This is fantastic. As you may know, California is attempting to bring about a nationwide ban on selling violent video games to minors. Their case must be phenomenally weak, because the Justices spend quite a bit of time ribbing the Attorney General over how this incredibly vague and biased proposal could potentially be applied to all manner of things.
Justice Sotomayor: “Would a video game that portrayed a Vulcan as opposed to a human being, being maimed and tortured, would that be covered by the act?”
Classic. There’s a whole transcript and a few more excerpts over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun if you’re interested.
Interestingly, I just watched Howl last night, the biopic about Allen Ginsberg and the eponymous poem that was notoriously nearly banned for obscenity. There are definitely some correlations between the two cases — one of the Justices actually suggests (playfully) that there should be a board that oversees whether a game is in fact too violent for kids, and they could call it the California Office of Censorship.
Anyway, it’s not looking good for the proposal, which was of course a silly thing to begin with.
Free Speech Wins! FATALITY