Computer Games Harmful

[Tarun]

02/10/2002

Concern aired over computer game shops

By JOEL C. ATENCIO

 

Education Secretary Raul S. Roco expressed yesterday concern about the presence of many computer game shops near public and private elementary and secondary school campuses nationwide.

 

The secretary noted that the computer game shops cause many students to cut classes.

 

Roco also asked the assistance of local government units (LGUs), schools and parents in discouraging students from over-patronizing computer game shops. He was also reacting to reports that Senator Tessie Aquino Oreta is pushing for the removal of computer game shops near schools.

 

Reports said many students have become hooked on computer games, forcing them to skip classes and spend much time in computer game shops near schools.

 

When asked if he will propose a crackdown on computer game shops, Roco said it is up to LGUs, schools and parents to handle the problem.

 

"The LGU has jurisdiction over the matter and should impose their ordinances to address the matter immediately," he said, adding that the parents should look after their children and avoid giving them to much allowance.

 

"The DepEd Central Office has loads of responsibilities to perform and that the LGUs, schools and parents should get their share of the responsibility in disciplining school children," Roco said.

[Tarun]

Computer Games can be Harmful

04/02/2002 Editor: Tamsin McMahon

 

Computer games with vibrating hand-held control devices should carry health warnings because they can cause damage to hands, British doctors said.

Parents and children should be aware of potential health problems that could be caused by prolonged use of the devices, said Gavin Cleary of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in London.

 

Cleary and his colleagues called for the health warnings in a letter to the British Medical Journal after a 15-year-old boy developed symptoms similar to hand-arm vibration syndrome, which is caused by using industrial tools for long periods of time.

 

The boy, who played computer games with a vibrating control device for up to seven hours a day, suffered pain and swelling in his hands.

 

Tamsin McMahon is assistant editor of Europemedia.net.

She was most recently an education reporter and editor for Peterborough Examiner.

She has worked at daily papers in Toronto, Hamilton and Edmonton, as well as for The Canadian Press.

Tamsin holds a journalism degree from Ryerson Polytechnic University.

[Tarun]

17 People Die in Video Game Parlor Fire

--------------------------

Xinhuanet 2002-02-18 00:56:52

 

SHIJIANGZHUANG, February 18 (Xinhuanet) -- At least 17 people, mostly youngsters, have been killed in a big fire in local video

game house in Tangshan City, north China's Hebei Province, Monday afternoon.

Seven of them were found dead on spot, and 10 others died in local hospital.

Video game parlor is illegally run by local retiree, Ling Fu, who blocked door and widows, leaving only secret gateway

for entrance.

Fire, which was believed to be caused by short circuit, occurred at 2:25 pm, according to local police sources.

Owner has gone into hiding, while three others involved have been brought into custody for interrogation by police who

was continuing to investigate case.

Enditem ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡ ¡¡

[Gauracandra]

I know for sure a few years back hundreds of kids in Japan went into a low level epileptic shock from watching a Japanese Anime cartoon on TV, with all its flashings... I think (not sure) that I've read a story before of kids getting the same effect (getting nauseated and sick) by the flashings of video games. Its just something I vaguely recall.

 

Gauracandra

[Tarun]

 

Software

Doesn't it make u feel safe to know, as the Beatles sang:

"It's getting Better all the Time!?"

At least our kids busy playing computer games are free from any negative street influence, right?

 

ADL issues Report on Racist Video Games

Reuters

February 20, 2002, 4:30 AM PT

Anti-Defamation League issued report Tuesday warning of computer games that espouse racist violence.

Organization's main exhibit was "Ethnic Cleansing," computer game sold by Resistance Records, small underground label that specializes in bands spouting racist and Nazi messages.

 

The game requires players to wander through urban streets and subway tunnels and to attack African-American, Hispanic and Jewish characters. Besides offensive racial stereotypes, game includes repeated racist images and audio content.

 

While there are no indications "Ethnic Cleansing" or more primitive games such as "Aryan 3" have spread beyond marginal following of racists and neo-Nazis, Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, said it was disturbing to see emergence of "seductive" new vehicle for disseminating racist beliefs.

