What began as a little California bill trying to stop the sale of violent video games has exploded to a national case that could affect not only video gamers and entertainment consumers in the United States but worldwide. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will be hearing the case Schwarzenegger v EMA on November 3rd to determine whether video games (and possible indirectly whether other entertainment media) are covered under First Amendment rights. A petition from the Entertainment Consumers Association in support of protecting video games as a form of free speech has already received 500,000 signatures and will be presented at the case. While petitions don't usually win or lose cases, it does show that their is support from the public and that these so called representatives of the people have agendas of their own. Another way to try and gain some publicity and to inform the public was started by the Video Game Voters Network who have been asking gamers to send in broken controllers to Senator Leeland Yee (the creator of the bill) in protest to this unconstitutional ploy to infringe on the First Amendment. I've already sent in my controller and encourage other gamers to get involved not only in this case but in politics in general - no matter what your political party affiliation is. The header above has a link to the PlayStation Blog where Hal Halpin, president of ECA, explains in more detail what this bill is and what it means if passed. VGVN also has a SCOTUS Action Center that has some great information as well. November is approaching soon and I will definitely be keeping my eye on this one.Update: Game developer Warren Spector is asking gamers to step up on October 19th in what he is calling a day of action. He is asking that gamers use Twitter and Facebook to get out the word about the threat to First Amendment rights. Check out VGVN's Day of Action center for more information.
Update: It's the day after the Supreme Court hearing and it seems like the justices were pretty split down the middle about California's violent video game law. Kotaku had a nice article summing up the events of the day as well as a link to see the full transcript from the case. An actual verdict isn't supposed to come down until next year (before the June 2011 break) so it's going to be a long battle.
