Venezuela Bans Violent Videogames and Toys
GamePolitics report that the Venezuelan government have passed a proposed law that makes it illegal to produce, sell, or import games and toys deemed too violent by Venezuela’s consumer protection society. It is a measure being taken to try and lower the nation’s notoriously high violent crime rates.
Breaking the law can carry jail time of between three and five years depending on the severity of the offence. In addition to the games and toys being banned, adverts for the sales of such articles will also be stopped from appearing on national media such as television.
Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, is widely regarded to have the highest murder-rate in the world due to drug and gang-related violence. The government stopped releasing official figures in 2005
I can understand the intent of these actions, but blinding the public to violent media strikes me as a rather poorly thought out and totalitarian way of dealing with a very real problem. As a Venezuelan gamer Guido Núñez-Mujica on BoingBoing (worth reading, by the way) points out;
This law makes selling video games to anybody actually worse than giving real guns or cigarettes to a minor, or even forcing him or her to work, as you get less jail time and lower fines if you do any of those things.
Videogames are being blamed here in an obvious attempt to use violent media as a scapegoat to distract people from more obvious issues, instead of implementing a solution that would deal with the problem more directly. It is a country in serious trouble.
This videogame ciminializing law isn’t going to land every person who’s imported a DS in jail, but it will be used selectively (be a good member of society else we’re sure we can find SOME law you’re breaking) because unfortunately, thats how the broken system is working.
I can think of some “violent” toys they shouldn’t ban. Hehehe.
My first thought was: Did us germans finally got rid of some of our politicians and they went to Venezuela instead?
I’m Venezuelan and I can safely say this law will not affect the majority of gamers. Everyone I know either imports or pirates the games anyways. In fact, most retail shops just buy it from retailers in the US and sell them back at 2x mark up to those that want to buy an original copy here so it’s a very shitty deal, on the other hand I’ve walked into shops in malls where they sell pirated games for about 1/10 the price you would pay.
It’s ass-backwards in our country, so it doesn’t really surprise nor faze me that something like this is happening.
@Dellgant: If only.