U.S. Dist. Court Judge George Steeh granted the videogame industry’s request for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the new Mich. law that would make it illegal to rent or sell sexually explicit and graphically violent games to minors. In his decision, Steeh said videogames are protected by the First Amendment, as videogame trade groups have consistently maintained. Steeh said he granted the preliminary injunction because the plaintiffs -- the Entertainment Software Assn. (ESA), VSDA and Mich. Retailers Assn. -- “demonstrated that the Act,” Public Act (P.A. 108), “is unlikely to survive scrutiny, and that irreparable harm follows from the loss of First Amendment freedoms.” The judge said the claim by Mich. Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) and other defendants that a “compelling state interest” justifies the law wasn’t convincing, because the state failed to prove a link between violent videogames and minors’ behavior. Steeh also said the research “did not evaluate the independent effect of violent videogames, and thus provides no support for the Act’s singling out of videogames from other media.” He went on to say that “the response to the Act’s threat of criminal penalties will likely be responded to by self-censoring by game creators, distributors and retailers, including ultimately pulling ‘T’ and ‘M’ rated games off store shelves altogether.” Steeh joined the law’s critics in concluding “there is a serious problem in determining which games are prohibited to be sold or displayed to minors under the Act.” ESA Pres. Douglas Lowenstein said his group was “gratified” by Steeh’s decision. He said that “rather than continuing to play politics and pursuing this case to its inevitable defeat, further wasting Michigan taxpayers’ dollars along the way, we hope the state will start to join us in a common effort to take steps that actually help parents raise their kids in a healthy and safe way.” Interactive Entertainment Merchants Assn. (IEMA) Pres. Hal Halpin conceded that the issue was “far from settled.” But he said “our members can begin the always-important holiday selling season knowing that we will not be placed in the position of trying to discern which games may or may not run afoul of the law.” Granholm didn’t respond to a request for comment by our deadline.

An overwhelming majority of state attorneys gen. opposes a bipartisan push for the Financial Data Protection Act, among several consumer data safety bills Congress could act on this session. HR-3997 stands to preempt state power to enact and enforce existing state breach notification and security freeze laws, a House financial services subcommittee heard Wed.

By the end of the year, the FCC is expected to resolve several wireless proceedings, agency and industry sources said. The Commission is close to acting on a Remington Arms Co. petition and an air-to-ground (ATG) proceeding, plus 2GHz MSS spectrum reallocation, E-911 waiver petitions, designated entities, broadband radio service (BRS) and educational broadband service (EBS) rules. “Remington will be the first, and then ATG, then it’s up in the air,” an FCC source said.

Broadcasters, cable and satellite providers must bolster indecency efforts to reduce inappropriate material on shows kids are likely to watch, said Sen. Obama (D- Ill.). If they don’t step up to the plate, Congress will mandate changes, he said. Speaking after a Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) panel in Washington, Fox TV Networks Pres. Tony Vinciquerra said his firm must do a better job educating lawmakers about what’s been done to combat indecency. A KFF report saying sexual content on TV has surged, also unveiled Wed., comes as lawmakers with oversight of broadcasters have stepped up efforts on indecency. The Senate Commerce Committee, of which Obama isn’t a member, is circulating a draft bill called the Family TV Act that would boost broadcaster penalties more than 15-fold for each instance of obscene material (CD Nov 7 p12).

On November 3, 2005, the Senate passed the conference version of H.R. 2744, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006 (Act). The House passed the same conference version of H.R. 2744 on October 28, 2005.

Online shopping portals selling movies and computer games in Germany must adhere to a set of strict regulatory provisions aimed at protecting minors from harmful content, under new rules to be published soon. In a document agreed upon by German authorities for the protection of minors in the 16 German states, online mail order sellers must verify the age of online customers ordering movies or computer games rated “over eighteen” by a face-to-face-check before accepting the order and a 2nd time for delivery.

A possible push by Commerce Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska) for cable indecency rules raises a host of First Amendment concerns because it could curtail cultural expression, said First Amendment lawyers, industry attorneys and other experts. After many calls by lawmakers for family friendly measures, cable is being targeted by the influential senator, sources have said (CD Nov 7 p12). Children’s and family programming tiers, and more drastic measures like applying indecency standards to cable, would probably overstep constitutional bounds, experts said.

ANNAPOLIS -- The ITU and its World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC), scheduled to convene next in 2007, should be refocused to better address the needs of industry for direction in some areas, while avoiding other areas where an extended WRC debate would do little good, said Mike Goddard, dir.-spectrum policy & international for the U.K.’s Ofcom and a leading candidate to chair the 2007 meeting. Veena Rawat, chmn. of the 2003 WRC, agreed, telling a Defense Spectrum Summit dinner Thurs. night that WRC must change to take into account industry convergence.

The Assn. of National Advertisers (ANA) filed a notice of intent to intervene in Viacom’s petition to the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C. to throw out the FCC’s new rules on restricting on- and offline ads on children’s programs. The rules take effect Jan. 1. ANA participated in the Commission’s rulemaking on the issue. ANA said the case will “significantly” after ANA members’ ability to advertise during children’s programs. The new rules substantially depart from long-standing FCC practice by expanding the definition of commercial matter for program promotions, unless the promotion is for educational and informational programming, the notice said. This would further limit the inventory of ad time available during children’s programming and affect the economic interests of advertisers, ANA said. ANA has also taken issue with the rules’ restrictions on website ads that could force expensive redesigns of websites aimed at youths. That could raise ad prices, said Dan Jaffe, ANA exec. vp-govt. relations. Some broadcasters display URLs during children’s programs, such as with crawls at the bottom of the screen. The rules would allow the display if the website offers substantial program-related material and other noncommercial content. The site can’t contain any commercial material, including links to other pages with commercial content. The rules violate the Administrative Procedure Act and raise constitutional problems, Jaffe said: The rules don’t regulate children’s programming so much as it regulates website content, and there are serious questions whether the Commission has authority under the Children’s TV Act to take such action. These rules would require advertisers to modify their commercial speech and business practices, ANA said.

LAS VEGAS -- With new technologies increasingly clashing with traditional regulatory policy, there could be a “train wreck” soon for programs like universal service, panelists from Wall Street, Congress and academia warned Mon. at the Telecom ‘05 show here Mon. New technology offered by companies such as Microsoft and Google will change the landscape, they said.