 

Initially, "Ethnic Cleansing" looks little different from popular shooting games such as "Quake." The sophisticated graphics of the game could attract players who wouldn't realize the true nature of the material until they were well into the game, Foxman said.

 

"It piggybacks on something that is very legitimate and popular and perverts it," he said. "It can attract people who aren't necessarily going to look for this kind of material."

 

Foxman said the ADL's main goal was to raise awareness before such games proliferate. The Resistance Records Web site states that the developers of "Ethnic Cleansing" are working on a new game based on "The Turner Diaries," the anti-government novel that inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

 

"Our hope is that we can alert the general public that something like this can come into the home," Foxman said.

 

Representatives for Resistance Records did not return a request for comment Tuesday.

 

Foxman said the ADL was also looking into the type of software that allows amateur programmers to create such games. "Ethnic Cleansing" was created with Genesis 3D, a collection of graphics tools freely available under an open-source license.

 

"We think you have a certain responsibility...to make sure your patents aren't perverted for reasons of hate," Foxman said.

 

The Genesis 3D copyright is held by software developer Wild Tangent, but the company has not been involved in distributing or maintaining the software since shifting it to an open-source license in 2000. Wild Tangent representatives could not be reached for comment.

 

Brian Marcus, a researcher in the ADL's Internet monitoring unit and author of the report, acknowledged the difficulty of using software licensing restrictions to limit hate speech, especially among the largely self-policing open-source community.

 

"That's the nature of the open-source community; you're putting it out there for the good of the community, but if someone wants to misuse it, it's there for them as well," he said.

 

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[Tarun]

2.45pm update

 

--

White supremacists create racist computer games

 

Sarah Left

Thursday February 21, 2002

 

White supremacist groups in the US have been creating and selling racist computer games with titles like "Ethnic Cleansing" and "Shoot the Blacks," according to a report out this week from the Anti-Defamation League.

Abraham Foxman, ADL's national director, said the groups were both creating racist games using open source software and modifying commercially available games to make targets of particular ethnic groups.

 

Mr Foxman said: "The difference is these games are loaded with blatantly racist messages and themes.

 

"It's a disgusting, sick perversion of the original games, where the manipulated versions give players points for killing as many non-whites and Jews as possible."

 

One of the games, Ethnic Cleansing, is advertised as the "most politically incorrect video game ever made."

 

Players kill black and Hispanic characters before descending into a subway station "where the Jews have hidden".

 

Black characters make monkey and ape noises when shot. The advertisement continues: "Then if your (sic) lucky you can blow away Jews as they scream 'Oy Vey!' on your way to their command centre."

 

Ethnic Cleansing is produced by Resistance Records, the publishing arm of the National Alliance, a white supremacist group, and retails for $14.88 (£10.50).

 

Repeated attempts by the Guardian today to access the Resistance Records website failed.

 

According to the ADL, Ethnic Cleansing was released last month on the US national holiday to celebrate civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Adverts on the site read: "Celebrate Martin Luther King day with a virtual race war!"

 

The group reportedly has plans to produce another game based on the Turner Diaries, a white supremacist novel by the leader of the National Alliance, William Pierce.

 

Other games highlighted by the ADL include scenarios that allow players to run a concentration camp, available on the website of the World Church of the Creator, which describes itself as a group for "white liberation".

 

Jon Dovey, a professor who studies gaming at the University of the West of England, said it was important to keep in mind that these games were a small part of the online community, and that action against them is possible.

 

"I'd recommend people to go to these sites and flame it, bombard it to bring it down. It's online direct action, and it's not difficult to do," he said.

 

Special report

Net notes

Also on Guardian Unlimited

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GameSpot

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GameZone.com

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PlayStation.com (UK)

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Trade association

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[Tarun]

'E-waste' Cited as Threat to poor States

John Markoff - New York Times Monday, Feb 25, 2002

Report says exports of old computers pollute Third World

 

SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO: Global export of electronics waste, including consumer devices, computer monitors and circuit boards, is creating environmental and health problems in the Third World, a report issued Monday by five environmental organizations says.

