This Wednesday, The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is scheduled to review a lower court holding that declared California’s violent video game law violates the First Amendment. The impending appeal has been on our radar for a long time, first discussed by LoP correspondent Matthew Razak. Legislators and game developers have been very vocal about the case, including the oft-discussed author of the legislation, Democrat Senator Leland Yee. Senator Yee offered to repeat his factually-dubious battle cry for reporters:

This is the same technology the armed forces use to help soldiers kill the enemy… All we’re saying is, “Don’t sell it to kids.”

The law would prevent minors from purchasing games that “appeal to a deviant or morbid interest of children and are patently offensive to prevailing community standards.” Retailers violating this law would be subject to a $1000 fine.

Curiously, the bill also calls for an “18″ label to be placed on excessively violent games, but this seems to be the exact function of the current ESRB ratings.

Laws similar to California’s have been repeatedly struck down by courts around the country. But, with the notoriously wacky Ninth Circuit involved, who knows what will happen? In all honesty, I doubt this case will be any different. The link between violent video games and real-life violence in so scientifically tenuous that we shouldn’t be attempting to abridge speech because of it.

[via Mercury News]

California State Senator and outspoken critic of violent video games, Leland Yee, recently sat down to answer questions about the medium and his policies. GameCyte has a full transcript of Sen. Yee’s interview. Read on to watch the two part interview.

Part 1:

Part 2:

In a press release issued today California State Senator Leland Yee, one of the main architects of California’s unconstitutional gaming law, has given California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger props for promising to appeal the ruling that the law is in fact unconstitutional. Yee said:

I am very pleased to see the Governor’s commitment to this issue. This is a common-sense law that empowers parents by giving them the ultimate authority over whether or not their children can play in a world of violence and murder.

On his own part the Governor had this to say:

We have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to protect against the effects of games that depict ultra-violent actions. These games are for adults, and the law I signed ensures that parents have the chance to determine which video games are appropriate for their children.

Hit the jump for more from Yee and some personnel ramblings.

Yee chimes back in with a little more rhetoric about the evils of the gaming industry:

The deliberations in this case took over a year, which shows that the ever-growing body of evidence that violent video games are harmful to children is getting harder and harder to ignore. The medical data clearly indicates that these ultra-violent video games have harmful effects on kids, and thus we have a state interest to protect them.

The $31 billion video game industry has fought any attempt at regulation every step of the way. They fought efforts to publicize their rating system because they thought it would impact sales, and now they’re again putting their profit margins over the rights of parents and the well-being of children.

The main question is why should it be the responsibility of the gaming industry to be in charge of the well-being of anyone? Parents should look at the games they’re children have purchased and see the clearly marked rating on the front. That being said a retailer would do well, and some already do, to enforce the selling of M-Rated games to minors. Both of these options are ways private citizens and companies can easily do away with any controversy over this. It gets fuzzy when you enforce the sale of violent games to people by law, which sounds like a restriction of free speech by the government to me. This is especially so with this law, where pretty much any game featuring death or killing would be illegal to sell to a minor, sounds like something that could be easily twisted by people who are anti-gaming.

If the government is going to regulate games, which it shouldn’t need to, it needs to create a law that does it fairly, not through some knee jerk reaction to popular opinion. As for the multitude of studies showing that games cause violence a quick search with Google shows a plethora of studies and news reports both against and for. Yee must have forgotten to read the former.