[The threat of legislation by the U.S. Congress prompted the videogame industry to form the Recreational Software Advisory Council circa 1994 (http://www.rsac.org/, though it is now trying to reinvent itself for web ratings and you won't see much videogame stuff there anymore). I believe there is no current law requiring video game creators to label for violent or other content. See also: http://www.politechbot.com/p-01353.html and http://reagle.org/joseph/commerce/singles/rsac7.html and Sen. Lieberman's "report card" at http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/internetgames981201.html --Declan --- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 14:59:12 -0500 From: Clayton Carter <crcarterat_private> To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> Subject: [POLITECH] Warning Labels for Video Games? User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i Hi Declan, Long time lister, etc. I haven't played computer games in years, but I still found this story[2] rather interesting (and ridiculous) and thought that might be of interest to the rest of the list. The summary is that some poor guy (with a documented history of mental illness) in Wisconsin was supposedly addicted to EverQuest[1] and, having commited suicide, his mom (he was 21) has decided that Sony (which publishes EQ, I guess) needs to put warning labels on the game because ``...they are all the same. It's like cigarettes. They need to come with a warning label. `Warning, extensive playing could be hazardous to your health.' '' The simplest (and, perhaps, most cynical) of the multitude of questions that this brings immedediatly to mind is: I presume she thinks that warning labels on video games will be more effective than those found on cigarettes? Thanks for running the great list. Take care. Clayton PS - It appears that K5 already ran something on this[3] (back on the first). [1] http://www.everquest.com/ (redirects to:) http://everquest.station.sony.com/ [2] http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/mar02/31536.asp (same text as:) http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/3022603.htm [3] http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/1/16133/05371 -- Clayton Carter crcarter at cs dot indiana dot edu "My mom says I'm the handsomest guy at school."" ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Politech dinner in SF on 4/16: http://www.politechbot.com/events/cfp2002/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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