Now that we have solved all the other problems of the world, the US government has once again turned to the most pressing issue of the day: videogames. This week “Politicians lash[ed] out at video game industry” and “Lawmakers slam[ed] FTC for video game actions.” Most notable were the comments of Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky:
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Illinois Democrat and ranking member of the subcommittee, criticized Wal-Mart for the ease with which consumers under age 17 can buy explicit games on its Web site simply by checking a box certifying they are the proper age.
“That age verification is a joke,” in an era when 13-year-olds can be issued credit cards and other children have access to their parents’ cards, she said.
Yes, finally, an elected official takes on the real issues! If the Internet had been available when I was 17 I know that buying videogames would have been the first thing I would have done. Well, of course as a 17 year old, I would have been more interested in looking at porn, but luckilly, there isn’t any of that online or anything…
However, if we accept for a minute that Rep. Schakowsky’s concerns are valid, her complaint is still horribly misguided. Let’s look at her statement again:
“That age verification is a joke,” in an era when 13-year-olds can be issued credit cards and other children have access to their parents’ cards, she said.
From that quote, it seems clear that Rep. Schakowsky feels that there is something wrong with 13-year-olds having credit cards. So what does she do? Does she attack the credit card companies? No, she attacks the businesses that accept credit cards. Now, I don’t really care about credit cards, but look at her own logic. Kids having redit cards is bad, so we’re going to attack companies that accept credit cards because the worst thing that kids will do with a credit card is buy a videogame. This just illustrates how sad our government has become. Instead of dealling with real issues, we are going to freak out about people buying videogames online. (insert your own joke about how this is a waste of time since the government is monitoring everything we do and knows everything we are doing anyway…)