Satan is more innovative than the entertainment industry?

It sounds harmless at first but once the US steps on that road it could mean big changes. The government has no control over our media and most of us want it to stay that way.

Well I said similar I in no way expect the US to simply copy it as there are vast differences in the countries. That said as an outsider looking in it often seems like the US has a blame culture where people claim they aren't told anything then they blame everyone but themselves. In the case of video games you have idiots like those Fox News people screaming about side boob in Mass Effect as something that's going to corrupt children when Mass Effect was never meant to be played by children. Because games aren't rated like movies in the US they still have this stigma attached to them that they are for children. In the UK it's far more clear for parents when they see the same 18 rating on a game that they see on a movie.

I should also say that generally the film classification status that games have in the UK also means game creators can be far more adult in their content than they can in the US. Obviously most games are made for the American market first and ROW later but nevertheless that freedom does exist there. AFAIK the only game in recent years to be banned in the UK was Manhunt 2 because it was rated as a movie not as a game.

Does the UK still employ "undercover" children to try and buy things such as cigarettes (and I guess, rated games/DVDs)? I bet if they try that in the US, someone would sue along the lines of entrapment U_U.

Ah, the nanny state. Dictating your life because a collective committee of idiots somehow know how to manage your life better than you.

I take it you're not familiar with the FCC.

Your point is largely valid though, I for one think that nothing good can come of us going further down the road of having the government decide what is and isn't OK for children to involve themselves in absent any sort of actual evidence or compelling reason to believe that it's harmful.

We do have ratings they're just not government-backed. Parents tend to ignore them though because they consider games to be toys due to a lack of understanding. This lack of understanding stems from frankly being lazy and not looking into what your kids are doing. I imagine most of them would do the same thing with a government-backed ratings system.
I am in a general sense, but that has to do with the government actually owning those communication lines and leasing them out right? Games aren't really under that purview.

Doesn't matter, the government has no legal authority to censor. I get that there's a lot of anti-tittie lobbyists out there, but the government still has no right to regulate such matters.

Fundamentally it's not any different than any other area of free speech. The government could legally declare that games may only be sold through their outlets sort of like the liquor stores around here.

I despise how the first amendment element of this issue has been walked around because of the self-policing nature. The self-policing exists solely because the industry is afraid the government will do it. So they do it themselves.

So instead of having a government telling us what is or is not appropriate for children, we have corporations doing it. It's already a bullshit compromise that shouldn't exist.

I long for the day that TV, movies, and video games have as much balls as Marvel does. They ditched the comics code in 2001. And everyone else follows suit. It's basically dead now. We don't need this nonsense.

More morons attempting to gain votes from their more braindead citizens by acting like they care about them? Typical.

The subject is actually a long-discredited law that Governor Schwarzenegger championed in 2005, when he was still trying to curry favor with religious-right elements in California (you know, the sort that are always in favor of their own free speech and against everybody else's).

It's not new, but it has been making its way through the courts for years, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari (review) last year, for reasons both unstated and inscrutable.

Is'nt Schwartzenneger the very same man that throws a woman in a fireplace, rapes a slave in a jail cell and punches a llama right in the face in the Conan movie?


Hard to believe...

Yeah, the same Governator who championed family values by boinking his mistress Gigi Goyette while his wife was asleep in the next room.

Yep and yep in the US I could see that being a potential legal shitstorm.

Yeah, the consoles' move to downloaded games will speed up. It's already begun.