Minnesota Game Bill Signed

Remove all ads!

It looks like buying adult games as a minor in Minnesota can make you incur a fine according to the new law just signed by the governor. Here's a snip:

As of August 1st, underage buyers of "M" or "AO" rated games may face $25 civil fines in the state of Minnesota.

This afternoon, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) signed into law SF0785. The bill, sponsored in the Minnesota House by Rep. Jeff Johnson (R) and in the Senate by Sen. Sandra Pappas (D) uses the video game industry's ESRB ratings to define which games minors are ineligible to buy.

The bill is unique in that it places the onus for purchasing or renting adult-oriented games on the buyer rather than the seller. Retailers are, however, required to post signs explaining the consequences of violating the new law.

I say it's fine. If something isn't legal to do, it's only logical to attach some punishment to the prohibition. What's your opinion?

Read the whole thing at Gamepolitics.

 

Lame

Well, I suppose it's logical, sure - but that doesn't make the law itself any better...

 

Ahhh....There's nothing quite like living in the land of the free and the home of the brave! Thank god the smart people in the government make all my choices for me, so I can get back to eating Cheetoes and watching NASCAR!



Sometimes the stupidity of our leaders just shocks me!

 

What's stupid about it being illegal to buy what isn't intended for you? And what's wrong about a sanction being attached to the prohibition?

 

Do they even sell AO games in Minnesota? If they do, in all my years here I haven't seen one.

I also question how old Tim plans to enforce this law. Does he plan to have state "agents" at the enterance of every Target, Best Buy or Comp USA checking the bags of underage kids?

In all honestly, I don't really care as I'm not a minor, but the responsibility of who plays what video games should lie with the parents, not the law makers.

 

I guess it's enough if the fine can be imposed if it comes out. There's no such protesting in case of people younger than 21, even already legally adult, buying alcohol, so why games now? Same kind of thing.

If parents explicitly want their child to play adult games, they can buy them and give them to their children. All those arguments about the freedom of parents to bring up children as they want serve only perpetuation of inaction and thus continued ability of publisher and retailers to sell adult games to minors.

 

It's quite possible that I as the parent have better things to be doing then taking my kid to buy video games. I know buying video games for myself, let alone someone else isn't a top priority for me. If the kid goes out and buys a game I don't like him or her to have, it's quite capable for me to simply confiscate or dispose of the game. If I dispose of my child's inappropriate video games, the money my kid is loosing on such purchases should stop the habit.

If I don't know what my child is doing, well then I shouldn't be a parent (yes I'm talking to you parents who think your six figure salary is more important than your kid), maybe the solution here is granting more power to social workers to take children from negligent or uninvolved parents. Anyway the law shouldn't be used to legislate parenting because it rarely works to do anything other then spend tax payers money. The root of the problem is parents, not the minors, the solution needs to be more preventitive then purely reactionary.

 

Exactly. It still leaves the decision in the hands of the parents. It's not like any child "caught" with an adult game will be incarcerated, or have their parents incarcerated, or jail the store owner who sold the game to the legal age parent. It's only illegal to sell the game directly to the minor. Hopefully Wisconsin will take a page from their neighbor to the west and make it illegal here too.

And even with this law, there are loopholes. There is nothing preventing a minor from finding some guy off the street of legal age to buy the game for them. The same thing happens with cigarettes. I was even approached once, and it took a bit of effort not to lay into the highschooler right then and there.

 

Contract made to circumvent the law is invalid, so one could argue the sale was invalid and the people should return the game and the money to each other respectively on the grounds of undue enrichment. Plus a fine for the minor or his parents, as well. But it would be hard to prove or enact.

But you'd still like your child to be able to buy those? What if he/she were to hide them from you? That isn't so hard.

 

Regardless of whether or not the parent does or does not want/do/see/whatever - it is none of the government's business what *anyone* is seeing/watching/playing. I do wish people would stop pretending that minors are subhumans who need laws restricting them from everything - we're not, we can deal with this stuff just fine, thank you.

 

You see watching or playing as disconnected from anything else but it isn't really so. The choice of films or games is related with all sorts of overall tendencies and the material disseminated in games and films has an effect on the watcher or player. The state has every right to intervene if that effect has negative social results.

 

Oh bull****. Especially seeing that 'negative social results' are mostly coming from the ****ing soccer mums whinging about it. The state doesn't care about these (supposed, nonexistant) 'negative social results' - they're looking for soccer mum votes (unless they have a soccer-mum complex themselves, in which case they're suffering the same delusion).

It's the overprotective people who are disconnected - disconnected from reality.
(And guess what, it's not video games fault I'm feeling aggressive - it's overprotectiveness. Maybe you should consider that as having 'negative social results' instead. After all, overprotectiveness inevitably breeds rebellion against it...)