A proposed bill by Fourkiller, if voted in, would levy a 1% tax on games rated “teen”, “mature” or “adult only”. The funds raised would go towards making kids less fat and less violent. How this would be achieved exactly is not mentioned, but the “Childhood Outdoor Education Revolving Fund” and “Bullying Prevention Revolving Fund” are where the dolllars would be diverted.

Fourkiller explains the urgency of the problem:

“it being immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety…[the law] shall take effect and be in full force from and after its passage and approval.”

In any event, the representative seems very happy in his picture and I hope he has good luck fighting laziness and obesity. The bill would take effect July 1st of this year if it were passed. One question I would ask Fourkiller is, “why are these lazy children playing games which are rated to be only for teens and adults?”. It will be interesting to see what happens with this one.

According to TMZ, a user posted “inappropriate” comments on the FoxSports.com team page and was consequently banned. As this course of action probably makes sense among the high-brow denizens who frequent the WPN page, this particular commenter on FoxSports.com didn’t take kindly to being banned and so the troll proceeded to threaten to assault the Fox Sports folks. TMZ recounted the story so eloquently that I can’t possibly improve upon it so I’m just going to share their words here:

The LAPD is on the hunt for a cyber-douchebag who threatened to attack the people at FoxSports.com … all because they blocked the idiot from posting on their message board.

According to official police documents, Fox Sports later received a threatening message which the user sent to the “report abuse” tab … which read, “All you moderators are c**ksuckers and one day you are going to get your faces caved in to your brain.”

The message continued, “You think just because you do this over the Internet you cannot be located. You are wrong …. Watch your ass you f**king b*tches. I am coming for you …”

FoxSports.com security officials told police they were “extremely concerned for the safety” of the staff … and insisted they are “not taking this threat lightly.”

No word on what the “inappropriate comment” was that the troll posted that got them banned in the first place. As much as I want to dimiss these threatening comments as the hollow product of a trifling troll with too much time on their hands, I suppose FoxSports did the right thing in notifying the LAPD because the last thing any of us need is some disgruntled commenter spraying bullets inside the office of people who write things for the Internet – and all because their comment(s) got flagged.

Luckily, I and the rest of my fellow writers at WPN never have to worry about being on the receiving end of this kind of malice and violence.

…Right?

Enjoy all the chaos recorded during Black Friday 2011, where the joy of the beginning of the Christmas season was uploaded for all of us to see on YouTube.

The first set of videos shows that it’s not just the big ticket items people were going crazy over. Towels for $1.28!!!

Along with the random bouts of chaos, there was some extreme physical consequences. Not just for people, but all the Wal-Mart displays as well.

This one actually has some character, and plot development as well…

One of the new trends during the Black Friday 2011 season was the use of police force and pepper spray. No, this isn’t related to the meme.

(Warning: this one is bloody, and a step above the others on the disturbing ladder)

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend, and enjoyed some great Black Friday sales. Time to start training for next year.

Today, the crown for ultra-violent games falls on titles like Call of Duty and Battlefield: Bad Company – both of which have new additions coming out this fall. And according to Doom creator John Carmack, it would probably be good for your stress level to play them.

Speaking to Industry Gamers, Carmack said that not only do violent games not contribute to violent behavior in real life, but they actually provide a release valve for aggression.

I really think, if anything, there is more evidence to show that the violent games reduce aggression and violence. There have actually been some studies about that, that it’s cathartic. If you go to QuakeCon and you walk by and you see the people there [and compare that to] a random cross section of a college campus, you’re probably going to find a more peaceful crowd of people at the gaming convention. I think it’s at worst neutral and potentially positive.

The debate between activist groups and the gaming community has been a heated one for some time. Doom found itself in the middle of the controversy in 1999 when it was suggested that Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were obsessed with the game. Cop killers have even used their addictions to games like Grand Theft Auto as defenses in court.

