Digital Cream

Though this only affects Australia, I still want to highlight the issue as a global one and urge people to take action. I wrote about this in a previous post and unfortunately, nearly three years later, this beast lurches on. In a nutshell, the current coalition (led by the Labor party, the main left party here in Oz) wants to impose two layers of ISP-level net filtering. I fully oppose one and partially oppose the other. They are discussed well at the EFA and the blog Somebody Think Of The Children; I will summarize here. (continued »)

Gday me heartys! So it be that on Talk Like A Pirate Day a story swings upon me decks. Though ‘t be a sore burden t’speak o’ video game laws in this gamesome tone, the laws o’ the sea be the laws o’ the sea, and speak like a landlubber may I not.

Grab yer tankard and roll a barrel to the foredeck as I give ye the news from Oklahoma, far over the rollin’ waves in the New World. It just so happens that a right wise wig-wearin’ man o’ the law there, deemed he a stop t’a law forbiddin’ young scalawags from buyin’ certain video games. (continued »)

The leader of the major Left party in Australia, Labor, advocates making it the law that Oz ISPs by default block certain kinds of offensive material, unless otherwise requested by the ISP customer.

I think this is horrid and I oppose Labor’s stance. I am eager to get citizenship so I can speak out on this kind of thing but in the meantime I’ll just try to yammer on to you Aussies who can take action. (continued »)

This is due to the HotCoffee fiasco which I presume everyone already knows about.

I think the action by the ESRB forcing an AO rating onto GTA:SA is justified. Rockstar needs to be spanked in order to bolster confidence in the ESRB rating system, which is (at least for now) protecting our industry from heavy-handed governmental regulation.

The political grandstanding about this is, as usual, both amusing and revolting. But that’s to be expected. Rockstar were idiots to allow this to happen and I want to personally slap those responsible.

I’m more willing than anyone to see an AO game be made and sold to enormous profit… but it must be clearly rated as such. Rockstar has set things back considerably.