people think is right. Usually agree with the guy and almost always respect his outspoken manner. He sees things in black and white at times and says what he thinks. Not sure it is the correct decision as I almost always side with the moral protection of kids. However, I just can't see making crimes out of videogames. Hate that the moral part loses, but I think it's the proper legal reasoning.

yeah, banning the sale to minors is wrong...

should kids have violent video games... hell no!

but it should be up to the game industry to come up with a better rating system... and then the parents use that system to judge wich games to buy there kid...

if kids are walking around with money to buy the games on there own, then the parents already failed by being lazy and just handing the kids cash and not actualy monitoring what they do with it...

it should be all on the parents shoulders not society, the state, or the gov...

parenting has been on the decline for along time now... its realy sad

 

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