EU Parliament Passes Red Button Resolution

Remember this? Yes the brilliant idea of adding a “Red Button” to electronic devices so parents can turn them of and regulate access to them just got passed in the EU parliament with 552 votes to 12.

Patrick Steen of Gamezine summarises the though of every intelligent human beeing on this pretty good by saying:

Forgive me for being naive, but isn’t this called the “Off” button? And controlling access to what your children play? Isn’t that called “parenting”? Parents should not only know what games their children are playing before they buy them, but they should follow the well defined BBFC and PEGI age ratings,

After reading the original paper, titeled Protection of consumers, in particular minors, in respect of the use of video games it became clear to me what the goal of this really is.

Parliament calls on the Commission and Member States, in cooperation with the industry, to explore the merit of developing a ‘red button’ which can be included on (mobile) consoles or game devices and computers and which disables a certain game or which can control access to a game during certain hours or certain parts of the game. It also calls for additional efforts in this respect, including the possibility of integrating an acoustic warning into the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) age rating system, and counts on the professional game sector systematically to integrate access models for online games in order to ensure that minors are not exposed to harmful content online.

So what they want is a button that allows the parents to park the kids in front of the TV and don’t worry about it anymore. And then they turn around and stress the importance of improving the PEGI rating systems and the awareness of parents. Points mentioned as appropiate for member states are:

‘¢ work with consumer organisations and other stakeholders to raise awareness among consumers, especially young consumers and their parents, of the classification systems in place and in particular the PEGI system;
‘¢ conduct information campaigns for parents and schoolteachers aimed at bridging the technological generation gap and at promoting the PEGI and PEGI Online systems and promoting safer, more aware use of new technologies, including video games;
‘¢ facilitate the exchange of best practice among competent national educational authorities in the short-term with a view to integrating gaming literacy within the educational objectives of primary and secondary schools;
‘¢ frame specific civil and criminal legislation on the retailing of violent TV, video and computer games. Special attention should be paid to online games aimed primarily at children and young people whose purpose is to generate profit;
‘¢ discourage, through specific legislative measures, the misuse of online games for dishonest commercial activities, such as those which dishonestly induce underage users to enter into legal commitments and which send anticompetitive promotional messages;
‘¢ work with authorities in other parts of the world to encourage the adoption of international guidelines, labelling systems and codes of conduct to promote global classification systems for video games and online games.

Hooray for sending out mixed signals.

To be fair, apart from the idiotic red button idea this isn’t all a bad thing. They want to prevent minors from access to violent media, which is fine in my book. The paper even says in the beginning that there are no known direct connections between violence in video games and violence in real life.

But since this is only a resolution and not a law, the member states pretty much can wipe their asses with it.

Via gamezine

Post pic by Pulpolux !!!