Andre Yoskowitz
20 Mar 2007 11:37
Late last week, Michigan congressman Fred Upton (R) filed the Video Game Decency Act of 2007 under the bill H.R. 1531.
The bill asks for federal legislation that would make it illegal for game developers to hide content in their games in the hopes of receiving a less restrictive ESRB rating.
If you recall, Upton was a harsh critic of the now-infamous Hot Coffee scandal and this is obviously seen in the language of the bill which in part says: "It shall be unlawful… to… distribute… any video game that contains a rating label… for that video game where the person, with the intent of obtaining a less restrictive age-based content rating, failed to disclose content of the video game that was required to be disclosed to the independent ratings organization"
According to Upton, any violations would constitute a deceptive practice under guidelines of the Federal Trade Commission.
This is not the first time Upton has introduced a bill asking for video game decency. He introduced a similar bill in 2006 asking for more FTC enforcement over video game content. The bill went unsigned.
Source:
GamePolitics