My friend is a media lawyer in Australia
He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban
He says the legislation is just an under defined word salad
Note this was several days ago and it may have been amended in the mean time
This is a trend in lawmaking in Australia, and it's seriously damaging. It's basically written so the Government's Minister of Communications gets to decide who to directly target (or not target) with the law.
Basically allows them to arbitarily apply the law to some parties and not others, with no right of appeal. That does lead to potential constitutionality concerns, but it would take years for it to be struck down if so, if a service is affected and eventually gets it before the High Court.
Isn’t that what the electorate desires?
By electing personable but mediocore, sometimes even incompetent, MPs over the intelligent but aloof candidates.
Someone or some committee, somewhere, still has to actually work out all the details, and if it’s not done in Parliament, because the average MP literally can’t grasp even half the agenda items, it has to be done elsewhere.
Edit: And even that is probably being too optimistic, I’ve heard of MPs who can’t even remember the key facts and figures from the last 100 executive summaries they’ve read. Let alone any detail within the reports whatsoever.
I started losing faith in democracy since Brexit. It is still better than other forms of governance, that seems like a low bar.
People making “protest” votes without bothering to understand the consequences, single issue voters, young people who don’t even bother to vote, dumb/racist/misogynist voters…
Democracy only works if voters take it seriously, only if media is at least reasonably honest/competent etc. Across the world, this is not the case today. Britain, U.S, India, Australia …
Maybe we've gone full circle here, since internet discourse drives much of that angry shallow populism.
Representatives democracy also only works if representatives take it seriously too. Much (if not most) elected ones serves their personal agenda before the voters interests, let alone those of who can’t/don’t vote.
There’s also no universal _Truth_ that someone can grab entirely and as you noted information is essential but humans can’t be omniscient and you always miss something.
- "If others players cheat, I would loose by following the rules"
- "all i know is I know nothing".
Those two reasons explain why abstention or white/protest/defence votes can be fact based with a logical reasoning IMO.
> dumb/racist/misogynist voters…
> Democracy only works if voters take it seriously
Do you mean democracy only works when all people vote for options that you think are sensible?
Im afraid you seem to have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to democracy. The whole point of it is that everyone, including people you disagree with, get to have a say. Calling people names like dumb and racist is just a crass result of disagreeing with somebody, and then extrapolating their entire personality based on an opinion.
Democracy works when everyone has the choice to vote, and excercises that choice. If 70% of the population suddenly voted to extradite all people with dark skin to Africa, under the rules of democracy you would need to accept that choice as correct and support it. If you decided to say the result was racist and that it shouldnt be carried out, then you are diagreeing with democracy full stop. In that situation you may as well just have a dictatorship, as what it boils down to is one person thinks everyone else should do what that person thinks is right.
If you feel that people should support and agree with what you think is right you need to do the same to everyone else in the world, including people whose opinion is drastically different from your own. Even if you feel it is wrong.
Calling people names and belittling their peronal opinions and judgements is only further sowing seeds of division and hate.
I was working in Mississippi during 2016 election. I met many people who point blank told me they will not vote for Clinton, just because she is a woman (there are a million reasons not to vote for Clinton, her gender is not one of them). What should we call such people?
Do you mean democracy only works when all people vote for options that you think are sensible?
How did you deduce that from my comment? Just one day after Brexit, tons of people regretted voting to leave - lots of them admitted they didn't take the vote seriously, they thought others would vote to stay, so their vote wouldn't matter. A serious voter would have voted on the merits of staying or leaving the EU, not because they were angry at some politician or some other policy <-- This is what I meant when I said "Democracy only works if voters take it seriously", I don't know how you deduced that I want everyone to vote the way I want them to.
What about spirit of the law vs letter of the law?
> He says the legislation is just an under defined word salad
This might be on purpose. I've heard many say online that this law is sold as "save the children" but is designed to be used to get everyone to provide ID when they go/public/message online.
> He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban
Bad for video game dev's business, and great for lawyers! The interpretation of the law will get clarified by many lawsuits (costing businesses a lot).
"He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban"
There are a lot of issues with this legislation, but I'm not sure this is one of them. Games like Roblox are so exploitative, they're probably worse for children than most social media.
See, for example: https://www.eurogamer.net/roblox-exploiting-young-game-devel...
Roblox already filters out a lot of words, including links (to social media and whatnot especially). They filter so many words they may just shut down the chats entirely.
The point is not about whether video games should be exempt, it's about being able to tell whether they are covered by this law or not
I'd guess that some games should be banned too but not everything. Something like Street Fighter is widely different from Roblox for example.
The problem with a badly written law is how can you decide which is which?
> I'd guess that some games should be banned too but not everything. Something like Street Fighter is widely different from Roblox for example.
Which one do you want banned?
The rapidly creeping authoritarianism is extraordinary.
This website has long ago lost whatever “techno libretarianism” it ever had. It’s so full of bootlickers. I have no idea why HNs userbase is mostly excited about this.
I picked street fighter because you don't interact with your opponent other than fight him (I haven't played the last game though, maybe that's changed).
I have to strongly agree here. Video games are not free from the social media problems that we are trying to free ourselves from. We also have parents and close family that have been caught in outrage nets, and who knows when, if they will ever be free? We know the pipeline for right-wing grifters.
Who doesn't have any taters in the family these days? A literal human trafficker and pimp who has been in prison is giving advice to our youth in droves. More than you will ever know. My family members stopped talking about it, and started complaining about how we can't talk about things anymore once they discovered that outside of their bubble people know what these monsters/grifters actually do.
I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to sleep tonight knowing the child exploitation industry is experiencing an existential crisis.