U.S. Dist. Court Judge George Steeh granted the videogame industr...
U.S. Dist. Court Judge George Steeh granted the videogame industry’s request for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the new Mich. law that would make it illegal to rent or sell sexually explicit and graphically violent games to minors.…
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In his decision, Steeh said videogames are protected by the First Amendment, as videogame trade groups have consistently maintained. Steeh said he granted the preliminary injunction because the plaintiffs -- the Entertainment Software Assn. (ESA), VSDA and Mich. Retailers Assn. -- “demonstrated that the Act,” Public Act (P.A. 108), “is unlikely to survive scrutiny, and that irreparable harm follows from the loss of First Amendment freedoms.” The judge said the claim by Mich. Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) and other defendants that a “compelling state interest” justifies the law wasn’t convincing, because the state failed to prove a link between violent videogames and minors’ behavior. Steeh also said the research “did not evaluate the independent effect of violent videogames, and thus provides no support for the Act’s singling out of videogames from other media.” He went on to say that “the response to the Act’s threat of criminal penalties will likely be responded to by self-censoring by game creators, distributors and retailers, including ultimately pulling ‘T’ and ‘M’ rated games off store shelves altogether.” Steeh joined the law’s critics in concluding “there is a serious problem in determining which games are prohibited to be sold or displayed to minors under the Act.” ESA Pres. Douglas Lowenstein said his group was “gratified” by Steeh’s decision. He said that “rather than continuing to play politics and pursuing this case to its inevitable defeat, further wasting Michigan taxpayers’ dollars along the way, we hope the state will start to join us in a common effort to take steps that actually help parents raise their kids in a healthy and safe way.” Interactive Entertainment Merchants Assn. (IEMA) Pres. Hal Halpin conceded that the issue was “far from settled.” But he said “our members can begin the always-important holiday selling season knowing that we will not be placed in the position of trying to discern which games may or may not run afoul of the law.” Granholm didn’t respond to a request for comment by our deadline.