Politics and the Game Industry
It seems that these days, any and every U.S. politician will find some time to speak out against the "atrocity" of violence and sex in videogames. It's such a frequent occurrence that it spurred on a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Dennis McCauley, to start-up GamePolitics.com. Just in the last week alone, we have a U.S. senator calling for the boycott of the unreleased 25 to Life, a D.C. Mayoral Candidate saying the videogame industry is "out of control," and a group of North Carolina state senators trying to pass yet another restriction of sales of violent games.
Schumer called upon New York retailers to boycott the game, and for Sony and Microsoft to cancel their licensing deals with Eidos for 25 to Life. "Little Johnny should be learning how to read, not how to kill cops," Schumer said. The bottom line is that games that are aimed and marketed at kids shouldn't desensitize them to death and destruction."Another interesting point of discussion that was brought up is GTA: SA's unlockable sex mini-game. Could it make the game as obscene as a hardcore porno flick, thus making it illegal to sell to a minor? Get caught up on your game politics right here.
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replyI don't like the gangsta trend in video games. Rate it whatever you want, the fact is that a lot of children (under 10) are playing these mature games. Parents need to step up but it doesn't seem to be happening.
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That is so true. They’re targeting entirely the wrong problem. The problem is everyone is so obsessed with freedom that they wouldn’t tolerate such a restriction. I personally would like a lot more state monitoring and a reduction in individual freedom since this would only be detrimental to people who abuse that freedom and the average person would be unaffected.
The simple fact is that if everyone had a chip implanted in them to monitor their location, and it was a capital offence to remove the chip then most crime would be instantly stopped. Murders, burglars, hit and run offenders, and most other crimes could be instantly solved by checking who was at the location in the window the crime took place in. Swift and effective justice could then be dispensed on the felon.
What would be the downside to the average honest person? Nothing. The only people who would be impacted by this would be people doing something wrong in the first place.
With that done I wouldn’t car who had children since none of them could commit any crimes anyway. The problem is that most people are so fanatical about retaining their privacy that they don’t seem to see the huge cost of that privacy.-
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That's one of those ideas that's good in theory, but with the way socity works it wouldn't work at all. There's always some corruptness... what's to stop certain cops from removing their own chips, or someone from stealing a chip from someone else. What if your chip breaks or starts broadcasting the wrong signal or something? What's to stop the wealthy from bribing some government official from turning off their chips? It won't work, and it will only serve to screw over most people. The whole big brother thing is NOT the solution. Freedom is one of the most basic and fundamental things that our society is built on (though it took us a little while to get even that right), and something like you suggested removes it close to entirely.
It doesn't matter if there's no 'downside', it's still limits to freedom and privacy and that never, ever, ever once in the history of the entire world has ever resulted in anything positive. Absolute power corrupts absolutly. Don't forget that.-
Society is most definitely not built of freedom. It is built on an absence of freedom, specifically laws. Every law limits what you can do and therefore reduces your freedom. By saying that limits to freedom have never resulted in anything positive you’re saying that that laws have not had a positive impact on society. You’d prefer total lawlessness?
The simple fact is that people can’t be trusted to manage themselves responsibly so laws have to be created and enforced for their own protection. Monitoring people does not reduce their freedom in anyway, it simply serves to better enforce the existing limits on freedom, specifically the existing laws.
Granted, any system can be abused but it would be better than the present system were most crimes go unsolved and criminals go unpunished and free to commit further offences. I’d rather live in a safe and fair society where someone always knows where I am and what I’m doing. The trade off is worth it.-
Western society is built upon freedom of expression: political , artistic and social freedom. Also the freedom of economic practices which are nescessary for growth of the economy and such freedoms have been essential in establishing the prosperity with which many of us enjoy today.
Laws are designed to help facilitate these freedoms and to prevent people from exploiting or harming other members of society. While they are nescessary to help maintain the stability of a society they do not define it. -
The trade off is not worth it. Laws are necessary, yes, but monitoring people to an absurd extent is not only inefficient but a blatant disregard for personal privacy. Do I want some random government branch to know where I am at all times? No. I'm not going to commit any crimes, but that is seriously scary shit. I'm of the belief that people should be given the benefit of the doubt.
