AllThingsD » free expression

Justices Split on Violent Games

Jess Bravin — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 07:00:05 +0000

The Supreme Court seemed split Tuesday over First Amendment protection for videogames, scrambling the justices’ typical ideological lineup in a conflict between a new medium’s free expression rights and government efforts to shield youth from bad influences.

A 2005 California law bans those under 18 from buying or renting violent videogames that appeal to “a deviant or morbid interest in minors.” Lower courts struck down the law, under precedent authorizing government to restrict youth from only one type of material, obscene sexual content.

In seeking the law’s reinstatement, Zackery Morazzini, a deputy state attorney general, told the court: “California is no less concerned with a minor’s access to the deviant level of violence that is presented in a certain category of video games” than it is with sexually explicit material.

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Videogames as Free-Speech Issue

Jess Bravin — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 12:00:59 +0000

Videogame designers at ZeniMax Media Inc.’s Bethesda Softworks destroyed a virtual U.S. Capitol, Jefferson Memorial and other landmarks in the Mature-rated “Fallout 3,” which depicts the ruins of post-apocalyptic Washington.

They didn’t bother to obliterate the U.S. Supreme Court. But in the real world, that’s where the $10.5 billion videogame industry faces its greatest threat. On Tuesday, the court’s nine justices will consider whether to strip First Amendment protection from violent videogames that critics say appeal to the deviant interests of children.

A 2005 California law prohibits selling or renting such games to minors based on legislative findings that they stimulate “feelings of aggression,” reduce “activity in the frontal lobes of the brain” and promote “violent antisocial or aggressive behavior.” The law never took effect because lower courts found it violated free-expression rights.

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Brazil Makes the Most Content Takedown Demands of Google

Beth Callaghan — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:59:59 +0000

Google’s second report on government transparency, released today, shows that Brazilian officials asked 398 times to have content removed from the Web in the first half of 2010–more than twice as often as Libya, which was next in line with 149 requests. The U.S. and Germany were close behind with 128 and 124, respectively. The report ranks the number of government takedown requests from 35 countries, with the aim of helping to promote free expression and competition in emerging markets.

Chinese Video Takes Aim at Online Censorship

Loretta Chao, Juliet Ye and Aaron Back — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:00:23 +0000

The latest battle over Internet freedom in China is playing out in an online movie that pits an armored blue beast and his band of antiauthoritarian rogues against a sinister force called Harmony that seeks to clean up the Web.

The video, called “War of Internet Addiction,” is a send-up of government censorship starring videogame characters that has become one of the hottest things on the Chinese Internet, epitomizing the unruly spirit that thrives on the Web despite an intensifying crackdown on free expression in China.

The 64-minute video consists entirely of footage shot in the virtual universe of “World of Warcraft,” a wildly popular online game from Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI) in which millions of players around the world do battle via magical avatars.

The movie’s plot centers on gamers’ frustration with an actual bureaucratic battle over regulation of the Chinese edition of the game, but its subtext is a broad, biting allegory of the fight against government Internet controls, peppered with allusions to a list of real-world conflicts in China over the past year.

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Walt's Digg Dialogg with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski

Walt Mossberg — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:27:06 +0000

Walt recently sat down to interview FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, and asked him the top questions submitted via Digg.com. Check out the entire Digg Dialogg right here (you can also find it on Digg.com):

For brevity’s sake, we’ve also embedded the trailer:

Cloud Gaming?

John Paczkowski — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:00:22 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]