The present study is on one side devoted to the question of the legitimacy and constitutionality of the restrictions for violent video games within the framework of the regulatory youth media protection system as well as the penal prohibition of depicted violence in Germany. On the other side it is interested in the more actual legal policies to further restrict such games, too. Insofar such restrictions are generally legitimtated with the allegation that violent video games could yield both directly and indirectly aggression-encouraging effects in the most negative sense, the current body of the violent video games effects research is analysed critically in the first part of the study: Initially it is argued that the discipline as a whole in the light of relatively unelaborated, implausible media violence effects models, an as incoherent as equivocal state of research and most grave (endemic) problems (e.g. with the measuring of the media violence exposure or the operationalizing of aggressive behaviour, physical arousal, aggressive cognitions, emotions and a desensitization to real violence) hasn’t (adequately) investigated the effects of violent video games on the players yet. Theoretical and practical nothing speaks for (practically relevant) harmful effects of such games, too, so that prohibitive measures against the same can’t be legitimated with such effects. Against this background the second part of the study deals with the concrete measures for the protection of minors and the general public against violent video games regarding their legitimacy and constitutionality, i.e. the indexing procedure of the Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors (BPjM), the age rating procedure of the Supreme State Youth Authorities (OLJB) and the penal prohibition of depicted violence according to § 131 StGB. Not only is the legitimacy of the individual indexing decisions and confiscatory orders, but is the constitutionality of the indexing procedure and of the § 131 StGB altogether questioned. It is demonstrated, too, that even the in strictly legal terms voluntary age rating procedure for violent video games, which shall be published for adult players only, shows sings of a constitutionally prohibited censorship; the Pan European Game Information (PEGI)-system is discussed as an alternative. The third and last part of the study addresses the development of the political debates on violent video games in Germany especially within the decade following the so called Erfurt massacre (26. April 2002). The focus is on a discussion of three problems: (1) The draft law for improving the youth protection (JuSchVerbG) tabled by the Bavarian state government in February 2007 after the so called Emsdetten school shooting (20. November 2006), which remains to be the only concrete draft for tightenings of the Youth Protection Act (JuSchG) and a new penal prohibition of depicted violence especially for video games (§ 131a StGB). (2) The research report no. 101 by the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN), a spiritus rector for the Bavarian draft and the debate on the whole, which wanted to analyse the appropriateness of the age ratings for violent video games by the German Entertainment Software Self-Regulation Body (USK). (3) The 1st Youth Protection Act Amending Law (1. JuSchGÄndG), i.e. the actual reform of the JuSchG. Due to the discussed problems of the German youth media protection against violent video games a liberalization of the same finally is put up for renegotiation
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