Quote:
The sponsor, Sen. Deanna Demuzio, denied the measure would interfere with free speech rights.
"Video games are not art or media," she said. "They are simulations, not all that different from the simulations used by the U.S. military in preparation for war."
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It's this bit of idiocy that had me rolling my eyes.
If she wants to make a fine distinction between art and graphics, I'd say she's using a decidedly non-mainstream definition of "art", but that does have different meanings for different people, so she has a little wiggle room there.
But media? Good god, thats moronic. It's not that I disagree with her opinion, this simply isn't a matter of opinion. Video games are media, she is factually wrong. Video games are delivered through the internet (a medium), on cd's (a medium) cell phones (a medium) cable tv (a medium) etc. Print media are just about the only ones that don't have video games.
The content of videogames includes graphic art, language, and music; they are, literally, media, and are delivered through a variety of electronic media. She's either an idiot or disingenuous.
How about this: let's label the video games as appropriate, and let parents police their children's gaming habits, and not start making retailers legally responsible for making value judgements regarding the products they sell. How would this work anyway? Are the retailers going to be required to play every game they sell? How else would they know the content in order to judge.
Good god, this is idiotic. First they start throwing comic shop owners in jail for selling comic books, and rappers for rapping, and now this. That it even had jail time in the bill at all is offensive and moronic.