Status of Maryland's Videogame (non-)Law

Last year, I heard that Maryland had a bill to restrict the sales of video games to minors. The bill was HB707. It passed unanimously in the House of Delegates and Senate. I was upset at the time because the ESA was all huzzah about it. As reported on gamepolitics.com, the new, poorly written Utah game bill reminded me of the MD legislation. I was correctly criticized for lack of information, so I looked it up. Here is what I found:

It isn’t a new law to begin with. It was an amendment to Maryland criminal obscenity law. If you don’t look at it carefully, it looks like carte blanche to just say: this is obscene, let’s throw somebody in jail. I find the obscenity law to be very vague, but the current precedent is genitals, breasts, and sexual acts. It actually doesn’t prevent nudity in medical documentaries or works of art that are not intended as porn, like in Schindler’s List or the statue of David (those are examples, not equals). Ironically, a game like Trauma center could have nudity if it was educational and not something “they could get away with.” I personally consider Trauma center non-educational, because we don’t have “heal-all” spray, for example. The obscenity law should be a little more specific, but when you add VIDEO GAME to the list of things that could have obscene covers or content, it would have to be compared with porn.

I thought repeating this on 2o2p would be informative. The laws that need to be fought are the ones that use JTdemorte language that is based on obscenity laws that change the word "prurient" with "morbid." Why? Because a morbid curiousity is vaguely and poorly written, and it isn't necessarily bad. I mean, where do doctors come from?

As a final note, I will keep my eye out if this obscenity law gets miscontrued.