Michigan starts sucking on Dec. 1, 2005
A few days ago, a character of the Diesel Sweeties webcomic couldn’t figure out how Michigan sucks. Had he waited a few days, he would have had no such difficulties: today, Jennifer Granholm, the (Democratic) governor of Michigan, has announced that she will sign a new bill regulating video games. The bill will make selling violent games to minors a crime starting on December 1, 2005. The text of the bill is rather convoluted, but I will make an effort to explain it.
According to the bill, a game is considered to contain “extreme and loathsome violence” if it contains “graphic depictions of physical injuries or physical violence against parties who realistically appear to be human beings”. In other words, 99% of modern computer games (all FPSs, all strategy games, virtually all role-playing and dungeon-crawler games, and a substantial fraction of shooters and simulations) are, by Michigan law, extremely and loathsomely violent.
Fortunately, Michigan legislators apparently realized that their label of “extreme and loathsome” is extremely meaningless. Thus, they introduce a second definition: “harmful to minors”. A game is “harmful to minors” if it appeals to aggressive tendencies, and is offensive to the “local community” (as an aside — that term is amazingly useless in today’s world of internet sales), and lacks artistic, literary, or educational value. The key word in the preceding sentence is and: the Michigan legislature was smart enough to set the terms up as a conjunction, meaning that not all games can be considered “harmful”.
Providing a game featuring “extreme and loathsome violence” that is “harmful to minors” to a minor results in hefty penalties — from $5000 to $40,000 (the clerk who makes the sale is charged with a civil infraction; his manager gets a criminal misdemeanor). Fortunately, there are a number of exceptions: a parent or guardian is allowed to pump his little children full of ultraviolence; a family member is allowed to do the same, but only in the family member’s or the minor’s residence; and any adult is allowed to show violent games to any minors who are guests in the adult’s residence. (Question for the wise Michigan legislators: why an adult who is a guest in a minor’s residence is not allowed to show violent content to the minor?) Physical vendors are off the hook if the minor shows ID; online vendors go scot-free if the minor pays with a credit card and say that minors are not allowed to buy anti-Michiganian games.
Now, at first blush, this does not seem to be such a bad law. Most games are probably not “harmful to minors” in Michigan. A grandmother is allowed to buy GTA3 for her 8-year old granddaughter. If my guests bring a kid, and the kid sees me playing Counterstrike, I don’t get jailed.
On closer examination, however, even this mild and reasonably intelligently drafted law is very wrong on several practical and philosophical levels.
First, the bill assumes that any depictions of physical violence against human beings are automatically suspect. That is completely silly. First, stylized violence — like in theater, old-style comic books, 1950’s Hollywood movies, etc. — will never excite homicidal passions in anyone. And second, actual homicidal maniacs in many documented cases started out with brutal violence against non-humans — dismembering cats, killing dogs, etc. I would argue that a game that graphically simulates the killing of small domestic animals is far worse for young minds than Grand Theft Auto. Of course, Michigan is a hunting state, so such an argument would not go over well in the Michigan legislature…
Second, the bill depends on local community standards. How can a British online store know what the precise community standards are in East Rustbucket, Michigan? How can a New York merchant tell that a particular game is not harmful to minors in Lansing, but is (by local community standards) harmful to minors in Detroit? I see, realistically, that foreign merchants will not sell games to the United States (because every state has its own set of crazy laws); and out-of-state merchants will not permit Michigan minors to buy anything besides a Barbie simulation. (Although even a Barbie simulation might be considered sexually explicit — another forbidden game category — in some random Michigan town.)
Third, the bill is full of insane, inconsistent little regulations. Online merchants cannot accept debit cards or Paypal from Michigan customers without taking a huge legal risk. If I visit a minor and we play a violent game, I am guilty; if he visits me, I am innocent. Selling a game to a minor (so he can play for hours) has a much lower penalty than letting a minor play a game in the store for 5 minutes.
Fourth, this starts a slippery slope: virtually any limitation of civil rights (censorship, tracking, street cameras, logging of phone calls and internet connections, etc.) can be justified if your primary concern is the marginal change in safety of your precious little children. Indeed, it appears that the UK is sliding down this slope with ever-increasing momentum.
And most importantly, fifth: violent video games do not make kids violent. If anything, a violent video game allows kids to let their aggressive tendencies out, contributing to the noticeable fall in youth violence in the United States over the past ten years. For more details, refer to a previous post of mine.
Finally, as a form of conclusion: Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm now joins Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton on the list of Democrats you should never vote for.