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Florida judge won't ban "Bully" video game

Declan McCullagh Former Senior Writer
Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. You can e-mail him or follow him on Twitter as declanm. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.
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Declan McCullagh

A Florida state judge won't ban a forthcoming video game called "Bully" after all.

Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge Ronald Friedman has reviewed a copy of the game, as we previously reported, but did not agree with lawyer and anti-video game activist Jack Thompson that it should be outlawed. "Bully" is set in a fictional high school called Bullsworth Academy and is being published by Take-Two Interactive Software.

"There's a lot of violence," Friedman said, according to the BBC. "A whole lot. Less than we see on television every night."

Of course, a string of U.S. Supreme Court rulings makes the level of violence irrelevant. The legal doctrine's called prior restraint: even if someone finds a book, magazine, movie, or video game offensive, that doesn't mean they can stop its publication.