The question “Do violent video games lead to violent kids?” has plenty of studies on both sides. Studies by Harvard University and The British Medical Journal have shown no conclusive link between the two.

Carmack addressed this controversy as well:

People just play games now and I never took seriously the violence in video games debate. It was basically talking points for people to get on CNN and espouse their stuff on there,” he told us.

There was an E3 where all that was going on where I was giving interviews and the reporters would start going into their questions, and I wasn’t supposed to talk about any of that. My wife was there and she’d start kicking me when I was about to go, ‘Well, I think…’ And in the end it didn’t matter, it didn’t make any impact on things. I never felt threatened by it and it turned out not to matter.

Violent video games have been in the news again recently. Last month the U.S Supreme Court ruled that states could not ban the sale of violent video games to minors, citing the fact that video games are protected as free speech.

And just a couple of weeks ago it was discovered that Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik may have used Call of Duty to train for his attacks. In his 1,500 page manifesto he wrote “I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game. It is probably the best military simulator out there and it’s one of the hottest. I see MW2 more as part of my training-simulation than anything else.”

Where do you fall in the debate? Do you think that violent video games can be beneficial by providing some sort of catharsis for the players? Let us know in the comments.

This is not a new process, but YouTube is calling attention to it as well as the fact that they have changed the "minors fighting" flag with "youth violence". This is presumably to lend a more serious-sounding connotation to it to inspire more people to use the flag.

YouTube appears to be stressing the importance of community to an effort like this, almost as if it were a virtual neighborhood watch. A post from the YouTube Team on the official blog says:

Think of the Guidelines and the flagging pull-down menu as part of our ongoing conversation with you. We give you a structure that makes it easier for you to talk to us, and you become the eyes and ears of the site. Of course, the best conversations are never static, and the same is true about this one. We’re always reviewing our Guidelines and the flagging categories to make sure they reflect what you see on the site…

With 13 hours of video uploaded every minute, we need you to be our first line of defense against content that violates our Community Guidelines, and we’ll keep doing all we can to make doing your part clear and easy.

I was not aware that youth violence was such a problem for YouTube. Obviously it’s a problem in the real world, but I did not realize that YouTube was having so much trouble policing the site for it. Perhaps if I had been searching for "kids beating each other up" I would have known better.

I doubt that a large percentage of the YouTube community reads the YouTube blog, so even though they have called attention to the issue there, I wouldn’t expect a drastic increase in flagging of these videos. Still, the new flag label might encourage some to act.

Fake Steve Jobs (AKA Forbes senior editor Dan Lyons) has been penning the Fake Steve satirical blog of the Apple co-founder to the bemusement of folks in the Valley. With potrayals of Microsoft boss Bill Gates as “Beastmaster Bill” (both Bill and the real Steve are fans of the blog), it’s garnered nothing less than a rabid following.

The blog contains nuggets of Silicon Valley life, like the recent entry “Java Developers Finally Realize The Party’s Over“:

But I think they don’t quite know which party they’re talking about. See this screed where some Javatard says Apple has been spitting in his face because we didn’t include Java 6 in Leopard. Or something. So he says he’s selling his Mac. His headline is, “So long, Apple. The party’s over.” Well he’s right about one thing. The party is over — the Java party, that is. Glad to see the Javatards have finally figured that out.

The pithy entries, are as amusing as the videos like “No Violence, But Clearly An IP Violation”

WebProNews conducted an interview with FakeSteve in conjunction with the launch of the new 248-page “Options” penned by FakeSteve, here’s an excerpt of an interview WebProNews did with FakeSteve:

1) The black turtlenecks you wear – humble article of well-made clothing, or a divine right conveyed upon you by the higher power that inspires gadgets like the iPod and the iPhone?

The former. I view my outfit as a form of monk’s robes. The idea is to abolish vanity and express my humility so that I can focus completely on my art. All I want to do is create beautiful objects. That is the only thing I want to think about. Not trivial things like clothing.

