George A. Rose: Leland Yee Like Sisyphus

A San Francisco Chronicle guest editorial by George A. Rose, Executive Vice President and Chief Public Policy Officer at Activision Blizzard, takes San Francisco mayoral candidate, State Senator (D-San Francisco) and anti-game crusader Leland Yee to task for his promise to continue to fight for a violent videogame law. This even after a bitter defeat and a strong rebuke at the hands of seven U.S. Supreme Court Justices, no less. The gist of the editorial is that many of Yee's misguided policies and political grandstanding costs money that California doesn't have right now.

"Lee kept up the grandstanding this week, even after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday convincingly and permanently laid to rest a Yee-authored 2005 law purporting to inhibit the sale to minors of video games that would have been deemed too violent," wrote Rose. "Deemed too violent by whom: by some yet-to-be-appointed commission of state officials (supported by taxpayer dollars) - a commission Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia scathingly referred to as the California Censorship Committee."

"Long before Yee’s law was signed, an industry-funded system costing taxpayers nothing had been put into place - a system that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission as recently as this year praised as the gold standard of self-regulation," he continued. "This system makes it not just difficult, but nearly impossible, for an unaccompanied minor to buy age-inappropriate games, especially the ones Yee cites as most egregiously violent."

Rose closes by saying that the SCOTUS rulings puts the power of what children play back in the hands of parents and out of the hands of lawmakers and bureaucrats. He also points out that California has serious financial issues that it needs to deal with and lawmakers shouldn't be throwing good money after bad laws:

"..public money is scarce in California these days. Squandering precious funds again on writing, defending and attempting to enforce ineffective and unnecessary laws that benefit political ambitions is a really bad idea. What’s not broken shouldn’t be fixed. It’s time for Sen. Yee to let go of the joystick and declare game over."

You can read Rose's entire Editorial at the San Francisco Chronicle.