Should it be illegal for retailers to sell Mature or Adults Only titles to Minors? This isn't the first time legislation like this has been proposed. H.R. 5990 was introduced to read, "It shall be unlawful for any person to ship or otherwise distribute in interstate commerce, or to sell or rent, a video game that does not contain a rating label, in a clear and conspicuous location on the outside packaging of the video game, containing an age-based content rating determined by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board."
Prior renditions of laws such as this, including one authored by the same author of this bill, have been struck down as unconstitutional. But apparently that's not stopping another introduction of the same type of law.
According to
this article, "The FTC's most recent "undercover shopper" test discovered that 80% of 253 minors were turned down when they tried to purchase M-rated games. Its test the year before found only 58% of children were turned down, and Rep. Matheson claims 42% of unsupervised teens aged 13 to 16 could purchase M-rated video games in 2005." It appears that times are changing and that voluntary carding seems to have helped.
So is this legislation misplaced? Should it be "illegal" to sell Adults Only or Mature games to minors? As far as I know, ESRB ratings are voluntary. Should they be relied upon to penalize retailers?
I guess I sound like a broken record, but in my opinion this legislation is misplaced. Instead of focusing on penalizing, we should be focused on education. Unless this entire proposal is intended solely to raise revenue, why not take the appropriations for processing penalties and use the funds to educate parents/retailers, etc.
What do you think?
