Failed Legal Fight Over Video Games Costs California Nearly $2 Million

[sunnyd]

Story : http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/19/4274796/failed-legal-fight-over-video.html

Designed to protect California kids from video games of murder and mayhem, a law that was passed six years ago but never took effect wound up costing state taxpayers nearly $2 million.

The final check for nearly a million dollars is expected to be written soon, a settlement contained in a routine legislative claims bill passed by the Senate and awaiting Assembly action.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, governor and attorney general at the time, supported appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court despite the state's 2009 fiscal crisis and defeats in two lower courts.

"It was an important issue to the governor," said Andrea Hoch, Schwarzenegger's former legal affairs secretary and now an appellate court judge. "It was something he felt strongly about." The tactic backfired when the high court rejected the appeal, 7-2, forcing the state to pick up the video game industry's legal tab.

[Digital_Exc]

There is a fine system in place for 'obscene' or 'violent' material: the rating-system. The rating-system should however not be intrusive: a green or red star with a number should suffice. A parent can easily identify the product as 'suitable/unsuitable' for his/her child.

Once the item is bought and in possession of the buyer, no one wants to be nagged with that rating-system anymore (if the DVD cover says 'R-Rated' we certainly do not want unable to skip logos, trailers, warnings saying that the DVD has that rating: we already have the damn DVD! it's already ours! We already saw the rating on the cover and popped in the DVD anyway! We are already watching it!! Gorram!!).

We saw the rating, we or the parents chose to ignore it. That's that. period.