Mr. GOH!

As a legal professional and avid gamer, I'd have to say this thread has been about games and the law the entire time. The VRA is a law, isn't it? The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a law too, right? A discussion of the political philosophy underpinning such laws, and the jurisprudence flowing from the laws, is still a discussion of games and the law. In order to understand how such laws and legal theories may affect games, we really ought to understand how such laws affect other media. Since there are a lot of USA folks here, any discussion of games and the law will necessarily involve discussion of the First Amendment and 'freedom of speech'.

*Reads about the UK VRA of 1984* What a prudish law.

Suppressing the market for specific types harmless expression because some folks, who wouldn't ever have to see or hear it, don't like it. Seems legit.

Good riddance to Mattrick. Zynga is probably the softest landing he could have hoped for. On the other hand, he *is* a CEO now. He'll probably make as much or more money, though I'd generally rather have stock options in MS than Zynga.

Why are drugs singled out? Do films depicting sex (simulated) have to promote STD awareness? Do films depicting cars require seatbelt warnings or statements about how pollution is changing the climate in dangerous ways? Do media depicting eating Big Macs have to be realistic as to their health effects? Edit: Business speech, including advertisements, is among the exceptions to unregulated free speech. Advertisements are direct promotion of a thing rather than a mere depiction. Since it is in the advertisers' interest to, essentially, deceive the consumer, or at least not to mention any harms, the regulation is needed as consumer protection counterbalance. I also fully support regulating media in which manufacturers or sellers of harmful products pay for product placement or advocacy, though such regulation should be disclosure of such arrangements rather than banning such speech. Ethan; Thanks. I did my 'thesis' on free speech and worked at a nonprofit dealing with First Amendment issues after 2L, specifically advocating for the regulation of broadcast advertisements of junk food aimed at kids while simultaneously protecting non-advertisers' rights to broadcast swearing, sex, and violence. I am a bona fide free speech nerd. Doesn't help much in my current practice, but it's fun to whip out when talking about games.

If you don't have a PC or laptop but you have a console, you should just GTFO now because this world of electronics ain't for you. Smart console manufacturers would work it so that the user has to affirmatively state that s/he read all the legal stuff first thing when setting uo the console. In fact, I'm pretty certain the PS3 and 360 work that way. Turn it on for the first and a window pops up saying "By selecting OK below, you acknowledge you have read and understand documents A through Z and that you release all claims current, future, in all jurisdictions in the universe, yadda, yadda, yadda." Fuck, just put all that stuff in a series of windows the user has to click through before you can play games. Then it doesn't matter if the user has a physical manual or an inaccessible USB manual; his shit just got owned for legal purposes. At least in the US. Not reading the legal stuff is no defense for enforcement.

Banning media for depictions of drug use is utter bullshit. There's a valid conversation to be had about drug laws, especially concerning their efficacy and necessity. Adopting a 'Drugs Are Bad, M'Kay' attitude doesn't do anyone any good. Supressing depictions of drug use in the media shuts down this conversation and normalizes the "Snort coke once and YOUR HEART EXPLODES!!!" nonsense. The rule of thumb re: American Free Speech is that the content speech itself does not harm anyone in any real way; however, if the speech is intended to lead to harming unwilling parties, then it can be regulated. Speech that incites violence ostensibly harms the targets of the violence without their consent. Fraud harms the recipient of the speech without his or her consent. Depictions of illegal acts harm no unwilling people. There is a debate in the legal and civil liberties communities about the few exceptions to this rule of thumb. Depictions of pedophilia that do not involve actual minors fall into this gray zone. Very little else does. The government may also regulate speech based not on its content, but upon its mode. So the police can arrest you for walking into a courtroom and yelling about how drug laws are bullshit if you're disrupting court proceedings. The government can keep demonstrations penned into certain areas so traffic isn't disrupted. The other big exception is broadcast (over-the-air) media, which can be regulated by the government because broadcast frequencies are quasi-property of the federal government and broadcasters are just licensed to use them and must abide by certain restrictions and mandatory content rules (educational and news programming must be broadcast for a certain number of hours each day, for example). I am firmly against any sort of broadcast content restrictions, and I am fairly certain they'll be struck down by the Supreme Court eventually. I am also against censoring the content of stuff targeted at children. Then again, I am a dangerous free speech radical out to subvert society.

