New Videogame Legislation

[Professor S]

http://lieberman.senate.gov/newsroom....cfm?id=249371

“I have developed legislation that will empower parents by making sure their kids can’t walk into a store and buy a video game that has graphic, violent and pornographic content,” said Senator Clinton.


Senator Clinton acknowledges that video games are fun and entertaining and does not support any limitations on the production or sale of games to adults. “This is about protecting children,” said Senator Clinton.

Today, on Capitol Hill, the National Institute on Media and the Family released its tenth annual Video and Computer Game scorecard, which revealed that retailers have become even more lenient in their selling policies than they were last year. Boys as young as nine were able to purchase Mature rated video games 42 percent of the time, according to the secret audits.

The main stipulations of the proposed law are as follows:

I. Prohibition on Selling Mature and Adults Only video games to minors

II. Annual Analysis of the Ratings System

III. Authority for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to Investigate Misleading Ratings

IV. Authority to Register Complaints

V. Annual Retailer Audit


It wasn't that long ago that I said that the ESRB needs to regulate itself better, or the government will do it for them. I believe I was almost universally derided for those comments. Then Rockstar allows that idiotic Hot Coffee content to get released thinking that no one would find out. The industry sat idly by while more and more minors were allowed to purchase mature rated games. Morons.

This legislation will pass. Now the government will be regulating the industry for the ESRB and we will have to be dependent on THEIR judgement of what we will all see in videogames in the future.