The New York Assembly looks to once again be put through evaluating potential video game legislature that aims to protect the eyes and ears of minors from disagreeable video games. Proposal A01474, submitted by Assemblyman Keith L.T. Wright and referred to the Assembly's Consumer Protection and Affairs Committee, hopes to prevent children under the age of 18 from purchasing video games "containing a rating that reflects content of various degrees of profanity, racist stereotypes or derogatory language, and/or actions toward a specific group of persons". That means retailers would have to be barred from selling such titles to minors in the first place.
This bill would ban the sale of video games that have been given a violent or mature rating to minors under the age of 18, and it would require purchasers of these games to show a valid form of identification in order to be sold. The bill would take a step towards preventing our children from being influenced by the glamorization of violence portrayed in such video games. Video games that include acts such as violent crime, suicide, sodomy, rape, incest, bestiality, sadomasochism, racism, religious violence, and the illegal use of drugs or alcohol will be inaccessible to the most easily influenced group.Considering a similar bill that actually made law in California was eventually ruled unconstitutional, costing the state some $280K USD in the process, you would think policymakers wouldn't want to go through all this again. This time we do note the inclusion of software promoting racism in the actual bill; promotion and perception of racist stereotypes can be a more subjective area, provided the software in question wasn't misguided enough to make an active effort to push these in the first place.
