Mods & Violence
David Walsh, president of National Institute on Media and the Family, a nonpartisan organization that looks at the impact of entertainment on children, contends that underage mod makers are the moral equivalent of teenage pornographers. He thinks the game industry should apply the same rating system used on games to the mods themselves and restrict kids' access to Web sites where mods are posted.
The issue is starting to catch the attention of Congress. "This is a whole new problem," says Dan Gerstein, communications director for Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut. Lieberman is the author of a bill that would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to penalize companies that intentionally market adult-rated entertainment directly to children. But the legislation is finely tailored to address deceptive marketing rather than prohibit kids from making mods for mature-rated games, Gerstein says. [...]