Wow, posted immediatly as green

i dont get why if they are so uptight how come carmageddon came out here a few years ago? i thought they were trying to ban the game alltogether

Australia sucks the fat one when it comes to the defence of our freedoms. That's what comes from never having to shed blood for your rights.

Oh well.

*sniff* Sweden is so great..

Shooting women scores you extra points!

Jesus. "Chief Censor"? Can it possibly get any worse than that?

Australia's governing party at the moment (Liberals) is meant to support the rights of the individual. However they keep sweeping away our rights in order to curry favour with an independant chucklehead (Brian Harradine).

So in order to get his vote to privatise Telstra (our Telco), they try to ban internet pron, violent video games etc.

And no-one wants to come out in the media in favour of pron, violent films etc. So freedom of speech quietly drifts away.

Would be better if we had a bill of rights... Or *any* actual rights...

Australia makes California look like a hotbed of conservatism.

indefensible: A bill of rights is only as good as the people protecting it. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and we are a lazy, lazy people.

It gets worse. Does your country have one of these?

http://www.oflc.gov.au/

Crap.

Bullshiat. At least neo-nazis don't get air time on the radio, like they are able to over in the US thanks to your "freedom of speech" rights.

I don't know; Tommy Vercetti makes quite a mess of those hookers after he has finished shagging them in his car. I wouldn't want my 8 year old son to see that.

But if you don't want your kid to play games like Vice City I'd be counting on you keeping an eye on things..

If video games caused violence wouldn't Japan be a shooting gallery by now?

Let me be the first to say,

buncha n00bs!

Kinda sounds like..
"guns don't kill people...video-games do."

Games don't kill people, people with weapons and convienient scapegoats with nothing to lose kill people.

Farking doo-gooders who live in pencil caves and sterile "committees" telling the public they are too stupid to know the difference between a computer game and real life. In the famous words of Robin Williams "that man is in more need of a blowjob than anyone I have ever met" (Good Morning Vietnam 1987)

luigi_chan: You say that like that's a good thing...

guns don't kill people. bullets kill people.

Bullshiat. At least neo-nazis don't get air time on the radio, like they are able to over in the US thanks to your "freedom of speech" rights.

Instead of sweeping such fiends under the rug and pretending they don't exist, so that the problems they cause can never br truly solved?

Guilty as charged, and proud of it. If we are to have freedom, then so must everyone else. The price of freedom isn't just eternal vigilance; it's also the fact that The Other Side gets its freedom too.

Hehe
Violence is cool!!!
I like shoving my hand into some dude's throat and yanking out his spinal cord!!!

I kind of like playing video games too. Mario Brothers rule!!

Call that a news story??

Yeah, and Leisure Suit Larry made me a sex fiend.
Now everytime I see a tanning bed, I grab a female and have sex with her in it. All in 16 color glory!!
Then the bed shorts out and we get fried. It all ends very sadly.

I can't believe this shiat article gets posted and mine never do. What is it? A seniority thing? Some kinda good ol'boy network? I don't farking get it...

Did they toss that law in Washington state yet? The one about restricting games that depicted violence toward law enforcement? Last I heard there was an injunction placed on it but I wonder if it finally got tossed.

General Custer surrenders

censoring violent entertainment is ridiculous.
just force walmart/bestbuy/blockbuster to post the ESRB game rating chart next to their game racks and be done with it.

all they do with their moral outrage, is help make money for these things they supposedly hate.

soldier of fortune, gta, 'panty raider' - these games would have wholly gone away if not for the outrage. and look what they get for their effort: they made gta and its crappy sequel so popular, they finally made the game legitimately fun (gta3/vc) - and now they have serious market penetration.

stupid censors. why not just have jerry falwell issue fatwas?

Millenium- Hey, we deal with our problems too. What gives you the idea that we 'sweep things under a rug?' We have a few problems, and I think the Liberal government sucks, but I'm glad I live here instead of the States. And who the hell said Australia was a conservative country?? What's all this talk about us not having freedom? We're a very cultured country.

HERE'S an article on a bit of flap when the Ontario Film Review Board (Originally the Ontario Board of Censors!) ordered cuts to French flick Fat Girl to make it "legal" in the province of Ontario. This film was critically aclaimed and was shown without cuts in supposedly "conservative" jurisdictions.

The director refused to cut scenes to make the Miss Grundies happy, and it became in effect, banned in Ontario, although you could go to NY State or Quebec to see it uncut.

