Quote Originally Posted by Yeargdribble View Post
If the ratings were defined by a third party rather than any government body, would this change your mind? I can see the potential slippery slope of a bill like this. However, if they simply said that the ESRB was doing a good job and that stores selling games inappropriate to their ESRB rating warranted a fine... I really don't have a problem with that.
No, that's exactly WHY it's a problem. If the government wants to legally enforce age ratings, well, I'm not going to blow anything up; I don't really agree with it but it's not exactly unprecedented, and most jurisdictions allow either de jure or de facto parental override, which I find satisfactory enough to tolerate*. The problem, and something which to my understanding has been at the core of every single court review of such a bill that has led to them all, every last one, being struck down, is that the government cannot make a third-party ratings system a legal guideline.

In purely practical terms I think this would be a waste of resources. Many stores already come down hard on employees who violate their rules, and contrariwise we can see given the continuing struggles of governments that they can't stop kids getting stuff like cigarettes and alcohol if the store doesn't care, which many don't, because they don't think they'll get caught. It's a waste of resources, and whilst I'm not going to suggest a government can't do two things at once, I think the gains are so marginal that it's really not worth enacting, and then enforcing and prosecuting etc.

Finally because these things are the thin end of the wedge. This sort of law isn't really a problem but they are always, always introduced by people who seek far stricter controls and indeed censorship and banning. Seeing as I have no problem with the existing system, I have no incentive to meet them halfway when I consider them to very probably be emboldened if they succeed and begin posing more and more of a threat to freedom of speech.

* Ultimately I am deeply wary of a government which decides what its citizens may see and listen to, and object to it on philosophical grounds, but as I say the practical reality means I'm not terrible bothered by the systems as they exist.