A public interest group had a holiday warning and a new word on Monday for parents of video game users: Beware of "killographic," defined as the "graphic depiction of brutal violence."
The National Institute on Media and the Family, an independent, nonprofit group, said "killographic" scenes are featured in a number of video games within reach of children. Issuing its eighth annual MediaWise Video Game Report Card, the institute listed games parents should avoid for their children, led by "Manhunt."
"If pornographic is the 'graphic depiction of sex,' then killographic should enter our vocabulary to describe the 'graphic depiction of brutal violence,"' David Walsh, the institute's president, told a Capitol Hill news conference.
"Clever phrase," Doug Lowenstein, head of the Entertainment Software Association, which represents computer and video game software publishers, replied when asked about "killographic."
Lowenstein noted that the average age of those who play video games is 28, and said as adults they should be allowed to pick their entertainment. He also pointed out that the industry rates its games on age appropriateness, and that Walsh's institute found most parents are not aware of a game's content. "The message is that parents in many cases aren't doing their job," Lowenstein said.
News source: Reuters
The National Institute on Media and the Family, an independent, nonprofit group, said "killographic" scenes are featured in a number of video games within reach of children. Issuing its eighth annual MediaWise Video Game Report Card, the institute listed games parents should avoid for their children, led by "Manhunt."
"If pornographic is the 'graphic depiction of sex,' then killographic should enter our vocabulary to describe the 'graphic depiction of brutal violence,"' David Walsh, the institute's president, told a Capitol Hill news conference.
"Clever phrase," Doug Lowenstein, head of the Entertainment Software Association, which represents computer and video game software publishers, replied when asked about "killographic."
Lowenstein noted that the average age of those who play video games is 28, and said as adults they should be allowed to pick their entertainment. He also pointed out that the industry rates its games on age appropriateness, and that Walsh's institute found most parents are not aware of a game's content. "The message is that parents in many cases aren't doing their job," Lowenstein said.
News source: Reuters
Ongoing concerns over the security and reporting features of e-voting machines have cast a cloud of uncertainty over the upcoming election season, forcing ballot machine vendors to address a host of complaints over their products amid signs of an escalating voter backlash.
The affected companies say the weaknesses that have been identified to date aren't insurmountable, and most said they expect to fix them on time to meet the HAVA deadlines. But the biggest problem facing e-voting machine vendors may turn out to be political rather than technical, as belated resistance to e-voting systems mounts.
Individual counties in the United States have used electronic voting machines for years, but many voters have only learned about the potential hazards of e-voting recently, through the missteps of one company: Diebold Election Systems of North Canton, Ohio. The company has become a lightning rod for criticism following partisan political statements by its chief executive and revelations of security flaws within its flagship product.
"I think it's been a year of widespread awakening among the American public about the risks of computerized voting," said Kim Alexander, founder and president of the California Voter Foundation. "A huge movement has developed across the nation, with citizen activists joining computer scientists, academics, lawyers, and nonprofits to demand verifiable voting systems."
Get it on paper
Renewed uneasiness over e-voting technology is manifesting itself in new security audits and demands for paper-based recount safeguards. In recent weeks, four states representing nearly a fifth of the U.S. population--California, Maryland, Nevada and Ohio--have taken official steps to re-evaluate the systems or require paper trails.
California enacted a rule that will require the use of a voter-verified paper copy. Ohio commissioned reports detailing security risks of major e-voting machine vendors.
Maryland ordered new reviews of voting machines scheduled for use in its March primary as state senators called for the implementation of paper verification systems. And Nevada awaits the analysis by its gambling auditors of e-voting machines while the secretary of state brings the e-vote debate to the voters in the form of town-hall meetings.
This week, Ohio's secretary of state demanded security fixes from electronic voting machine vendors, and released two reports that detail their shortcomings.
Diebold Election Systems representative David Bear said the surge in scrutiny of e-voting issues was the result of HAVA.