There's even a mention further down about the censors in Oz wanting to turn back the clock to the prudish 1950s.

Unfetchable link. Damn HTML. Copy and paste, then, sheesh!

http://www.cinemarati.org/features/news112601.shtml

luigi_chan "And who the hell said Australia was a conservative country??"

Nobody here. Conservatives fight government intrusion into their lives.

History has never looked kindly on censorship.

Well, it takes a village. I mean, sure you can watch your own kid, and make sure he or she doesn't witness all the violence. And as he or she gets older, you can make sure you communicate regulalry so there is a firm understanding of reality vs. fantasy violence. But how can we be sure ALL parents do that? We can't, so the only answer is regulation.

/posted for the purpose of getting me flamed. Please don't disappoint.

LawTalkingGuy: it's interesting that American courts have come down on sexuality in entertainment (the best example being Miller v. California), but won't touch violence in entertainment. Federal courts have overturned laws restricting violent books, movies, and video games.

MikeWealth,
Well the current Aust govt is about as conservative as western governments get. This means having 1950's values towards things like entertainment classification and not having the slightest clue as to how to deal with current video games. A less intolerant govt (ie not conservative) would be much less restrictive towards these types of things.

No doubt, elwood and those thoughts really pervade society as well. I mean, Arnold Schwarzenegger has pretended to kill literally thousands of people. Do you think that a candidate with a similar record of movies with nudity and simulated sex would be taken as seriously? Very very doubtful, I think.

It's also interesting how video games are struggling to be recognized as free speech worthy of constitutional protections.

It's weird the distinction the government makes between movies and video games. A US district court decision (can't remember the case name) declared that video games were not a legitimate medium for conveying ideas and thus not subject to the same first amendment protection as movies.

Being a gamer, I don't agree. Games are getting more plot driven and more adult (dealing with concepts kids have trouble grasping not just sex and violence).

LTG: there have been two recent cases that have helped video games gain a first amendment foothold. The 7th circuit held that video games are constitutionally protected in American Amusement Machine Association v. Kendrick, which overturned an ordinance centering around violent arcade games. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case. And in Interactive Digital Software Association v. St. Louis County, the 8th circuit also ruled that video games are protected and overturned a law restricting the sale of violent games to minors. That one is being appealed, but the Supreme Court hasn't yet decided if it will hear the case or not. Since the 8th and 7th circuits agreed, it's unlikely that they will.

Personally, I hope that they would at least make some kind of ruling just so we could once and for all put an end to the vote-pandering that is video game regulation.

Video games are actually on a pretty good timetable. Movies didn't have constitutional protection until 1952, in Burstyn v. Wilson.

Don't you Americans start preaching to us Aussie... I've seen Bowling for Columbine... yeh, go America!

-Broman

If you cant walk around naked in a country without being arrested, then there is no freedom of speech.

/walks around naked in Sweden all the time.. .Execpt for the 11.5 month of winter.

2003-09-22 07:35:22 AM luigi_chan


Bullshiat. At least neo-nazis don't get air time on the radio, like they are able to over in the US thanks to your "freedom of speech" rights.

So you're willing to stifle everyone's freedom of speech just to suppress a minority viewpoint, eh? I wouldn't consider that a fair trade.

2003-09-22 09:15:49 AM MikeWeath


luigi_chan "And who the hell said Australia was a conservative country??"

Nobody here. Conservatives fight government intrusion into their lives.

Actually, not to be pedantic or anything, a conservative is someone who wants to 'conserve' the status quo. So a conservative in Stalinist Russia would be pro-Stalin and therefore pro-government intrusion.

2003-09-22 10:51:39 AM Broman


Don't you Americans start preaching to us Aussie... I've seen Bowling for Columbine... yeh, go America!

Yeah, and Michael Moore would never mislead you...

USA and Australia are probably pretty bad both of them...

"There is a goal you have to achieve by killing people basically - for kids I don't think that's great."

However, as soon as they reach 18 they are urged to join the military where they have the opportunity to achieve goals by killing real people.

The body that you were born with is only acceptable to show in public if it has been disembowled by heavy weapons fire.

Notice the way the censors are talking about games?
"some have video sequences"

These guys are still stuck thinking of Night Trap as cutting edge, and are operating under some bizarre logic where video sequences=mind warping

To me thinking and forming opinions is a very personal and private thing.
I don't want the government to clean my teeth or wipe my arse for me, and I don't want or need them thinking for me either.