.

The report says that 50 percent to 80 percent of electronics waste collected for recycling in the United States is placed on container ships and sent to China, India, Pakistan or other developing countries, where it is reused or recycled under largely unregulated conditions, often with toxic results.

.

The groups said there were no precise estimates of the amount of such waste currently created by the disposal of obsolete consumer electronic and computing gear. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated last year, however, that in 1997 as many as 3.2 million tons of "e-waste" ended up in U.S. landfills and that the amount might increase fourfold in several years.

.

The groups also cited National Safety Council estimates that as many as 315 million computers became or will become obsolete from 1997 to 2004, generating a wide range of potentially toxic wastes.

.

For example, each color computer monitor or television display contains an average of 1.8 to 3.6 kilograms (four to eight pounds) of lead, which can enter the environment when the monitors are illegally disposed of in landfills.

.

"We've created a problem that has to be dealt with," said Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, one of the groups that participated in the report. The others are the Basel Action Network, Toxics Link India, Pakistan's Society for the Conservation and Protection of the Environment, and Greenpeace China.

.

A scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency, Robert Tonetti, acknowledged that a significant portion of obsolete consumer electronics gear was exported. He said, however, that there was no systematic reporting of the shipments, so there was no way to gauge the extent of the problem accurately. "No one has a good grasp of the numbers," Tonetti said. He said that figures in a 1999 National Safety Council report showed that about 723,000 computer monitors had been recycled in the United States and 100,000 had been exported. The report noted that more than a million monitors were unaccounted for and that many of them may have gone to parts brokers who subsequently exported the gear.

.

There is an international debate over how to deal with the problem, Tonetti said, adding that the European Union was moving toward requiring manufacturers to take full responsibility throughout the life of their products, particularly when they contain potentially hazardous materials. The industry in the United States has resisted this approach, he said.

.

While there is no consensus on a solution, he said the environmental groups had focused on important issues that should have more attention. Tonetti added, however, that the full-responsibility approach was not endorsed by the U.S. government.

.

Environmental groups, he said, have overlooked the fact that much electronics manufacturing now occurs outside the United States and Europe, complicating the issue of manufacturer responsibility.

.

He also said a significant factor in the increased exporting of obsolete electronics from the United States was the closing of smelters there in recent years, frequently because of environmental regulations.

.

The report, "Exporting Harm: The Techno-Trashing of Asia," focuses on electronics recycling around the region of Guiyu in Guangdong Province in China. The area, which is northeast of Hong Kong, includes a cluster of small villages that since 1995 have become a booming recycling center for electronic gear arriving from all over the globe through the port of Nanhai.

.

The region has a work force of about 100,000 people focused on recycling, the report said, with the process broken into small, specialized cottage work groups. In one neighborhood, plastics may be salvaged, while in another, circuit boards may be smelted to extract trace amounts of gold and other valuable materials, according to the investigators, who visited the region in December last year.

.

One casualty of the recycling boom in the region has been drinking water, the report says. Since 1995, as a result of groundwater pollution, water has been trucked in from 30 kilometers (19 miles) away.

.

The investigators said the recycling operations often involved young children, many of whom were unaware of the hazards. The hazardous operations included open burning of plastics and wires, riverbank acid works to extract gold, the melting and burning of soldered circuit boards, and the cracking and dumping of cathode ray tubes laden with lead.

.

The report described certain areas of Guiyu that were dedicated to dismantling printers. In those areas, toner cartridges were recycled manually, said Jim Puckett, an author of the report.

.

"Workers without any protective respiratory equipment or special clothing of any kind opened cartridges with screwdrivers and then used paint brushes and their hands to wipe the toner into a bucket," the report said. It added that the process created clouds of toner, which were routinely inhaled.

.

Puckett, coordinator of the Basel Action Network, said, "They call this recycling, but it's really dumping by another name." The network is an international watchdog group that is trying to enforce the Basel Convention, a 1989 United Nations treaty intended to limit the export of hazardous waste. The United States is the only developed nation that has not signed it.

