NY game bill discussion continues, issues arise |
Senator Andrew Lanza of Staten Island (R), sponsor of proposal A08696 against game violence, had a lengthy session with Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson of Mount Vernon (D) over the conditions of "speech" content that may or may not be considered as violent content on grounds of unconstitutionality. What they could agree on, however, is that they really did disagree on the finer points of the case.
Now what was really the issue was that the Democrats in the meeting, which includes Senator Hassell-Thompson, formally made the bill completely meaningless. This was because they iterated the fact that the bill could be constitutional under the terms that it will be made to regulate content that are both violent and obscene.
Senator Lanza argued that if the bill will be made constitutional (in which he adds, "IÂ’m not saying that but you might say it"), it will not regulate anything that isn't already regulated by the obscenity law. Obscenity and violence, in combination, is considered "extreme pornography" under the obscenity law and needs no further reinforcement from a bill targeted at video game violence.
The transcript of that part of the session is as follows:
Lanza: The cases that have been struck down have been struck down on the principle that states have attempted to prohibit the sale of video games based upon the speech content, that being violence.
Hassell-Thompson: YouÂ’re misreading the case. YouÂ’re misreading them. I donÂ’t know whether youÂ’re doing it deliberately or what. ItÂ’s frustrating me.
Lanza: IÂ’m not misreading the cases. Those are the cases.
Hassell-Thompson: YouÂ’re misreading the cases.
Lanza: Absolutely not Senator. We can agree to disagree on that point.
Hassell-Thompson: You got a battery of attorneys sitting behind you. IÂ’m telling you I wrangled with them 3 out of 5 meetings.
Lanza: Maybe youÂ’re missing something.
Hassell-Thompson: Well, weÂ’re paying them. We should fire them.
Lanza: LetÂ’s just be clear. It makes it a felony to sell video games based upon the speech contained therein. ThatÂ’s what it does. Now it may pass constitutional muster because the speech that is being regulated therein is pornography, which I might add is already regulated and is already prohibited with its distribution to minors. So you might say the governorÂ’s version accomplishes nothing. IÂ’m not saying that but you might say it.
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Comments
doncha love it Politician: A 6 year old kid with a law degree and a piss-poor attitude These guys dont even play video games and they have the anger issues and lack of maturity they are trying to regulate against. God people are so *****ed that they cant even look at themselves and see what is going on.... woot america "opph heres our tax dollars at work, protect us from ourselves!" ----A Scanner Darkly
I couldnt have said it better myself. They say that video games causes aggression in children. I think that they should take a good Hard look in a mirror. I have heard more obsenities come out of people like Jack Thompsons mouth then I have ever heard in a Halo2 match. We need to fire all politicians that we have right now and replace them with younger people who actually know whats going on.
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