🚀 go-pugleaf

Ala wrote:
> Monday 27 June 2011
> by: Michael Doyle, McClatchy Newspapers
> http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/06/27/116532/supreme-court-strikes-down-violent.html
>
> The Supreme Court on Monday struck down California's ban on the sale of
> violent video games to minors.
>
> In a ruling closely watched by other states and the entertainment
> industry, the court in what amounts to a 7-2 ruling determined that
> California's 2005 violent video game restrictions violated free speech
> rights protected by the First Amendment.
>
> "Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional
> limits on governmental action apply," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for
> the majority.
>
> The much-anticipated ruling in Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants
> Association is a defeat for current Gov. Jerry Brown. As attorney
> general, he had defended the statute signed by his gubernatorial
> predecessor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the one-time star of the
> ultra-violent Terminator movie series.
>
> The ruling continues a run of cases in which justices have struck down
> restrictions on electronically conveyed violent or salacious material
>
> The ruling, moreover, could constrain at least 11 other states,
> including Florida, Mississippi and Texas, that explicitly sided with
> California's efforts to restrict the video games minors can buy.
>
> The decision Monday took an unusually long time since the oral arguments
> were heard in early November.
>
> Justices Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas dissented separately.
>
> "The interest that California advances in support of the statute is
> compelling," Breyer wrote.
>
> Thomas added that at the time the Constitution was drafted, the Founding
> Fathers believed firmly that "parents have authority over their children."
>
> Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr and Justice Samuel Alito agreed that
> California's law, while "well intentioned (was) not framed with the
> precision the Constitution demands." The two conservative justices,
> though, differed in their overall reasoning from other members of the
> majority.
>
> California's law banned the sale of violent video games to customers
> under 18. Lawmakers defined, "violent" as activity involving the
> "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a
> human being."
>
> The law was modeled after obscenity statutes. It set a familiar-sounding
> threshold that a "reasonable person" must think the violent game was
> "patently offensive," appealed to a minor's "deviant or morbid interest"
> and lacked serious scientific, literary or artistic merit.
>
> Though passed six years ago, the California law has faced legal
> challenge the entire time and it has never been put into practice.
>
> California lawmakers justified the restriction as a way to protect
> minors "physical and psychological welfare, as well as their ethical and
> moral development." They cited games such as Postal 2, in which one
> illustrative scene includes the player hitting a woman in the face with
> a shovel.
>
> "As she cries out and kneels down, the player hits her twice more with
> the shovel, this time decapitating her," California's legal brief
> recounted. "The player then proceeds to hit the headless corpse several
> more times, each time propelling the headless corpse through the air
> while it continues to bleed."
>
> Entertainment industry advocates countered with their own game examples,
> such as Full Spectrum Warrior and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.
>
> Without venturing too far into a game-by-game review, the court in
> concluded California's law and its accompanying penalty of $1,000 per
> violation suppressed too much protected speech.

No wonder the USA is fucked.