Course:Legal Constraints on Digital Creativity/Course Notes/10. Criminal Law

From UBC Wiki

CRIMINAL & OBSCENITY LAWS

EXPLICIT, VIOLENT & HATE CONTENT

  • “Facebook gets an A- for fighting ‘digital hate,’ Twitter gets incomplete”: http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/facebook-gets-an-a–for-fighting-digital-hate-twitter-gets-incomplete/article2441476/?service=mobile
  • The “Hot Coffee” controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_mod
  • “Can’t We Discuss This Like Adults?: Sexualised violence against women is a serious topic. It deserves a serious debate, not conniving and dishonesty” – Rob Fahey, May 31, 2012:
    “This week’s example, of course, is the trailer for Hitman: Absolution which has been released by Square Enix. It’s a rubbish trailer, showing absolutely nothing of relevance to the game and actually turning fans of the series off the latest incarnation by suggesting that it’s a sub-par action romp rather than a stealthy, fairly cerebral affair – in that alone, the marketing team responsible (who are undoubtedly patting themselves on the back for generating such a media storm around the brand) are desperately underselling the work of the development team, who are working on what is by all accounts a great-looking new game. That’s not the key issue, though. What has disturbed many people is that the trailer appears to strongly sexualise and fetishise not just its disposable female characters, but also the actual act of killing them.
    Let’s be absolutely clear that it’s that factor which is the issue. It’s not the fact that there are nuns in the game who then turn out to be sexy nun assassins in suspender belts. You want sexy nun assassins in your game trailer? Be my guest. It looks ridiculous, and I don’t see them getting much assassinating done while wearing those heels, but if you think your target audience is the demographic slice of people who get turned on by poorly CG rendered assassins in habits and stiletto heels, go for it. Nor is the issue the fact that Agent 47 commits violent acts against women. He’s a hitman, assassins are attacking him, he kills them. That’s not the problem.
    The problem is the interaction between those two things. The thought process of the creators of this trailer is naked for the world to see. Gamers like sexy women. Let’s have sexy women, and let’s make them sexy nuns because that’s edgy. You know what else is edgy? Having the dark anti-hero kill women, rather than the usual faceless male soldiers and thugs. That’ll get headlines. Let’s do that.
    One of two things happens at that point. Either the marketing team managed to completely not realise that the interaction between “sexy” and “violent death” might not be an entirely comfortable one; or they did realise, and went ahead anyway, which labels them as an utterly unpleasant and irresponsible bunch of sociopaths. I’m going with option A. I prefer to see the good in people, even if that means thinking they’re a little bit dim.
    The issue here, then, is the sexualisation of violence against women. It’s an issue rooted in a whole morass of problems that our society struggles with. The video makes it seem as if it’s “okay” for Agent 47 to kill these women not because they’re assassins, but because they turn out to be dressed like prostitutes under their nuns’ robes. It creates shots which emphasise the sexiness of the women even as they’re being killed, and even highlights the sexiness of their corpses (there’s one for “words I wished I’d never have to write on a gaming website, or indeed anywhere”). It intercuts the whole thing with slow-motion, stylised shots of Agent 47′s gleaming pistols being raised into the air. The imagery is deliberately powerfully sexual. It’s also deliberately powerfully violent. Square Enix intended both of those things to be present in the imagery. I don’t think (wishful, perhaps) that they quite intended their interaction to be so horrific. In a society where 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence, Square Enix just released a video of violence against women presented as sexy and fetishised. That’s the issue.”
    http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-05-31-cant-we-discuss-this-like-adults?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=european-daily
  • Is the videogame business about to wake up from its violent dream? Censorship and attempts at censorship (for example around the GTA4 “Hot Coffee” debacle naturally rallied many of us to fight threatened constraints and irrational fears. But as games have progressively moved out of the eye of censorious storm, other reasons to diminish the role of violence and sex in games have become obvious – namely that those “features” don’t make particularly good games, particularly in excess. This suggests that just as the best way to distort a market and make your product a success whether it is any good or not is to get it banned, the fight over censorship of violence and sex actually delays the real reckoning over the role of those factors – which is one of artistic value not cultural values.

For an excellent and well thought out example of appropriate creative handwringing related to excess violence in games see:

“A History of Violence: So Where Do We Go From Here?”
By Matthew Handrahan, June 12,2012
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-06-11-a-history-of-violence-so-where-do-we-go-from-here?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=european-daily

For possible misuses of criminal law see Russian Authorities Are Deciding If It’s Illegal to Paint Putin in a Negligee @ Smithsonian.com

But especially read most everything about the Aaron Swartz case, including What killed Aaron Swartz? @ Politico: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/what-killed-aaron-swartz-95979.html

As well do not miss Lawrence Lessig on “Aaron’s Laws – Law and Justice in a Digital Age”

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