COMMENTARY ON VIDEO GAME VIOLENCE SILENCED BY LEGAL THREAT

[http://www.joystiq.com/2006/02/20/rockstar-bullies-artist-into-submission/|This post] at Joystiq.com talks about how this guy who used a short looping clip of video from The Warriors video game to illustrate violence toward women in video games has been sent a C&D. You can see where the clip used to be by heading to http://www.thehighestscore.com/. Sadly, the guy(s) who run that site aren't entirely clear on copyright law as, from the sound of it, the clip is entirely legal and clearly falls within the realm of "fair use."

Here's how the creator of the clip, Dave Beck, describes his clip in [http://www.isthmus.com/daily/node/908|post] at Isthumus.com:

What is displayed on the website, says Beck, is a "5 second video of myself playing," that is, a game character stomping on the body of a downed and presumably dead woman. Beck then looped the clip "to play continuously and randomly," and subsequently added a counter in the top right-hand corner of the display to add the scoring element.

It's a real shame--this kind of commentary, I think is incredibly important in today's America. Violence is everywhere and it only seems to be getting worse. No, I'm not against ALL violence in video games, but I think there seems to be an awful lot of emphasis on violence these days. I've often commented on the contradiction in our culture where violent video games may be frowned upon, but if you play a video game where you have sex, you're a freakin' pervert.

Seems like it's OK to explore the urge to digitally kill, but to have virtual sex is deviant.

Instead of being able to pound a girl with my fists in a game, I'd much rather be able to pound her in another way... if you know what I mean.

The creator of the clip and the guy who runs the site it used to exist on seems like a pretty clever guy--make sure to read the whole post at Isthmus.com. This isn't the first time he's done commentary through art. I would like to formally complain about [http://www.davebeck.org/|Beck's website], however. I paid it a visit and couldn't figure out what the hell to click on and I have a life so I couldn't just start clicking on shit until I found something I liked.

To me, a website is for presenting content to people. If you don't want to make it easy for people to find your content why not just publish a book or maybe just shut up all together? Sorry--just my opinion.