{"id":14,"date":"2007-11-27T21:22:47","date_gmt":"2007-11-28T05:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=14"},"modified":"2007-11-27T21:22:47","modified_gmt":"2007-11-28T05:22:47","slug":"line-in-the-sand-or-slippery-slope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/14\/line-in-the-sand-or-slippery-slope\/","title":{"rendered":"Line in the Sand or Slippery Slope?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s an article over at SPOnG<\/a> about Rockstar’s appeal over the UK ban of Manhunt 2<\/a>. Arguing for the BBFC, Andrew Caldecott had this to say:<\/p>\n

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“Games and technology develop incrementally… If you take the comparable argument to its extreme, you get a gradual creeping towards ever more graphic violence, but you never draw a line at any particular point.<\/p>\n

“If you’re not careful you get into a peculiar game of Grandmother’s Footsteps, where everybody’s shuffling forward but Grandma’s never allowed to turn round and say, ‘Stop’… Is there never a point at which you can say, ‘This is unacceptable’?<\/p>\n

“If there is a point, the question then becomes much more difficult: where do you draw it?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As a quasi-independent entity with the full force of law delegated to it by the state, then, no. There is abso-fucking-lutely no point at which you should stop and say ‘This is unacceptable’ for adults to view. None. The whole point of freedom of speech is protecting unpopular speech.<\/p>\n

Now, slippery slopes usually make for bad arguments, but seeing as we’re talking about “drawing the line” for future titles, what happens next? What happens when the next would-be censor decides some other game crosses the line? I’ve beaten Manhunt 2, and it didn’t even seem as brutal as the first one, so the bar seem rather low.<\/p>\n

What happens when the next bureaucrat decides all war games cross the line because of fear they promote “gun crime” or something? Sounds far-fetched until you consider there were cries<\/a> to ban<\/a> another game for that very reason. And given the British elite’s pants-shitting hysteria over toy guns<\/a>, well, yea.<\/p>\n

And given that about half the people posting at various game sites around the net don’t seem to care or about (or in some cases even support) the ban simply because they think the game sucks anyway, what motivation is there for the BBFC to not<\/em> ban more titles when they think they can get away with it? But, hey, when they end up banning Mario because it’s insensitive to the turtles’ feelings or some shit, don’t say we didn’t warn you.<\/p>\n

At any rate, this illustrates precisely why the US Constitution prohibits the state from granting legislative powers to unelected, non-accountable, private actors. Even though certain politicians<\/a> would like to do otherwise..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s an article over at SPOnG about Rockstar’s appeal over the UK ban of Manhunt 2. Arguing for the BBFC, Andrew Caldecott had this to say: “Games and technology develop incrementally… If you take the comparable argument to its extreme, you get a gradual creeping towards ever more graphic violence, but you never draw a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illspirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}