Calif: Ban on violent video games thrown out (ban on selling to minors is unconstitutional)

[Kadie]

Ban on violent video games thrown out
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, February 20, 2009

(02-20) 12:00 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court ruled today that California's ban on selling violent video games to minors is unconstitutional, saying the state was trying to interfere with free speech and had failed to show that simulated mayhem causes psychological damage in young people.

The law, sponsored by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, was signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in October 2005 but was blocked by a federal judge before it could take effect. It would bar anyone under 18 from buying an interactive video game that is so violent it is "patently offensive," according to prevailing community standards for minors, and lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

Those games would carry a large "18" label on their packages. Anyone who sold such a game to a minor could be fined as much as $1,000.

In defending the law, the state argued that violent content should be judged by the same obscenity standards as sex. Just as the government can prohibit the sale of explicit pornography to minors, state lawyers contended, it should be allowed to establish an adults-only category of ultra-violent video games.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco disagreed. A 1968 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed tighter restrictions on selling explicit materials to minors than to adults applies only to sexual content and not to violence, the appellate panel said.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/20/BAI9161PAJ.DTL&tsp=1