-

If anything, this is a classic case study that strong content can bring you to high places…

Now on with beautiful objects and creating things…

MySpace, Say Anything But That

So, my future stepson’s fourteen. Big YouTube fan. Likes his music irreverent, edgy, antiestablishment. I think that’s healthy and normal. His mother’s taught him right. He calls me over to the computer and says, "Have you heard of ‘Say Anything?’"

And I’m like, "Duh!" John Cusack with that stupid boombox over his head. And he’s like, "What’s a boombox?"

He says, "No, old dude," (I’m 30), and he brings up a YouTube video that I’m not going to link to because I’m sure it will be DMCA’d as soon as I do. It’s a tribute video, not the studio production of the band Say Anything’s song "Little Girls," with the lyrics appearing in sync with the audio, a Web 2.0 version of the old red bouncing ball, of which he probably also knows nothing.

The lyrics go:

I kill, kill, kill little girls.
I kill, kill, kill little girls.
It’s such a thrill, thrill, thrill to the world
when I kill, kill, kill little girls. 

The video cycles through pictures of little girls at birthday parties and such.

As my stomach turns, he’s laughing his head off and looking at me like I should be laughing with him. If the teenagers in the comments section beneath the video were standing in the room with us, they’d all be lmaoing and wondering why I wasn’t too.

I’m not laughing because I’m at once disgusted and conflicted. I think of Columbine and Virginia Tech, of child predators, of all the sickos out there that these teenagers probably haven’t thought much about between Biology and English. They’re not having the visceral, sad, sickening feelings I am when I think of it – it’s just a bunch of nonsense to them. They don’t watch the news.

But I’m also a defender of the arts, of free speech, and I remember how unjust and crazy and un-American I thought it was that Dee Snider was yanked in front of Congress to talk about some stupid song lyrics that the kids seem to get but the adults were outraged by.

And here I am, with only a few white hairs parked amid my dark chocolate waves, just one foot into full-on adulthood and still breaking in a 401(k), thinking the world is about to end because of a rock band. I could stomach Ozzie, Marilyn Manson and Mudvayne, but not this?

To be fair, judging from other lyrics it does seem to be some sort of shock rock attack on prettiness – you know, all the glossy lipstick DUI insanity inflicted on us from the Lindsay Lohan absurdities out there.

Other Say Anything titles include "It’s a Metaphor, Fool" (okay, fine, you don’t really want to put sixteen bullets in my head) and "I Will Never Write An Obligatory Song About Being On The Road And Missing Someone" which is just hysterical. 

With over 238,000 friends, the band is quite popular on MySpace, which is why I bring it up here. That, and by sheer coincidence, the day after I first heard their song about killing little girls, MySpace announced their first concert tour.

Guess who was headlining.

Weird, huh?

I tried to contact the band to ask them to explain the lyrics to me, but they have not responded.

I wanted to ask MySpace how promoting a band that sings songs about killing little girls fits into their aggressive campaign against child predation on their website, but neither MySpace nor Fox Interactive Media returned requests for comment. 

But don’t tell that to Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.). This week, Diaz-Balart introduced the Web Video Violence Act, a bill that “encourages” states to impose stiffer sentences against people who post videos of violent acts online. I use the word “encourages” because states would have a choice, if they don’t mind giving up some crime-fighting federal funding.

The bill comes in response to concern about young people, especially teenagers, attacking victims and then posting videos of the attack on MySpace and YouTube – and therefore encouraging others to do the same. The goal is understandable, and honorable, but it seems a little like spitting in the wind. TechDirt points out that by them posting the videos, they’re actually aiding law enforcement.

“In today’s technologically savvy world, we need to look at ways to curb the promotion of violence among students,” Diaz-Balart said.

“The recent trend of posting videotaped attacks onto websites like MySpace is especially disturbing since these videos are clearly intended to further humiliate the victims as well as spread fear and intimidation…

“These attacks are bad enough. We don’t need to promote them throughout cyberspace.”

Here are excerpts from the actual language of the bill:

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