Congress has obviously lost faith in American parents’ ability to monitor their children’s access to mature content. Just this past week, three U.S. Senators submitted a bill to Congress that will expand the power of the federal government to impose limits on mature gaming content, enforce fines due to violations, and evaluate the appropriateness of game ratings.

The bill, called the Family Entertainment Protection Act, is designed to keep mature games out of children’s hands. It was developed by Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana. The Act, the Senators believe, is necessary to “put teethâ€� into the enforcement of game ratings. Although ratings for video games already exist, retailers who violate the rating system by selling games with adult-themes (those rated M, AO, or RP) to minors often face little retribution.

If the Family Entertainment Protection Act is passed, store managers could be fined up to $1,000 or 100 hours of community service for a first time offense of selling adult material to a minor. Subsequent offenses would result in fines of $5,000 or 500 hours of community service for each new offense. Those retailers who develop a system to display and enforce the video game rating system may be cut some slack on the fines, in the event that a violation occurred despite their best efforts to monitor sales. Another provision allows retailers to avoid fines if they were shown identification believed to be valid, such as a fake ID.

In addition to fine enforcement, the Family Entertainment Protection Act would require an independent annual analysis of the ratings system, in effect double-checking the results of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. The effect will be to expand the power of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), allowing the federal body to conduct in-depth investigations into hidden coded material (like the infamous GTA: San Andreas Hot Coffee mod) that might miss initial inspection and, therefore, but left out of a game’s rating. The bill also require that the FTC accept consumer concerns and complaints about misleading or deceptive game ratings. And annual “secret shopper� audits of retailers by FTC staff will be conducted to ensure that retailers are, in fact, abiding by the new rules and restricting game access to minors.

Only time will tell if this bill is passed and is signed into law. Although similar bills are on the books in Illinois, Michigan, and California, the Illinois law was recently declared unconstitutional by a District Court judge. In addition, a similar law in Michigan has been temporarily blocked by a District Court judge pending a review of the law’s constitutionality.

You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Add to Del.icio.us