New York: FELONY for selling video games?

[KBCraig]

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/06/22/gamebill/index.php

June 22, 2007 2:53 pm ET

Game bill passes through New York legislature

By Eugene Huang, GamePro

The Lower Hudson Online reported that both the New York Assembly and New York Senate agreed on a bill Thursday that would essentially make it a felony to sell video games to minors that fall under the game's minimum age requirements.

As GamePro reported in late May, the bill originally passed through the New York Assembly with ease and only awaited a similar approval from the State Senate. The Senate agreed on Thursday, the last day of this year's legislative session.

"We were all always on the same page in protecting children. We just had to come up with ways to compromise," said Democratic Brooklyn Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, who co-chaired the joint conference committee.

In addition to the measure that would make the illegal sale of "violent" or "indecent" games into a felony, the bill also calls for all consoles to be equipped with some form of parental-control device that would limit access of such games to underage children. Additionally, New York retailers would have to label potentially offensive games under state guidelines, and a committee would be established to study inappropriate video games in general.

Although Governor Eliot Spitzer has not yet had a chance to fully examine the bill, it has been fully expected by most observers that he will sign it into law.

[Brock]

Electronics retailers on every border of New York salivate at the thought.  Anybody got a storefront in NJ near a train station?

[LiveFree]

Wow.  That seems like a pretty harsh way to deal with a problem that parents should be dealing with in the first place.

More nanny government from a socialist utopia, I suppose...

[Demolama]

Everything will become a felony.  After all Federal jurisdiction reaches every case now... constitutional or not. 

[penguins4me]

Everything will become a felony.  After all Federal jurisdiction reaches every case now... constitutional or not. 

Not sure what your precise point here was, although a "felony" is (roughly) defined as "any crime punishable by more than one year in confinement". It isn't necessary to violate a federal law to become a convicted felon (heck, sometimes you don't have to violate any law at all, see Cory Maye's travesty of justice).

[Spencer]

What a difference 200 years makes . . . felonies used to be limited to those offenses for which a person could be executed or have his estate forfeited.  Those felonies were limited to things like murder, manslaughter, robbery, rape, and burglary; now, violating obscure federal regulations regarding Medicare, etc. are felonies, as are possessing a plant (marijuana) and lying to the FBI (Martha Stewart).

America is going down the tubes, and the elevation of everything to a felony is part of the plan (in most states felons cannot vote; under federal law felons cannot possess firearms -- the definition of which includes ammunition).