Sex Offender Online Game Ban

Sex Offenders, we can all agree, are fairly vile criminals, they violate one of the most intimate and important parts of human lives, the relationship and trust that is built into sexual intercourse between two people. A new operation put forward by Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has had several game companies with online content shut down the accounts of registered sex offenders. Now, while this is all for the good some might say, I'd like to point out that not everyone who is registered as a sex offender is actually guilty of rape or child molestation, and the registry of sex offenders rarely makes a distinction between out right rape, child molestation, or statutory rape.

To give a seriousness of the allegations here, read this article here. In 2009 this case went to the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Fourteen year old boy with a trio of girls, 12 and 11. Even I find the concept distasteful, but the fact of the matter is that the boy would be registered, for life, as a sex offender, in his later years this would hamper his ability to get a job, to go to college, and any number of other things because the registry makes no distinction that the act was consensual between minors. Things like this are why simply putting down a blanket "registered sex offenders should be banned from online games because they could use them to prey on minors as online predators.

Now, even ignoring that people who don't deserve to have their basic liberties stripped from them are having them stripped because of what is, let's face it, a glorified error in the paper work, the idea that the government is nannying us in this manner is frankly, disturbing. Yes, the government should take steps to prevent online predators from being able to do what they do, but that should be through non invasive means, not that they should put the onus of this on the game companies, holding them responsible for removing and banning sex offenders. See, by making it the companies' job to ban these people, rather than by policing such elements themselves, they are effectively making the companies responsible for these people.

If the government wants to police these groups, there are far better and more efficient, and far far more ethical methods than simply stripping them of their rights, especially given the sticky and vague definition of "registered sex offender" that can be applied to perfectly innocent teenagers and strip them of large parts of their futures. If the government, federal or state level, wishes to police known sex offenders, then it can simply be utilized via a program they are required to put into their computers that monitors what they're looking and sends back logs of any key words or specific key stroke combinations that pop up on their machines. Flagging them for companies to keep an eye out for, in case they are accused of sexually inappropriate behavior on the company's website, is also a valid move. Simply blocking them off so that they cannot access content is wrong though.