"I would say I think there's heightened awareness as a result of HAVA," Bear said. "All the states are addressing the issue of how they're going to come into HAVA compliance and, doing the right thing, they're involving the general public in that process. Most people did not think about elections except for the dedicated folks who work on election day or day in and day out as elections officers. But the Florida (2000) vote and the subsequent HAVA act put a spotlight on this as an issue."
But others, including Alexander, said the current hand-wringing may have as much to do with high-profile gaffes by Diebold as it does with deadline jitters.
Diebold, which has deployed 33,000 touch-screen voting machines in the United States, first gained notoriety after its chief executive wrote in an August fund-raising letter that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to (President Bush) next year."
Asked about the August fund-raising letter, Bear referred a reporter to a news report posted to the company's Web site, in which Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell pledged to curtail his political activities as a result of the controversy.
"I'm not doing anything wrong or complicated, but it obviously did leave me open to the criticism I've received," O'Dell told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "I've taken it personally; it's very painful, it may have injured our company, and I feel really badly about that."
A month earlier, university researchers failed Diebold machines in a security audit. And last month California launched an investigation after it was alleged that state-uncertified software had been inserted into Diebold machines in Alameda County--a violation, if true, of California election law.
The company earned another sustained round of bad press after it threatened copyright infringement lawsuits against Internet service providers whose subscribers had posted damaging internal e-mail correspondence that called into question the company's security practices.
Faced with a lawsuit by an ISP and subscribers it had threatened, along with a barrage of news reports that further publicized the e-mails' internal gripes about Diebold security, the company backed off the copyright threats--but not before Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who is seeking the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, called for a congressional investigation of Diebold.
Assessing the risks
Diebold is not alone in fending off criticism of e-voting's alleged shortfalls in advance of the HAVA deadlines.
Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell on Tuesday published two previously confidential reports: the DRE (direct recording electronic) Security Assessment report commissioned from Raleigh, N.C.-based InfoSentry, and a Technical Security Assessment Report the state commissioned from Detroit, Mich.-based Compuware.
The Compuware report identified 57 potential security risks of varying severity in four different systems.
Blackwell said he would request a deadline extension to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) so that vendors would have time to fix problems with their machines.
"I will not place these voting devices before Ohio's voters until identified risks are corrected and system security is bolstered," Blackwell said in a statement. "Fortunately, all of the documented risks will be expeditiously corrected by each of our voting machine manufacturers."
Ohio had intended to start using electronic voting machines in March, but Blackwell now wants to wait until August special elections.
Meanwhile, the four vendors surveyed in both reports will have to prepare for another round of inspections by the consultants. In some cases, the secretary of state said, changes in the software will require new certification by the state and federal governments.
The Ohio studies examined three voting systems in addition to Diebold's AccuVote-TS: Election Systems and Software's iVotronic, Hart InterCivic's eSlate 3000, and Sequoia Voting Systems' AVC Edge. All four passed a summer evaluation process by the state that examined the companies and their products, with the caveat that they would have to undergo subsequent security evaluations.
Provided that the system vendors pass another security audit, Ohio counties will be able to consider them.
In response to the publication of Ohio's reports, Diebold said it had already fixed the problems in response to similar complaints by the state of Maryland.
"The areas identified by the secretary of state are the same types of items that were identified and addressed by Diebold Election Systems in Maryland," Mark Radke, director of voting industry for Diebold, said in a statement. "We are confident that the mitigation actions we will take--which have already been used in municipal Maryland elections--will achieve the secretary of state's goals and provide accurate and reliable election results."
Sequoia also said it was well on its way to satisfying Ohio's demands.
"We've already made a number of the recommended changes," Sequoia spokesman Alfie Charles said in an interview. "And we'll be making the balance of them and welcome the secretary's leadership in conducting that type of review so that the entire industry can give voters the confidence they need in their voting technology."
