California’s Failed Attempt At Video Game Censorship Cost The State $2 Million.

You know what’s up. You followed the case last year. The one where California was trying to drop a hammer on video games and thereby a whole gauntlet of other mediums. The one they lost. California’s failed attempt wasn’t without its cost. In fact it’s costing the Soon To Be Below Sea-Level Residence a cool couple million.

Boing Boing:

Now that California’s video-game censorship law has been struck down by the courts, the state finds itself $2 million poorer, having had to pay the legal expenses of all the vendors they sued under it.

A bit over half a decade ago when California legislators felt entitled to protect children across their state by restricting sales of violent video games struck me as deeply amusing from the onset. Not because it would end up costing the state roughly $2 Million in legal fees after a failed appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court nor out of the sheer disregard for the First Amendment. But because the sheer bureaucratic arrogance on the parts of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, the Governor of California and State Attorney during this time in believing it was their responsibility to discern what content children should or shouldn’t have exposure…

Created by California lawmaker Former San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Leland Yee, now a senator, in the hopes of curbing children’s access to games that allow for assassination, violent crimes, rape, etc. — the law would have fined retailers $1000 for each instance of selling a game to a child that depicted any sort of terrifyingly horrible act that could teach children the crimes in games versus reality are exactly on par. Yee also made a provision in the law that violence in a game would be visibly denoted by some sort of label on the packaging, a measure already taken by the game industry’s ESRB.

Damn sonnnnnn! That’s a lot of green backs. Let us have our Sub-Zero and our Grand Thefting. Even if we’re underage when we get to it, it won’t do much damage. I mean fuck!, I grew up Mortal Kombating and I turned out with few to almost no emotional problems once the medication kicks in.