Greek Court rejects gaming ban

[CSN NewsBot]

You no doubt have heard about the ban on gaming - of any kind - in Greece. Some good news today, as it looks like the law has been overturned by their courts.

The two internet cafe owners and an employee were charged after police found some of their customers playing online chess and the popular multiplayer game, Counter-Strike.



They could have been sent to jail for three months and faced fines of $4,950 each.



However, the court hearing the case has ruled the game ban as unconstitutional.

This is a good thing, not only for our friends in Greece, but for legitimate game players all over the world.

[The Who?]

hooray for all the Germexicanese folk!

[[ICCS]Viper]

lol arrested for playing chess



*claps*

[Jsunu]

YAY

UT 2003 demos for all

[cheetarah654]

hmmm that could possibly be one of the most ridiculous things i have ever heard. the arrested part, but luckily the court has some sense

[emilk]

Edited by [user="2695"] @ [time="1031755096"]

Good.

[scud]

emilk wrote..

Hurra for freedome! And what a day to get it!

jesus learn to spell freedom at least. we're not trying to free any domes you mongoloid

[pants]

Bah... they should have sentenced the people playing chess to 5 years of reformatting.



harsherpunishmentamustpants

[sniv]

cool for greekieans.

[artemis]

Gaming was only banned in public, in an effort to combat illegal gambling. The cybercafe owners were arrested for breaking a law, though that law was later overturned. It's really not that hard to understand. Gaming as a whole was not banned in Greece. You could still buy video games, consoles and accessories; you just had to play them at home. Seeing that this is where most people play their games anyway, this wasn't that harsh of a law. It's nice that it was overturned, but internet connections suck in Greece anways :)

[BoomChild]

Yeah for the gaming stuff. Public game playing banned... blah?! It's good stuff when the judges are smarted than the politicians. Go politicians :-/

[asspennies]

artemis wrote..

Gaming was only banned in public, in an effort to combat illegal gambling.

Actually, artemis, if you looked further into the law, gaming was banned not only in public, but also in private. There were several exposes on this that looked at the entirety of the law.



It was quite a stretch, but essentially the law banned *any* form of game playing, *anywhere* in Greece - even in private. Which means you couldn't even play your game boy at home, much less on a train or bus.

[JdeFalconr]

Well they've succeded in restoring gaming in Greece...now what are they going to do about the gambling problems? Perhaps this time they'll come up with a better solution, but it sounds like something really needs to be done to address the problem.

[Unregistered]

That's great!



On an unrelated note - shouldn't rizzuh change his corner to some sort of 9/11 related message? Just a thought.

[David Johnston]

Of course, there's always that other group of people who were in favour of the gaming ban - the group that feel violent games such as CS make children less sensitive to human life, in addition to those who are strongly against gambling and felt this move was a large step forward... they'll now be sorely disappointed, but I doubt they'll try to have the overturn overturned.