http://gamepolitics.com/2007/09/17/noted-harvard-law-prof-talks-free-speech-tech-video-games-at-summit/Constitution Day Special: Harvard’s Lawrence Tribe Talks Free Speech, Tech, Video Games
Forget all of the arguments you’ve heard in favor of video game regulation.
Over at the Technology Liberation Front, Adam Thierer writes about Prof. Lawrence Tribe’s recent speech to attendess of Progress and Freedom Foundation’s Apsen Summit.
Tribe (left) is a renowned legal scholar who received close consideration for a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court during the Clinton administration. He spoke about a number of issues related to the First Amendment and technology. His comments on the regulation of violence are particularly relevant to the current efforts to legislate video games in California, New York and elsewhere.
GamePolitics also notes that ESA president Mike Gallagher was reportedly among the Aspen Summit’s attendees. As Adam Thierer writes:
Prof. Tribe… argued that the recent push by the FCC and some in Congress to regulate “excessive violence†on broadcast or cable television is doomed to fail if tested in the courts. Depictions of violence are already considered protected in other contexts…
And because there is almost certainly no way to define a strict category of objectionable violence, the regulations would likely be held to be overly broad or excessively vague by the courts. And such regulation would create a “chilling effect†on many reasonable forms of speech and artistic expression.
Tribe also pointed out that the growing supply of parental control tools and methods makes it even less likely that such regulation would pass constitutional muster. [Parental controls] represent a “less restrictive means†of dealing with underage access to objectionable material…
GP: Prof. Tribe’s speech is, in a word, brilliant. He explains why violent video games enjoy absolute First Amendment protection and discusses the chilling effect of government game regulation. In particular, as Adam Thierer notes, Prof. Tribe explains why it really is all about the children:
“The malleability of children’s minds is not a defense [for regulation],†Tribe noted. Many pro-censorship laws and regulations are premised on the idea that government action can be justified in the name of protecting children from objectionable content or communications.
But Tribe argued that the exact opposite is the case. Precisely because children’s minds are malleable, we should not empower government officials to have greater say over how they think or develop. In a free society that task should be left to families…
We strongly recommend that you invest an hour and watch the video on Technology Liberation Front site.
http://gamepolitics.com/2007/09/17/constitution-day-special-1st-amendment-lawyer/Constitution Day Special: 1st Amendment Lawyer Explains Why Game Violence Laws Fail
Today is Constitution Day in the United States.
While it’s not an official, sleep-late-and-stay-home holiday, here at GamePolitics we plan to celebrate by focusing on how the U.S. Constitution has, so far, protected video games from government censorship. We’ll start with a terrific article by attorney Julie Hilden over at FindLaw.
Hilden, a Yale Law grad and former First Amendment specialist, writes about the recent overturning of California’s 2005 video game law by U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte:
Simply calling video games “violent†attempts to blur reality and fiction; video games obviously are not violent in the sense, say, dogfighting is. They depict violence, rather than actually perpetrating it.
Calling video games “violent,†then, is much like calling a Barbie doll “anorexic.†The real concern is that the games promote violence, and the dolls promote anorexia.
What might seem to be innocuous shorthand, however, cloaks the need to provide evidence of a link between the violence depicted in the video games and actual violence committed by those playing the games - the very kind of evidence Judge Whyte looked for, and did not find, when he struck down the California statute…
[The] “psychological conditioning†argument makes a poor fit with First Amendment law, because it tends to see us not as the First Amendment sees us - as thinkers… but as reflexive actors, responding to stimuli without conscious choice or mental mediation… No wonder, then, that the California legislature, in drafting the “violent†video game statute, borrowed heavily from the classic legal test for material that is deemed obscene-as-to-minors…
The video game statute closely tracks the Miller test’s three prongs… outside the obscenity context, Supreme Court First Amendment doctrine looks with great disfavor at government regulation of speech based on its content.
