RIPPING out your video game opponents' spine is akin to Hansel and Gretel baking their captor in an oven.
That's the message sent to gamers by the US Supreme Court yesterday, after it refused to let California regulate the sale or rental of violent video games to children.
California's 2005 law would have prohibited anyone under 18 from buying or renting games that give players the option of "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being".
That means that children would have needed an adult to get games like Postal 2, the first-person shooter by developer Running With Scissors that includes the ability to light unarmed bystanders on fire.
However, governments do not have the power to "restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed", the court ruled, despite complaints about graphic violence.
On a 7-2 vote, it upheld a federal appeals court decision to throw out the state's ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors, saying the law violated minors' rights under the First Amendment.
"No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm," said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion.
"But that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."
The California law would have prohibited the sale or rental of violent games to anyone under 18.
Retailers who violated the act would have been fined up to $US1000 for each infraction.
More than 46 million American households have at least one video-game system, with the industry bringing in at least $US18 billion in 2010.
Unlike depictions of "sexual conduct", Justice Scalia said there is no tradition in the United States of restricting children's access to depictions of violence, pointing out the violence in the original depiction of many popular children's fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White
That's the message sent to gamers by the US Supreme Court yesterday, after it refused to let California regulate the sale or rental of violent video games to children.
California's 2005 law would have prohibited anyone under 18 from buying or renting games that give players the option of "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being".
That means that children would have needed an adult to get games like Postal 2, the first-person shooter by developer Running With Scissors that includes the ability to light unarmed bystanders on fire.
However, governments do not have the power to "restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed", the court ruled, despite complaints about graphic violence.
On a 7-2 vote, it upheld a federal appeals court decision to throw out the state's ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors, saying the law violated minors' rights under the First Amendment.
"No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm," said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion.
"But that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."
The California law would have prohibited the sale or rental of violent games to anyone under 18.
Retailers who violated the act would have been fined up to $US1000 for each infraction.
More than 46 million American households have at least one video-game system, with the industry bringing in at least $US18 billion in 2010.
Unlike depictions of "sexual conduct", Justice Scalia said there is no tradition in the United States of restricting children's access to depictions of violence, pointing out the violence in the original depiction of many popular children's fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White
