{"id":1341,"date":"2011-06-27T22:37:59","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T20:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/?p=1341"},"modified":"2011-06-27T22:38:38","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T20:38:38","slug":"supreme-court-strikes-down-violent-game-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2011\/06\/27\/supreme-court-strikes-down-violent-game-law\/","title":{"rendered":"US Supreme Court strikes down law against violent games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The big game news of the day (in the US) is that the supreme court <a href=\"http:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/10pdf\/08-1448.pdf\">has ruled against the state of California&#8217;s attempt at restricting violent video games<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/10pdf\/08-1448.pdf\">ruling<\/a> is surprisingly clear, well-written and sensible:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;California correctly acknowledges that video games qualify for First Amendment protection. The Free Speech Clause exists principally to protect discourse on public matters, but we have long recognized that it is difficult to distinguish politics from entertainment, and dangerous to try. \u201cEveryone is familiar with instances of propaganda through fiction. What is one man\u2019s amusement, teaches another\u2019s doctrine.\u201d <em>Winters v. New York<\/em>, 333 U. S. 507, 510 (1948). Like the protected books, plays, and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas\u2014and even social messages\u2014through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player\u2019s interaction with the virtual world). That suffices to confer First Amendment protection.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And there it is. A court ruling stating that video games communicate ideas.<\/p>\n<p>More write-ups <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/06\/28\/us\/28scotus.html?_r=1&amp;hp\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/35459\/Supreme_Court_Decision_Video_Games_Qualify_For_First_Amendment_Protection.php\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/kotaku.com\/5795472\/video-games-defeat-california-in-supreme-court-battle-over-violent-video-games\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The big game news of the day (in the US) is that the supreme court has ruled against the state of California&#8217;s attempt at restricting violent video games. The ruling is surprisingly clear, well-written and sensible: &#8220;California correctly acknowledges that video games qualify for First Amendment protection. The Free Speech Clause exists principally to protect &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2011\/06\/27\/supreme-court-strikes-down-violent-game-law\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;US Supreme Court strikes down law against violent games&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}