Federal Judge James J. Brady has temporarily blocked Louisiana’s enactment of a law designed to make selling just about every video game under the sun to minors illegal. Here’s hoping the piece of reactionary, ill-created swill stays blocked when a permanent injunction hearing takes place June 30.
Brady’s action came following the filing of a suit by the Entertainment Software Association and the Entertainment Merchants Association. Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s signature didn’t have a chance to dry on the paper before the suit was filed last Friday.
From Game Spot:
According to the text of the law, it is illegal to sell, rent, or lease a game to a minor if it meets the following three conditions:
(1) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's morbid interest in violence.
(2) The game depicts violence in a manner patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors.
(3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
Based on this poorly crafted wording, pretty much any game known to man could be banned for sale. The ESA and EMA are saying it violates the 1st and 14th Amendments of the Constitution. It also violates common sense, but that’s another matter.
You know it just amazes me that this thing passed through Louisiana’s House and Senate so easily. Makes you wonder what the state’s representatives are doing with their time? Don’t they have a state that needs shoring up for this year’s hurricane season? Weren’t they just named one of the least prepared to handle any disaster?
I guess that news shouldn’t shock if this is what Blanco and her cronies have been working on so diligently in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It seems they’d rather fight imaginary threats than face the real ones.
Here’s hoping the ESA and EMA prevail. It will be a victory for all Americans who value their rights and the rights of parents above the inane babbling of those in office and elsewhere who seek to chink away at the Constitution for their own gains.
Related:
Louisiana Passes Jack Thompson’s Law
ESA Says Leave Those Kids Alone
Getting Tough On Video Games
Jack Thompson On Another Witch Hunt
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