Reuters reports:The video game industry told a federal appeals court on Wednesday that it has the same rights to free speech as moviemakers and publishers and urged the court to overturn a local government ban on the sale of violent video games to minors.Appearing before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, attorneys for the Interactive Digital Software Association, which represents the video game industry, argued that a lower court ruling upholding St. Louis County's restrictions on game sales should be overturned as unconstitutional.
Video games, like movies and books, are forms of expression protected under the First Amendment because they feature art, music and performance, IDSA lawyer Deanne Maynard told the court.
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I don't know how this argument will do today--but I'm almost positive that it will be viewed more sympathetically about 15 years from now, when the video-game-playing generation grows up to fill the appellate benches. This argument would also be a lot more appealing, even to current judges, if there were a Ulysses of video games. Instead, the paradigm game before the courts is Grand Theft Auto III.