U.S. Circuit Court strikes down law banning violent video game sales to minors.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...,4023312.story

Court kills law banning sales of violent video games to minors
By Dan Browning | McClatchy-Tribune
10:42 PM CDT, March 17, 2008

MINNEAPOLIS - Thirteen-year-old Jack Yongquist says he has no desire to play ultraviolent video games like "Grand Theft Auto." But the Roseville, Minn., teenager says he's glad that a federal appeals court ruled Monday that Minnesota can't enforce a law that prohibits the sale or rental of such games to minors.

"I think they should be able to —if their parents say it's OK. It's their choice," Jack said while shopping after school at Game Crazy on Snelling Avenue.

Jack initially said he'd never played any such games, but he had to backpedal when a store clerk mentioned that "Halo" is "technically rated mature."

"It's not that bad because it's not with humans," Jack said.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Minnesota may not enforce a law restricting the sale or rental of "adults only" or "mature" video games to minors.

The court previously has held that violent video games are protected free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution, the panel noted. For that reason, the judges said, the law can be upheld only if it is proven "necessary to serve a compelling state interest and . . . is narrowly tailored to achieve that end."

The Minnesota attorney general's office said that it was reviewing the opinion and considering its options.

The Entertainment Software and Entertainment Merchants associations sued Minnesota in 2006 seeking to prevent enforcement of the law and have it declared unconstitutional.

The state introduced evidence attempting to show that media violence caused aggressive behavior in some children.

But Chief U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum ruled in July 2006 that violent video games were protected speech, even for children. He found the state failed to prove its claim that playing violent video games caused lasting harm to the psychological well-being of minors.

Rosenbaum also faulted the state for failing to address other forms of violence in the media. And he held that the state's dependence on a voluntary rating board to determine which games should be restricted was unconstitutional because it did not permit immediate judicial supervision of the ratings.

Most retailers voluntarily enforce the ratings determined by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), a private organization. Clerks at a Game Stop store said they could be fired for providing adults-only or mature games to anyone younger than 17. One clerk said such titles prompt a computer message to check the customer's ID.

Dan Nordlund, president of the Minnesota chapter of the Entertainment Consumers Association, supports voluntary ratings but says they might need to be tweaked to make them more understandable.

The parents are the problem, not the kids, Nordlund said. He said parents will rent inappropriate games without knowing what's in them because "they want to please their kids; they want to shut them up." That's no reason for government to regulate the games, Nordlund said. "Video games fall under the First Amendment," he said. "They're a form of art."

Nordlund refers anyone concerned with the issue to gamepolitics.com.

Judge Roger L. Wollman of Sioux Falls, S.D., wrote the opinion for the appeals court, which included Judges Lavenski R. Smith of Little Rock, Ark., and Duane Benton of Kansas City, Mo.

While the judges upheld Rosenbaum's ruling that violent games are entitled to First Amendment protections, they hedged their opinion.

Wollman wrote that "whatever our intuitive (dare we say commonsense) feelings regarding the effect that extreme violence portrayed in the above-described video games may well have upon the psychological well-being of minors," precedent requires incontrovertible proof of a causal relationship between exposure to the games and some psychological harm.

The state failed to meet that burden, Wollman wrote. "The requirement of such a high level of proof may reflect a refined estrangement from reality, but apply it we must," he said.

"Indeed, a good deal of the Bible portrays scenes of violence, and one would be hard-pressed to hold up as a proper role model the regicidal Macbeth," Wollman wrote.

"Although some might say that it is risible to compare the violence depicted in the examples (of violent games) offered by the State to that described in classical literature, such violence has been deemed by our court worthy of First Amendment protection, and there the matter stands."

[cartman]

What, no quote from Jack Thompson?