Posted on 07/15/2005 4:43:17 PM PDT by CHARLITE
WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has attacked violent video games as "a silent epidemic" among children, said she wanted a federal investigation into one of the most popular, "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."
Clinton, D-N.Y., is asking the Federal Trade Commission to probe how players can access "graphic pornographic and violent content" for the game from the Internet.
In a letter dated yesterday to FTC chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras, she also urged the agency to examine whether the game's rating of "M" for mature should be changed to an "Adults Only" rating.
The Entertainment Software Ratings Board, a self-regulatory ratings arm of the game-software industry, is already investigating the issue.
New York's junior senator said it was time for the federal government to step in.
"There is no doubting the fact that the widespread availability of sexually explicit and graphically violent video games makes the challenge of parenting much harder," Clinton said in her letter seeking an FTC investigation.
The senator is also pushing legislation that would make it harder for young kids to obtain such material.
Even before her election to the Senate, Clinton spoke out against the amount of sexual and violent content available to children.
In March, Clinton delivered a speech to the Kaiser Family Foundation in which she called media sex and violence "a silent epidemic" among children, and sought federal research into how exposure to such graphic content affects young minds.
In that speech to media experts and child advocates, she singled out "Grand Theft Auto" as particularly harmful, saying it "has so many demeaning messages about women and so encourages violent imagination and activities and it scares parents ... . They're playing a game that encourages them to have sex with prostitutes and then murder them. You know, that's kind of hard to digest."
Oh, the humanity! Hillary now behaving like a prude in her efforts to "move to the right."
Don't be hornswaggled by this phony!
"They're playing a game that encourages them to have sex with prostitutes and then murder them. You know, that's kind of hard to digest."
HA! What a thought!.....the idea of "having sex with prostitutes........." and then using the FBI and/or Secret Service to get rid of them.....!!
Last I saw, game programmers weren't flying planes into the World Trade Center or slicing the heads off Iraqi contractors while shouting "Allahu Akbar!!"
Char :)
Hillary is looking for a probe? Why doesn't she ask Bill?
Hitting a little to close to home, I guess.
So, you have to be old enough to be an intern to play these games?
I love how it's two Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Leland Yee, who are going after this game. They're trying to wrap government regulation in the guise of moral responsibility.
Thanks, Nintendo. Thanks for using game violence as a political issue in order to force Sega out of the market.
I'm no Hildebeast fan, but I do agree with her on this game. I have kids that play Playstation 2 and I monitor what games they can purchase, but when they go over to a friends house that puts me at a disadvantage. I think there should be stronger enforcement of some of this crap and kids don't need to be exposed to it.
I think most GOPers would agree. That being said, I concur with all of you that this is another "move to the right" for her for obvious reasons.
Apparently, there was buried sexual content in the game and some hacker group issued a "hot coffee" modification that enables game players to access this buried stuff. There have been a couple of articles at Beta News on this. Here's the latest:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Rockstars_Sex_Mod_Scandal_Deepens/1121373705
I dunno what the big deal is. I've seen far worse in R-rated movies. Sheesh...
Clinton, D-N.Y., is asking the Federal Trade Commission to probe how players can access "graphic pornographic and violent content" for the game from the Internet.
Inquiring minds want to know why she wants to know.
The article is a bit bogus. Okay, I have worked with video game developers and have created mods for video games my self.
If you can hack the source to a game, it really doesnt take much to modify it to what you want. In fact some times amature work has better graphics that published work. Why? Because amatures create the skins and models at their own whim while busineses have to restrict things to certain number of polies (and hours of production).
So to say that just because the graphics look good is to say its an easter egg is bad.
If you are downloading a mod, you are downloading somthing to where someone has (in some cases) fundamentally changed the game and the company cannot be held laible for it.
I will leave the question as to if a game should be moddable to another time.
I hope the picket fence she is straddling sticks her good.
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not going to touch that one at all.
Wasn't Hollywood sleazoid Jack Valenti a Friend of Bill? And wasn't it Valenti who so wholeheartedly resisted suggestions by Michael Medved and others that maybe Hollywood could clean up its act a little, maybe produce movies that didn't singe the ears of a Turkish sailor with their profanity, or embarrass a New Orleans madame with their gratuitous sex?
No big deal. It became controversial because it was disputed whether the game maker or the hackers were responsible. Apparently the game maker included some sexually explicit material while they were putting the game together but decided to lock it in order to market it to 17 year olds instead of 18 year olds. The hot coffee mod unlocked this hidden material.
Somebody told hillary about it and she saw a perfect opportunity to get a rep for morality the cheap way, much like Tipper Gore did some years ago.
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