Hey everybody,
As you probably know, Brown v. EMA should be announced by the Supreme Court sometime tomorrow morning. I wrote a constitutional law article on the case law, cultural history, and theoretical work leading up to Brown v. EMA (formerly Schwarzenegger v. EMA). Tomorrow is the last day of the court's official schedule, so they'll either have to extend or make a ruling tomorrow.
My paper is available as a free .pdf download at SSRN and was published in the Northwestern Interdisciplinary Law Review.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1868759
Here's the abstract:
Prompted by the upcoming Supreme Court case Brown v. EMA (formerly Schwarzenegger v. EMA), this article explores the case history of electronic game censorship, the history of new media regulation, and how significant free speech theories can be applied to electronic games. In Brown v. EMA and similar cases, lawmakers have attempted to regulate electronic games based on their violent content, while earlier cases refused to consider electronic games as speech at all. This paper advocates a structuralist analysis of media, the expressive germ perspective, to determine which media should be considered speech. By focusing on the capabilities rather than the content of nascent media, courts can avoid misclassifying rightfully protected expression due to cultural prejudice or unfamiliarity with new media. Ultimately, this paper broadens the discussion raised by Brown v. EMA to interrogate our judiciary's failure to protect media in their formative stages and fulfill the anti-majoritarian goals of the First Amendment.
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I wrote it when I was an undergraduate with both general readers interested in video games and legal scholars in mind, so hopefully it should be pretty accessible. My core argument is that electronic games should have been protected by the First Amendment from the earliest cases in the late 1970s, but instead weren't recognized as speech at all due to a sociological phenomena called the River City effect. Basically, older generations are suspicious of new media (that they have little firsthand experience with) that appeal primarily to young people and unfairly stigmatize and regulate them. Even if electronic games are accorded full protection tomorrow (and I certainly hope they will be!), without a clear definition of speech, new media will likely continue to be censored because the lawmakers and judges responsible for those decisions can rely on their prejudice rather than an objective standard.
I'd be happy to answer questions about the case and hear any feedback from you guys!
As you probably know, Brown v. EMA should be announced by the Supreme Court sometime tomorrow morning. I wrote a constitutional law article on the case law, cultural history, and theoretical work leading up to Brown v. EMA (formerly Schwarzenegger v. EMA). Tomorrow is the last day of the court's official schedule, so they'll either have to extend or make a ruling tomorrow.
My paper is available as a free .pdf download at SSRN and was published in the Northwestern Interdisciplinary Law Review.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1868759
Here's the abstract:
Prompted by the upcoming Supreme Court case Brown v. EMA (formerly Schwarzenegger v. EMA), this article explores the case history of electronic game censorship, the history of new media regulation, and how significant free speech theories can be applied to electronic games. In Brown v. EMA and similar cases, lawmakers have attempted to regulate electronic games based on their violent content, while earlier cases refused to consider electronic games as speech at all. This paper advocates a structuralist analysis of media, the expressive germ perspective, to determine which media should be considered speech. By focusing on the capabilities rather than the content of nascent media, courts can avoid misclassifying rightfully protected expression due to cultural prejudice or unfamiliarity with new media. Ultimately, this paper broadens the discussion raised by Brown v. EMA to interrogate our judiciary's failure to protect media in their formative stages and fulfill the anti-majoritarian goals of the First Amendment.
----
I wrote it when I was an undergraduate with both general readers interested in video games and legal scholars in mind, so hopefully it should be pretty accessible. My core argument is that electronic games should have been protected by the First Amendment from the earliest cases in the late 1970s, but instead weren't recognized as speech at all due to a sociological phenomena called the River City effect. Basically, older generations are suspicious of new media (that they have little firsthand experience with) that appeal primarily to young people and unfairly stigmatize and regulate them. Even if electronic games are accorded full protection tomorrow (and I certainly hope they will be!), without a clear definition of speech, new media will likely continue to be censored because the lawmakers and judges responsible for those decisions can rely on their prejudice rather than an objective standard.
I'd be happy to answer questions about the case and hear any feedback from you guys!
. However, I don't have any actual experience in law so be prepared for any questions I may have while reading it