Flipside wrote:

claimed the Sims was an effective paedophilia simulator with accurately modelled 'nipples and labia'

Funny thing is, I've never even heard of anyone other than Jack Thompson trying to look between a Sim's legs...

f### that, I want to know where he found that mod!

This is interesting; see page 7 or so http://www.gamepolitics.com/images/ill-53.pdf

There's some interesting stuff in that decision; particularly a conclusion by the Seventh District Court that was cited.

It says minors have First Amendment rights.

That's news to me. I have long been under the impression that your Constitutional rights were not fully "active" until you reach majority. It also opens a giant can of worms for suing the school districts if anybody notices like I did.

I would have thought that would have massive bearing on the current trend of punishing students who protest the war etc?

Flipside wrote:I would have thought that would have massive bearing on the current trend of punishing students who protest the war etc?

So far as I know, that's considered a violation of student's rights by anyone within hailing distance of sanity. Your age has no bearing on your right to nonviolent political protest. You can't arrest the kids in a march just like you can't arrest the adults.

I phrased the first part poorly. It says minors have full First Amendment rights.

I chose the phrasing "fully active" because your constitutional rights are generally understood to be curtailed in certain areas. You have a First Amendment right to buy porn if you want...but only as an adult. The banning of "foul" langauge in elementary schools makes an excellent example of the curtailed First Amendment rights of a minor. You can walk around a mall saying "Damn, s###, f###." over and over, and that's within your First Amendment rights as an adult. (Security may ask you to leave, however they really can't force you to unless you're yelling it. Then you're a public nuisance.) Such behavior is generally understood to not be within your First Amendment rights as a minor, however. (And security may forcibly remove you from the premises.)

Hmmmmm....

/me wonders if he should partially open a can of worms on Game Politics

ngtm1r wrote:You have a First Amendment right to buy porn if you want...but only as an adult.

That's not a first amendment right. You could say you have a first amendment right to make porn, but commerce isn't covered in the bill of rights.

And anyway, the Constitution only covers what the federal government can do. The citizens of the several states answer to the state constitutions.

Granted this isn't adhered to much anymore, but it's how things were originally set up.

Goober5000 wrote:Granted this isn't adhered to much anymore, but it's how things were originally set up.

For anyone not familiar with the US Constitution, the "non-adherence" that Goober's referring to was brought about by the Fourteenth Amendment, which, along with granting the right to vote regardless of race (and a few other miscellaneous items related to the Civil War), contained this clause:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Particularly within the past several decades, this has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to mean that no state can deny citizens rights that are granted to them as citizens of the United States. This has manifest itself through a series of Supreme Court decisions that have "incorporated" most of the Bill of Rights as being required to be held against the states, in addition to thier original restrictions on the federal government. Most of the individual state constitutions contain these very same protections, but as those cases show, this isn't always the case. The clause is also related to the section in the Fifth Amendment that states that no person can be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." There are a few rather extreme people out there who feel that this interpretation is a grievous infringement on states' rights, but that's a relatively rare view even among those who favor a smaller central government. In general, these Court decisions have guaranteed that the fundamental protections in the Bill of Rights are applicable at any level of government.

(If you're wondering, yes, I'm a sucker for constitutional law. )