EU to ban violent games?

[Tomas]

cnn article

"These terrible things contribute to violence and sooner or later that leads to police intervention," Germany's Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said of violent video games, after EU justice ministers discussed them at a meeting in Dresden.

[Tomas]

hey, why do you care ? you're in Norway !

Alot of EU stuff are forced upon us Norwegians as well. This is because we are a member of EØS"dunno the english name"

One of the most recent things is changing our car number plates into the same style of EU number plates.

It would be better if we were a member ourself, since right now we experience most of the cons of being in EU without having any influence ourself or getting the good stuff like free trade between EU countries and so on.

[Tomas]

which means you get all the free trade stuff anyway, you, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Switzerland opted out of it and negotiated their own trade agreements.

No we dont... We have very restricted rules when it comes to import even from EU countries. When we travel to another country we cannot for example bring more than one single litre of spirits/vodka and a couple of liters of beer. We also have limits when it comes to shopping at internet shop outside of norway and anything costing over 25 euro or so will be much more expensive due to toll. Actually if i buy lets say a game costing 26euro, then i will have to pay twice the price!
We also have taxes on food import and such to protect our norwegian farmers which means that there is no competition, limited selection and expensive prices.

[Tomas]

hooray for trying to "translate" languages you don't know: the european economic area?

That is actually correct i think..

[Tomas]

I'd like to know what makes a game 'violent'.

I bet it will be similar to what the german government is trying to pass.. They are trying to ban all games that involves violence or cruelty against a human character. This means that games like CS and Call of duty will be banned. They even have proposed to prison those who break the law by playing such a game as well as those who sell or develope them.

[Tomas]

I'm sure that stuff can be an incentive for some crack nuts, as a matter of fact I seem to remember a juvenile going a shotgun spree under the influence of GTA, but I'm not sure ...

Dont you think this is because it is easier to blame it on something else like a game instead of blaming yourself? Violence and killings have NOT gone up since such games arrived. The stats in alot of places actually shows a decrease which includes USA.
A mentally healthy person will in no ways take damage from playing a violent game as they can differ between fiction and reality. But what do you say about movies? There was the same hysteria when violent movies came out, but that as well turned to be false.

I can handle age limits though even though i do not believe that a underage will take much damage either.

[Tomas]

I do not say that all people playing GTA are subject going to killing sprees, but it can trigger some switches in some people.

Yes it can.. But so can alot of different stuff do. The thing is that these people are unstable already and you just cannot blame it on games, movies or whatever that is triggering them off.
You cannot ban a thing just because one individual out of a million+ cannot handle it.