ES&S issued a statement that said it was still analyzing the reports but was confident it could resolve the problems they identified before Ohio's special elections in August 2004. A representative of Hart InterCivic said the company was "pleased to address" risks identified in the reports, while noting that the bulk of problems reported about its systems were deemed "low risk."
"We're working on plans to address them, and it's our intention to be substantially more aggressive in this area than the reports would require," company representative Bill Stotesbery said.
In Carson City, Nev., Secretary of State Heller was preparing on Thursday to conduct a Washoe County town hall meeting with elections officials to address voters' concerns about the machines. In the coming week the state will choose between Sequoia and Diebold machines. Counties that prefer Diebold are wrangling with Clark County--home to Las Vegas and 70 percent of Nevada's population--which has been using Sequoia machines for 10 years.
To help sort through the security analysis, Heller has asked the state's Gaming Control Board to offer its opinion of the machines and expects to get the results of that survey in the next few days.
"There's not a whole lot of people smarter at stopping hacking than in the gaming industry," observed Steve George, a representative for the secretary of state.
In California, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley set a July 2006 deadline for all counties and cities to provide touch-screen voting systems that provide what is known as a voter verified paper audit trail. The paper receipt is meant as a safeguard in case questions are raised about the validity of an electronic vote. Under the policy, counties and cities will be prohibited from buying systems without the paper audit trail starting July 1, 2005.
Paper verification has become a rallying cry for technology watchdog groups and voting rights advocates, who cheered Shelley's decision.
"The recent decision by our secretary of state to require voter-verified paper trails no later than 2006 is a sign we've turned a corner," said CalVoter's Alexander. "And I think and hope that other states will look at California's decision as a sign of where the technology is going, and will follow our lead."
i've been "killing" people in video games for damn years, yet ive never held a gun at anyone or had any intention of killing anyone because i found it enjoyable/funny in a game.
if you find killing people in games isn't enough and need to do it in real life, you are mental and should be sectioned!
ffs whinging bas tard parents.
Trained Killers.
bingo.
I like it so much, I'll quote it again separately!
Back to computer. Sent to bed. They just don't have the time to hang around the streets looking for trouble....
Fact is most ppl's kids are not going to go grab a gun and shoot someone after playing GTA... but that is because most kids grow up relatively stress free and in safe environments. But for those kids who grow up in poverty/violence, the violence in media/entertainment can present to them an interesting course of action.
Where I live right now it is being said in the news recently that violent crimes in schools are on the rise. There is increasing gang mentality in various suburbs of the city as well as an increasing number of children commiting crimes that typically have been dished out adult sentences. Can anyone possibly imagine that media/entertainment plays absolutely NO role in this development? Again, I'm not saying that playing GTA turns you into a killer... perhaps playing GTA is just the symptom and not the cause... but it is a factor somewhere in that equation.
We should open our eyes to the possibility that exposure to violence *can* encourage futhur violent tendencies. The popular conception that keeping violence in videogames gives ppl an outlet and prevents them from taking violent action in real life is very incorrect. Why exercise any amount of violent tendencies? At best, even if a person does not become violent through playing violent videogames, it will most definitely desensitize them to real violence and thus reduce their compassion and empathy for the plight of others that are faced with real violence.
I cannot for the life of me imagine that those who have been to war-torn countries in this world, would ever pick up a copy of GTA and find it amusing. We should learn from what they have experienced and wonder why it is that they don't find it amusing yet we do.
Much of what I say may seem naive or too grand in scope, and I apologize if I've offended anyone, but the way I see it, there is enough violence in this world as it is... why play with virtual violence? At the end of the day, if it does not produce a negative effect on society and people, does it produce a positive one instead? Is there a possibility that the effect is neutral? Imho, very unlikely.
