Fragging the Bad Bill
I alerted everyone I could about HB 0257, the proposed ammendment to the Utah "pornography" law (officially the "materials harmful to minors" law, though they have YET to find any kind of real link between videogame violence and long-term "real world" violence, though they have CERTAINLY tried). I e-mailed the representatives of Utah's House Judiciary Committee, and actually got responses from two of them (one was a form letter, the other was a very short note that she was also concerned about the bill).

Naturally, I didn't get an email from Rep. David Hogue, who is my district's rep., and who sponsored the bill.

The committee met on the bill while I was at work, but a friend of mine listened in on an Internet broadcast of the hearing. According to him, the Utah Retail Merchant's Association was there to complain bitterly about the bill. One of their points was that there is a 30-day MINIMUM jail sentence associated for violators of this law, which could happen JUST FOR advertising a game or movie in the newspapers, or displaying it on a rack. They also noted that the newspapers themselves could be in violation of the law for going into the details of a violent crime yet failing to report on the consequences (because the consequences haven't occured yet), OR they could be in violation for only reporting the consequences of a brutal crime.

Apparently they tried to salvage the bill at the last second by creating a quick-and-dirty ammendment (trying to get it passed so they could then QUIETLY re-ammend it later once it's already a law) by changing a bunch of "Or" clauses into "And" clauses - restricting the definition of what constitutes inappropriate violence.

The modified bill came EXTREMELY close to passing through the committee - it was a six-six split. Since the majority did not favor it, the bill could not pass out of the committee with recommendation, so it's pretty much dead. If it HAD passed, I guess it would have gone on to a general vote. But I think at this point it's dead-dead-dead. Until someone resurrects it under a new name and slightly different language.

The summary of the rise and fall of this incredibly bad bill can be found here:
http://www.le.state.ut.us/~2006/status/hbillsta/HB0257.htm

I am just nervous about how close this bill came to actually passing through committee. Six committee members voted in favor of it.

Man, I've never been this political before. As I am also a part-time computer game developer, I look at everyday events in life and ask, "Could this be turned into a computer game?" So how about the whole process of getting a bill through city, state, or federal legislative process. Until it was something I cared about, the whole thing sounded dry as toast. But as the TV shows "The West Wing" and "Commander-In-Chief" have shown, the whole political and governmental process can be punched up to become nicely dramatic and juicy, full of backstabbing, spinning, wheeling, and dealing. There's disguising really crappy laws with all kinds of "pork" in them with titles and overall 'summaries' that sound really, really good to voters. It's a "Protection of Family Values" bill, or an "Election Reform" bill, when really it's a "Make More Exceptions To That Pesky Bill of Rights" bill that also grants congressman raises, forces the military to buy tanks from a factory in a sponsoring congressman's home district, and raises taxes in some minor way that they hope nobody will notice.

Would that be interesting fodder for a game?

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:21 AM (Permalink)