.

The convention calls on countries to reduce exports of hazardous wastes to a minimum.

.

The authors of the report argue that stricter environmental regulations in the developed world have caused a trend toward exporting hazardous materials to the poorest countries, where occupational and environmental protections are inadequate.

.

The environmental groups took water and soil samples along the Lianjiang River and had them tested by a private center in Hong Kong.

.

The results, the groups said, revealed alarming levels of heavy metals that matched the metals most commonly found in computers. The water sample, taken near a site where circuit boards were processed and burned, showed levels of toxic materials 190 times the levels for drinking water recommended by the World Health Organization.

.

The report also notes evidence of similar unregulated recycling operations in Pakistan and India.

< < Back to Start of Article Report says exports of old computers pollute Third World

[Tarun]

Columbine lawsuit against makers of video games, movies thrown out

By The Associated Press - 03.05.02 - Printer-friendly page

 

DENVER — A federal judge yesterday dismissed lawsuit that claimed several video game distributors and moviemakers shared blame for Columbine High School massacre.

 

U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock granted motions to dismiss filed by Time Warner Inc. and Palm Pictures, as well as 11 video game makers, including Sony Computer Entertainment America, Activision and Id Software, maker of "Doom."

 

Lawsuit was filed by family of slain teacher Dave Sanders and on behalf of other Columbine victims. It alleged that makers and distributors of games and movies should have known their products could have led student gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to carry out the massacre.

 

Sanders' wife Linda refused to comment on Babcock's ruling. Her lawyer, John DeCamp, said he hadn't seen the decision but would almost certainly appeal it.

 

In ruling, Babcock said there was no way makers of violent games including "Doom" and "Redneck Rampage," and violent movies such as "Basketball Diaries," could have reasonably foreseen that their products would cause Columbine shooting or any other violent acts.

 

In a journal written a year before attack, Harris wrote of his and Klebold's plans: "It'll be like the LA riots, Oklahoma bombing, WWII, Vietnam, Duke and Doom all mixed together. ... I want to leave a lasting impression on the world," Harris wrote. "Duke Nukem" is also a video game.

 

Babcock rejected plaintiffs' claim that video games should not be protected by First Amendment, ruling that a decision against game-makers would have chilling effect on free speech.

 

"Setting aside any personal distaste, as I must, it is manifest that there is social utility in expressive and imaginative forms of entertainment, even if they contain violence," Babcock wrote.

 

During investigation into April 20, 1999, shootings, police found a videotape that shows one of killers with a sawed-off shotgun he called "Arlene" after a character in video game "Doom."

 

The plaintiffs also said Harris and Klebold had watched the Leonardo DiCaprio movie "The Basketball Diaries," in which a student kills his classmates.

 

Babcock also rejected argument that the video games were defective because they taught Harris and Klebold how to point and shoot guns without teaching them the responsibility or consequences of using weapons.

 

He also ruled that defendants' legal fees be paid.

 

Authorities say gunmen killed Sanders and 12 students before killing themselves in attack that also left about two dozen others wounded.

 

Babcock is judge who previously dismissed all but one of nine lawsuits filed against school district by families of those slain or wounded at Columbine High School. The one he didn't dismiss was filed by Sanders' family.

 

The other defendants included in motion to dismiss are: Acclaim Entertainment, Capcom Entertainment, EIDOS Interactive, Infogrames, Interplay Productions, Midway Home Entertainment, Nintendo of America and Square Soft.

 

Not included were Apogee Software, Atari Corporation, Island Pictures, New Line Cinema, Meow Media, Network Authentication Systems, Polygram, Sega of America, and Virgin Entertainment.

 

Previous

'Doom' distributors seek dismissal of lawsuit

Company says suit claiming video game influenced Columbine gunmen is identical to one thrown out in Kentucky. 09.03.01

 

Related

Federal judge dismisses lawsuit against movie, video game makers

Media producers could not foresee that Paducah, Ky., teen would go on shooting spree, court finds. 04.07.00