Utah House Passes HB 353, Senate Vote Forthcoming
Posted by Eric on March 3, 2009Making the rounds of video game news sites comes breaking news that the Utah House of Representatives has passed HB 353, which, as reported previously, amends Utah’s Truth in Advertising Act with language that would penalize businesses (read: sellers of video games) with a hefty fine (up to $2,000 per incident) if they are caught selling M-rated video games to minors. The bill passed the house with a resounding 70-2 vote.
The rationale behind the amendment, which can be viewed here, centers around deceptive advertising and sales. Specficially, since minors are not allowed to purchase M-rated games, any subsequent sale to a minor constitutes deceptive advertising by making implicit assumptions to (minor) customers that they in fact can purchase these titles when in reality they are not allowed to.
Websites are reporting that game retailers are no longer opposing the bill, which will now move to the Utah Senate for consideration.
Stay tuned to Gameslaw for more information and analysis on this latest attempt to curb sales of violent video games.
Popularity: 6% [?]
I can only wonder how this is going to fare in light of the recent finding that California’s laws were unconstitutional. Then again, Utah is often its own strange new world.
Unconstitutionally broad, as it can be applied to board games, PG-13 movies, T-rated games.
Besides the clock is ticking on this pile of garbage bill, since there’s only a week left in the session.
With the amendments added to this bill, it has been completely and utterly neutered. It does nothing now.
Well, well, well, according to the clock, there’s less than 12 hours left in the session and the bill’s just now on the calendar.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
And as an added bonus, the Utah Senate sponsor of the House bill added yet another amendment to the bill and this amendment(basically saying that the information about the ratings systems and the ratings themselves are not advertisements) effectively kills what little impact the bill may have had.
And even if it passes the Senate within the next 12 hours, it has to go back to the House first so they could approve the Senate’s changes to the bill(depending on how much time is left in the session by then and depending on how major this change in the bill is) and the Senate has to re-vote on the bill as well before it’s officially passed.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
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