Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaylena  USSC |
Do you mean SCOTUS?
I kid, I kid.
In any case, a few points (and I'll point out that I'm not a lawyer OR paralegal, and I was mostly just fucking with you when I said that):
-There just isn't anything here that appears to be prosecutable until there's some evidence that someone's made sexual contact with an actual child. It's been said repeatedly in this thread but bears repeating; I'd need a lot better evidence than some people saying that some threads with allegations of actual sexual contact with minors MIGHT have been deleted from the Blizzard boards before I would be convinced otherwise.
-The Miller Test isn't even "bench law", in that it de facto creates something prosecutable in and of itself; it's a legal test to see whether OTHER law can be applied. You can't be sent to jail for violating the Miller Test, and I'm not sure an only very tangentially applicable Georgia blue law changes that, particularly not in an interstate commerce situation like an MMORPG.
-ESRB ratings aren't legally binding; game companies participate in the system so that they can sell their games at Wal-Mart or wherever but the rating system itself has no legal standing. So again, no one is going to jail for introducing content into a game that would change its ESRB rating.
Could these individuals, or Blizzard, get sued for this sort of speech? Probably, because as a paralegal (tee hee, don't flip out!) you would know that the bar (get it?) is much lower for civil liability than for criminal charges.
I get why people get so emotional over this; it's a very unpleasant subject to think about, that there are people that have these sorts of urges. I'm right there with you that it's distasteful, and I agree that it's not something that should be happening within the context of an online game.
(although I do also agree with others that have said it's a slippery slope; to give an example that I'm sure I'll be called all sorts of names for, I think it's entirely appropriate for a gay-centric guild to be able to recruit like minded individuals so that they won't have to see "fag" used as an epithet every other line in guildchat; and for a lot of people in the flyover states, gay still equals pedophile)
But being icky and being something that you can put someone in jail for are two entirely different things.
