Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Today I filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in its proceeding examining the marketplace for “advanced blocking technologies.” This proceeding was required under the “Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007,” which Congress passed last year and President Bush signed last December. The goal of the bill and the FCC’s proceeding (MB 09-26) is [...]
This week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a California video game statute as unconstitutional, holding that it violated both the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution. The California law, which passed in October 2005 (A.B.1179), would have blocked the sale of “violent” video games to those under 18 and required [...]
The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) is a group that does some good things to mobilize gamers to fight misguided regulation of video games. I greatly appreciate their tireless efforts to fight stereotypes and myths about games and gamers, and to specifically counter the hysteria about video games that we sometimes see in the press, and [...]
Many folks are discussing Christopher Ferguson’s latest paper on “The School Shooting / Violent Video Game Link: Causal Relationship or Moral Panic?” And with good reason. It’s an important look at how “moral panics” develop in modern society, in this case around video games. [Moral panics is a subject I have written on at length [...]
Regular readers will recall my great interest in video games and the public policy debates surrounding efforts to regulate “violent” games in particular. One thing I bring up in almost every essay I write on this subject is how fears about kids and video games are almost always overblown and that kids can typically separate [...]
My good friend Jim Dunstan will be speaking to the “Games Gateway” meet-up group for the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Region on Dec. 2 at 6:30 pm about the legal issues affecting video game developers. Did you know that enabling gamers to talk via voice while in a virtual world may subject you to FCC regulations? Or [...]
A new study (which is actually based on an old study) by Dr. Craig Anderson of Iowa State University and two other researchers is making news today because it suggests a link between violent video games and real-world aggression. I have written extensively about such studies here in the past, and have included a list [...]
GamePolitics.com reports that there are strong signs the protracted legal battle over video game regulation in California might soon be headed to the Supreme Court. The ongoing battle deals with a California law passed in October 2005 (A.B.1179), which would have blocked the sale of “violent” video games to those under 18 and required labels [...]
So I was just finishing up this excellent new Pew report on “Teens, Video Games and Civics,” and was about to post some thoughts about it when I saw in my RSS feed that the brilliant Henry Jenkins had beat me to it in an essay entitled “Video Game Myths Revisited.” Prof. Jenkins summarizes the [...]
I’m pleased to announce the publication of A Manifesto for Media Freedom, which I co-authored with Brian C. Anderson of the Manhattan Institute. Brian serves as editor of Manhattan Institute’s excellent City Journal and he is the author of best-selling books like South Park Conservatives and Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents. In this little manifesto, [...]
May 23, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