Also your system does not make any sense. How will monitoring people prevent crime? Crimes will still be committed, and how exactly can the 'don't remove your chip' rule be enforced? If the chip is removed then how can they find you? Do you also propose that police officers be stationed on every street or every half mile on every road or backwoods part of the country? What's to stop me from going out to some remote area in the desert, removing my chip and then high-tailing it somewhere? Or what's to stop me from calling someone from another country and having them kill you? Where does it end? Do you monitor phone calls 24 hours a day too, do you monitor web sites, do you monitor library books, bus trips, newspapers read? Where does it end? And who is monitored? Do we really need to monitor my 2-year old cousin? Do we need to monitor my 87 year old grandfather who can barely walk? Do we need to monitor me, who has never committed any crime outside of a speeding ticket?
And I also like your ability to shrug off the blatant inadequacies of your proposed system stating that the current one is imperfect. I will lend you that the current justice system is imperfect, but your system would not only require intense amounts of manpower for the hundreds of millions of people, but it lends much more room for corruption. Like I said, how hard would it be to pay off someone on the inside to remove your chip and simply not notice it? Then they can commit any varierty of crimes and never be caught since nobody will know where they are. He could commit crimes in broad daylight and the only suspects would be those in the vicinity of the crime? They were there, so they must be guilty, right? Do eye-wittnesses even matter since people 'can’t be trusted to manage themselves'? They were there, it's their fault, right?
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Think about the concept. It just doesn't work. Aside from being a horrifying violation of privacy, lets examine why:
The people that would be willing to follow the rules anyway will continue to behave the same way as they do now. But the fraction of the population that want to continue being "bad people", either by choice, or by some mental illness, will still be able to do so quite easily. You remove the chip, and you're now invisible to all the expensive surveilance designed to catch bad people. The problem is it requires willing participation from all parties in order for a system like this to work. If everyone was willing to participate, the system wouldn't even be necessary.
The only people you'd end up catching would be the retarded criminals, or innocent people that were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Not to mention the fact that a system like this is a logisitcal nightmare. Any system capable of monitoring the whereabouts of hundreds of millions people throughout the course of a day would be so thoroughly unweildy as to be extremely cost prohibitive.-
That’s why I said removal of the chip would be a capital offence. Removing the chip is essentially an admission of guilt to some crime and so you would catch the guilty by default.
It wouldn’t even be logistically difficult to implement. You’d simply have to start tagging people at birth and activate the system only once everyone had been tagged, probably 100 years later. Obviously the technical element of ensuring the chip didn’t malfunction or didn’t move around in the body would be much more of a problem.
Out of interest, what is the problem with invasion of privacy? Why would it bother you to have a government agency know exactly where you are at any time? I really can't follow that line of thinking because I'd happily give up my privacy in exchange for safety and equality.
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See, the only problem with that is when something we do now, and feel is fine, becomes illegal. Then, you have to change your behavior, or you become a criminal...which, in theory, is fine, except, really, who wants to give up the things they can do now?
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That is true, but I can't really think of anything I do now becoming illegal. The government generally gets most laws about right, with the exception of speed limits. But then it gets back to where we started from - most people shouldn't be allowed to drive a car in the first place. I'll tackle that one another day though :)
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If they make "re-caliborating my revolver" a crime then I'd be sentenced to life. ;)
I get where you're going with this and it's not a bad idea. I really don't care because the likely hood of this happening in my life time in slim to none. However with removing the chip, imbed it in their brain so removing it would require some very experienced doctor/surgeon. Then if all these people that blip up at this doctors office and then suddenly fall off the "system" its pretty safe to assume he had something to do with it. Anyhow I'm not sure if I'd totally be for it but since they can't "see" what I'm doing an only know where I am it's not a huge problem to me but it would be a little uncomfortable. -
Wait a second... do you seriously believe that the government gets all decisions right and that authorities do not seriously abuse their power? Look at the linchings and murders of activists in the 60s, murders commited by the sheriff. Even in current times, look at the anti-terror laws, many people arrested, torchered and then released with no charges pressed.
Tagging also does not solve the problem of wrongful arrest, also people do not solely commit crimes becuase they think they can get away with them.
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More importantly, governments that aren't held culpable (by being thrown out of office by voters, the sort of politicians that don't allow protests) can do whatever they like.
The American government may currently be reliable enough to carry out this system without too much abuse, but what makes you think they'll stay that way? The more power governments get, the faster they get worse for the people. What about 100 years down the line, will you still trust the government with your children's rights after 20 more patriot acts?
What's scary to think about is the fact that it's legal to track people when they're in public, and cheap computers coupled with computer vision systems and video cameras everywhere means you won't have to have chips implanted in anyone to monitor them. This might not be a huge problem in the states, but it will be a HUGE tool for authoritarian governments in the rest of the world.
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so? a kid isn't going to become a gangster because he played a videogame.
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One way or another, he'll be shooting a lot of white people in it.
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