There are also some people who expect that parents are supposed to police their kids' videogaming. In all honestly, what's the likelihood of this happening? I dont' know what type of parents most people have, but the way my mom is, I could convince her that GTA is actually a word processor, and I imagine that most kids (any kids determined enough to be cool by playing GTA) can convince their parents of nearly the same thing. It's just not realistic in this age of dual-income families, daycare-raised kids, no one having enough time, for parents to be policing their kids' entertainment. Perhaps that is the fault of the parents, but it's not practical to expect that it's happening. Neither do kids make it easy when many kids won't let their parents within 10 feet of them when their friends are around because it's "uncool". All this means that *some* of the responsibility is on the entertainment industry. It's too easy for them to shirk their responsibility in this matter and put it all on the parents.
The whole argument essentially winds down to this: While the effect of violent videogames on the human psyche can't necessarily be gauged immediately or even over a short duration of time, it definitely must have some effect. We should remain open to all possibilities... I for one cannot imagine a society of ppl playing violent games and watching violence (whether fictional or not) being a happier more well-adjusted society.
That's my input... Thanks...
You'ure also saying that any parents that don't want to be responsible for their childern don't have to be. Explain to me WHO is responsible for the children then. American society has taken the detrimental attitude that you aren't responsible for your own actions. And well, your children are the result of people's own actions, and people should be responsible for them, contrary to what you believe.
So the entertainment industry has to do...what? Babysit children because the parents are "too busy" to? [b]If you are too busy to care for children, then don't have any![b] It's quite a simple solution to absentee parenting problem, but obviously too many people make that mistake, and according to you they all should be forgiven for doing it.
You're right, video games don't account for violence in human history. What I was trying to say was that video games are possibly a contributing factor in recent times. Violence has typically arisen out of poverty, exposure to more violence, oppression, etc. For people who are more prone to violence because of environmental factors, why give them more options like video games, which are gradually showing more and more realistic portrayals of violence. You can't say with certianty that relatively small factors like video games don't constitute an influence on decision-making. Thus, if violence is to be abhorred, generally the most logical course of action is to avoid exposure to gratuitious 'entertainment' violence.
As for all the comments relating to my analysis of the responsibility of parents, I feel that you've largely misunderstood me. What I was saying is that it IS indeed the responsibility of parents to raise their children, but what we need to open our eyes to is that parents for the most part don't *know* anything about video games or what their kids do. They dont' understand video games, how can they police them? Most of my young cousins buy their own video games with money made from newspaper delivery jobs. Their parents both work, and thus are NOT able to devote time to policing the kids simply because of the hours they work.. and they're not even well off or neglecting their kids to get rich. The kids are well behaved and all, but my point is that realistically the parents are not able to control the kids' entertainment choices for various reasons. Thus the entertainment industry cannot EXPECT parents to take responsibility in all cases.
The more responsible thing is for the entertainment industry to assume that parents can't in all cases watch their kids because a) they don't have time or b) the kids take enough measures to prevent parents from knowing what they do... thus the entertainment industry itself should pick up responsbility. It's *totally* unrealistic to place *all* responsibility on the parents. Producing well-adjusted healthy children is the responsibility of ALL society because those children will grow to become a part of that society and how they serve that society in the future is in the best interest of everyone concerned.
If we can agree that it is in everyone's best interest for children to be well-adjusted and happy, then can't we agree that it is thus everyone's responsibility to play a good role in their development? Think what parents are up against... How can parents combat the influence of their children's peers, tv, the internet, advertising, etc.? They can't... thus it's also the role of a child's peers and teachers, as well as tv, advertising and entertainment companies to be good influences (albeit to a considerably lesser degree than the parents). It's called being socially responsible.
Again, I think it's necessary that I reiterate the core of my argument: We may not entirely understand the effects of videogame violence on children (and adults to a lesser degree), but we can say with a good amount of certainty that it's not bound to produce better people and thus a better society. Is entertainment ever just entertainment? Not likely... we have to face the fact that entertainment and media affect the development of people, and at least their sensitivity to real-world violence.
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