European Parliament Wants One-Button MMOG Interdiction

From GamePolitics, we learn that a committee of the European Parliament wants a screen-closing red button on keyboards so parents can press it when something awful happens.  Online content is user-generated, meaning that provider censorship schemes don't work. You can't punish Verizon for things people say on Verizon cell phones. But I guess you could require Verizon to put a red button on the phone, so that a father who felt his daughter was in an awful conversation could turn the phone off before too much damage was done. Yeah. I guess you could do that.

Comments

[toychristopher]

1.

It's called alt-f4. Once again if they learn about technology instead of screaming in terror they would discover the 'solution' already exsists.

[Zubon]

2.

My monitor already has an "off" button. My internet browser has an "X" in the upper-right, in case alt-f4 is too hard to remember.

And my phone also has a red "off" button. But, like the computer "off" button, you must hold it down a while to shut the thing off. It terminates a call immediately.

[Adam Hyland]

3.

Lulz. They should take that "instant off" complaint up with Intel for inserting a four second delay into ATX. This is a slightly less amusing moral panic than the one over terrorism in wow, though that one garnered extra points as it was clear someone was just milking their research grant.

[Daniel Stengel]

4.

Had a look at the press statement and couldn't believe it. Does this mean that - for proper use of the button - parents would have to watch their children playing all the time, always ready to leap forward to interrupt the game? If that's the plan, I'd vote for it immediately! Pure quality time for educating the parents.

I'm happy that they realised at least that "[t]he presence of violence in video games does not automatically lead to violent behaviour". I think we all got lucky, then.

It's scary that these people who have really no clue at all are representing me (among others).

[Arlene McCarthy fan]

5.

Look who sits on that Committee chair?
Arlene McCarthy !

[SusanC]

6.

After a bit of web searching, I found the actual report and the amendments.

In clause 14, it says:

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 a game;

.. which makes it sound more like the parental controls interfaces we already have in many systems (e.g. Windows Vista), rather than an actual "red button".

In general, I'm against government committees trying to legislate user interfaces: there is no reason to believe that they will be any good at it.

[Cunzy1 1]

7.

I did some digging around the EP minutes and here are some of their further demands over the coming years:

1) Panic Button.

2) Parental Controls to come as standard on all gaming devices, telephones and kettles.

3) Some kind of rating system on games and sections of the internet so that parents can make a judgement about whether or not their child should be exposed to a game before completing it (with all endings) first or by cruising all the forums as a vulnerable to see if there are any filthy paedos out there.

4) Some kind of person to follow all our children around, play games with them and have conversations with them to find out what is really going on in their lives, their likes, dislikes, fears and general wellbeing. This person would then liaise with the parents for regular updates on all the different ways the technology literate filth men may get them.

5) Lethal injections on a key chain in case something really horrible happens online and nobody can reach any one of a gazillion buttons that will stop THE UNCONTROLLABLE PAEDOPHILE STUPID MAKING RAY FILTH DISGUTING that occassionally spontaneously burst from monitors on unsuspecting children and young adults. This way we can euthanise anyone who has been exposed. This is the responsible action in this scenario.

6) Foil hats.

[SusanC]

8.

In a somewhat related news story ...

A government minister has called for the universal blocking of child porn websites by ISPs in the UK.

Home Office representative Alan Campbell was speaking in light of figures which show even though over 95 per cent of broadband providers in the UK block access to websites listed by the Internet Watch Foundation, there is still five per cent who impose no such restrictions.

At present, UK ISP's can choose whether or not to block sites that are on the IWF's ban list, and, for various reasons that I won't bore people by repeating here, some of them have chosen not to.

The relevance for this discussion is that measures that start out being voluntary end up being made compulsory when some vendors/service providers decide not to go along with them. I would expect the gaming "red button" to follow a similar trajectory, unless the game developers manage some energetic lobbying against it at the outset.

[Adam Hyland]

9.

RE: the IWF. There is a pretty good Wikipedia article on that. They don't really just ban child porn.

Though that isn't too germane to the question of whether or not 100% of the internet there should be proxied, as opposed to 95%. My view is that if the UK pushes for ISPs to be forced to submit to IWF, then it becomes more of a quango than it was before. Maybe (doubt it), it will become governmental enough that they have some element of responsibility/accountability attached to them. that might be nice.

[hosting]

10.

Yes thats is a good idea. Thanks a lot. Good information

[David]

11.

Seems like an odd idea. The parent would have to play the game or watch the show in order to determine if the content is bad. That's a lot of time involved.

[alan adı]

12.

The Euro Guys are crazy horses. jiiiihaa

[mirc indir]

13.

Nice article. İm looking now. Thanx man ;)

[mini notebook]

14.

en ucuz ve kaliteli mini notebook lar burada.

[laptop]

15.

en ucuz laptoplar burda

[erkulmetal]

16.

Erkulmetal sizin mekanınız.