It is truly baffling to me that people immediately jump to blame violent video games when a shooting happens and that now $10 million dollars will be spent on game violence research. What ever happened to plain old criminology? There are a myriad of other ways to explain such tragedies but for political leaders to be so quick to point the finger at video games reeks of intolerance, stereotyping, sexism and ultimately disrespect. Violent video games are so pervasive now that, in my opinion, it is akin to saying that there is a connection between young men who wear shorts and violence. Virtually every young man wears shorts. Virtually every young man plays violent video games. There are no actual numbers that I could find regarding the percentage of men who play violent video games but we can assume from the fact that since over 85% of video games include violence (in whatever capacity) that the numbers are high.
But what’s with talking about men all the time anyways?
I take offence to the fact that violent video games are being blamed for shootings because, like a large portion of the gaming culture, it completely disregards the fact that women play violent video games too and make up nearly half of all gamers. 62 mass shootings — defined as a single spree that killed at least four people — have been carried out in the U.S. since 1982. Only one was perpetrated by a female. In 2006, Jennifer San Marco fatally shot her former neighbor, then drove to work and killed six colleagues before turning her gun on herself (http://theweek.com/article/index/237938/why-are-there-so-few-female-mass-murderers). If women play these games too, then why are there virtually no mass shootings committed by women? Probably because there are other criminological factors such as simply being male, having a mental illness (Adam Lanza, Dylan Kleebold anyone?), checking off the majority of boxes on Hare’s psychopathy checklist (Eric Harris anyone?). Or maybe because they interact with anti-social peers (differential association) or for whatever reason feel they cannot achieve popularity, fame, wealth etc through legitimate means and therefore attempt to obtain these things through crime instead (theory of anomie, strain theory). Or perhaps they do not play sports or have pro-social relationships? (social control theory). These are much more plausible reasons for a mass shooting.
Ultimately, we are asking the wrong question.
The question should not be asking why people commit mass shootings. It should be asking why people don’t commit mass shootings. Since there are so many gamers, we must ask why young men who play violent video games do not commit violent acts if we really want to find out what actually causes these mass shooting tragedies. And I am willing to bet that video games are not the cause.
Interesting discussions today in class. Some thoughts and concerns:
I find it quite reasonable to recognize copyright protections for expressions and NOT ideas. If the goal of copyright is to promote and encourage new works and the dissemination of these works, what would affording “exclusivity for a period of time” on an idea even look like? I can imagine a 1984 scenario playing out whereby thought police are invoked to enforce some statutory damages on having contemplated on an idea that had previously been contemplated on .. by anyone… It becomes absurd fast. Protections should only be granted to those individuals contributing to the commons/market place of ideas through expressions; if for no other reason than for lack of feasibility in copyright protecting “ideas”. Far be it from me to speak on the chaos of the modern patent system – perhaps in some other post since the “the tragedy of the commons” was raised and the bigger problem I see in the patent system is the tragedy of the ANTICOMMONS.
Ken raised some issues on the permissibility of mash-ups and extra contributions to the commons through such modification and additions. I like the idea of the copyright modernization act allowing for such things under fair usage; but it doesn’t escape me that such things can easily be abused.
Imagine Joanne Rowling having just finished her final sentence on what could potentially be one of the world’s best selling novel’s “Harry Potter”. Now imagine Tyler-the-lazy-jerk doing little more than copying/mashing up/modifying every iteration of the name “Harry” and any other signals that the character is male. Imagine I modify it to be Harriette. The book may still be wonderfully written (as it’s substantially the work of a good writer), but now it’s in the genre of “homoerotic magical fantasy”. Worse, I may have greater resources through piracy/internet to propagate my version of the book. I may propagate the homoerotic version of the book so adequately that consumers are more likely to associate the story in that particular niche; and Joanne Rowling as a writer within that subculture. At the very least she’ll have lost control of her work and have gained the reputation (that she didn’t intend to have) of being a great homoerotic fantasy fiction writer. At the very worst, I’ll have destroyed any chance she had of being popular amongst her original target audience – young males not interested in reading about “witch…craft…”
I use this as the example because Joanne Rowling used JK Rowling as the author’s name (not having a middle initial) to simply make it ambiguous as to whether she was female; thereby not alienating herself from the overly sexist niche of young males who might have discriminated. The connotation is irrelevant, it could just have easily been modified to be white power literature (simply make Voldemort the only black character…); it’s that the original author loses control with anyone messing with the integrity of the work. Where’d late 90s music sensation “Creed” go? Did someone by chance mash up one of their songs with something a little too Christian Rock? Gain fans from a minority subculture at the cost of everyone else … ?
Imagine someone (or a corporation hired to do such things) doing malicious mash ups to out-compete and over propagate over an authors intent… Imagine having no recourse because the legislator said it was “fair use”.
What do you think? How are real and virtual guns the same/different from the perspective of causality? Are they lines on a continuum or “apples and oranges”?
Lawrence Lessig is a well deserved legend in digital media legal circles. See Prof. Lessig’s comments below, but before you do to better understand the background at least scan the introductory article (or many others like it you will find this morning on the web). Prof. Lessig’s comments go to one of the themes of the course and one of most useful filters/tools as we navigate through the challenges and confusion of the law & ethics of digital media – the double standards test. In this iteration should those who hold others accountable be held accountable (within the law)?
Ironic that this question, here applied to prosecutorial conduct around IP related court actions finds (far less tragic) application in many digital media situations from take-down demands to IP holders being a bit more lax on “borrowing” the constituant elements of what became their IP then ultimately allowing their work to be “borrowed”…but that topic is most certainly for another day….