Irresponsible, FDB. Regardless, you're gonna hafta get coverage after January 1st, 2014, or pay a hefty tax penalty.

You budget for health insurance, too, FBD?

Ugh, 1099s. Don't be a 1099 independent contractor unless it pays 40% more than what you'd get as an employee.

No prob, Vecha. Ethan:In layman's terms: Not on refunds timely paid out. If they fuck up and make your refund late, they gotta pay interest. More fun tax reading on overpayment and interest. http://www.irs.gov/irm/part20/irm_20-002-004.html

Electrician's tape is a pretty good video surveillance countermeasure. Probably something similar would work on the mic, too.

I'm sure there are plenty of great villains other than Luthor who could induce both fun action scenes and moral struggles. Hell, they coulda done it better with Zod in this movie.

The Bling Ring. A movie in which everyone is awful and you cannot root for the celebrity 'victims' nor the starfucking rich kid burglars. Not brilliant, not all that deep (I think This Is The End has a more cogent and engaging critique of celebrity), but well worth it. Man of Steel was awful, and I am sad that this is the version of Super Man we'll have going forward and that Zack Snyder will continue to make movies. I can forgive the Comic Book Plot Holes , but I think it was a mistake stacking Supes against Zod in his first movie. The conflict in Supes should be about how he restrains himself and uses his near-infinite power judiciously.

A show about a magical ring that turns a boy into a superhero who just looks like a girl would do more to encourage cross-dressings than to encourage kids to be transgender. Shitloads of male cross-dressers are not transgender at all. If the show treats the cross dressing as a joke, it may actually harm transgender awareness by reducing gender-bending to a joke rather than a legitimate expression of how a person sees him or herself and how s/he may want others to see him or her.

Ethan: I am not a tax law expert, but if a person overpays their taxes, the IRS will generally turn around and refund it. I mean, millions of folks get tax refunds yearly from their withholdings. That likely costs more and has more issues than if the IRs just returns your check and rejects payment. For example, if the amount is big, the IRS may have to pay significant interest on the refund. The IRS also likely has a duty to tell taxpayers what the IRS believes their tax liability is. If Vecha and Mrs. Vecha just sent in the form and check without some sort of affirmative statement amounting to 'We LOVE paying taxes! Here's some money we don't owe the IRS under law, but take it anyway, it's just burning a hole in our bank account!", the IRS would have to tell them they have no duty to pay. Why would the IRS accept the check and, in the same breath, say that it has no right to the money? Edit: Also, Vecha: pay someone competent to do your taxes next time.

Same here, Thursday, Same here. Edit: There is a three year statute of limitations on IRS tax audits. If the IRS hasn't audited your taxes, then you don't have to pay the back taxes. Well, unless the IRS thinks you were concealing tax fraud. If they prove you committed tax fraud, it's jail time for you! Your state may have a longer SoL for state tax audits, though. Edit again: Here's some federal tax law for your reading pleasure: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6501 Don't say I never done nothing for ya.

He says he does. He is not shy about it. Or wasn't, back in the day in chat. He made it sound both debilitating and like it made him smarter than everyone else in the universe.

DocSeuss drives me up the fucking wall. But he has brain damage, and is better than everyone else in the world, despite not having a job or prospects and having fucking debilitating brain damage. Nobody knows which one has won yet. I suspect the Xbone will sell quite well. I also suspect the PS4 will sell well. What we do have is a loser; the Wii U.

I am aware of the other meaning for "ETA," Dean. It also can mean "Edited to Add."

ETA doesn't mean "Edited To Add?" I swear I've seen it used that way around these parts. I'm still not sure making Mattrick fall on his sword would accomplish that much, publicity-wise. The public narrative of the DRM fiasco and the Xbone isn't really about individual people, and I don't think it's necessarily in Microsoft's interest to make it about individuals. There might be other reasons to can Mattrick, but I'm not familiar with the internal workings of Microsoft's Xbone team/units/departments/whatever. Edit: I would suggest, eleven, that the shared games in a such a system would be more robust than the public demos. More options available, longer playtime, and so on. The idea is that friends suggesting games in this way would be a powerful selling tool. "Leveraging gamer social networks" is the related corporatespeak, I'd imagine.

Nuke it from orbit; it's the only way to be sure.

That's what I would suggest family sharing should be like if I were in the business. Glorified demos.

EU requires that digital copies be lendable? That's new to me.

Beer is pretty good. But fine liquor is so much faster.