As part of a 20 minute slide show produced by the New York Dept. of Criminal Justice, Elliot’s Spitzer’s administration has cited a well-known Internet hoax as a helpful resource for parents.
The site cited, Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence (mavav.org) claims to be:
organization is dedicated to educating parents of the world’s fastest growing addiction and the most reckless endangerment of children today: Video Game Addiction and Violence in Underground Video Game Cultures
The site goes on to claim that:
Video game addiction is without a doubt, becoming this century’s most increasingly worrisome epidemic, comparable even to drug and alcohol abuse. All the while, the video game industry continues to market and promote hatred, racism, sexism, and the most disturbing trend: clans and guilds, an underground video game phenomenon which closely resembles gangs.
MAVAV is actually the creation of a New York design school student, a well documented fact that is easily uncovered by research. And by research I mean about 2 minutes Googling the farcical organization. Too great a burden for the NY DOJ.
The NY Justice Dept. report also contained a reference to several over-hyped stories of questionable reliability and is riddled with errors. In addition, the report claims that Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer, was a Counter-Strike player, a claim that has since been shown to be unsubstantiated.
If this is the worst indictment that the insidious legal mind of Elliot Spitzer can produce, gamers might not have to worry about New York’s proposed regulation of video game sales.
Hat tip: GamePolitics.com
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.