There are few better litmus tests to how technology is affecting culture as to when the technology of entertainment mixes with the masses.

As technology advances, so do the current bugaboos. In recent years, video games have joined the ranks of what penny novels, comic books, and even music lyrics have faced in their apparently checkered pasts: the fear that the medium itself is corrupting children. Multiple sates have attempted to forward laws that would restrict the sale of what is deemed violent video games to minors and none of them have stood up to constitutional scrutiny in court.

On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a 7-2 decision striking down the newly minted California law that prohibits the sale of violent video games to children on a multitude of grounds. In the decision Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011) the court upheld the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court.

In the majority decision, the Supreme Court held that video games are protected speech and that the “basic principals of the freedom of speech do not vary” with new and different communication and expressive systems. California did not adjust boundaries of unprotected speech with its laws and instead sought to create a new category of media-and-content based regulation directed specifically at children. The United States has no history of restricting violent content to children in movies, music, plays, or books (citing such common high school reading material such as Lord of the Flies and the original much gruesome tales from the annals of the Brother’s Grimm fairytales.)

In failing to restrict other media on the same grounds, the decision argued, California’s legislation was wildly underinclusive.

Industry reaction has been highly favorable

The reactions of the video game industry have been quite interesting. Upon the eve of the decision, Valve’s publication service Steam posted a giant image reading: “FIRST AMENDMENT FTW.”

George L. Rose, executive vice president and chief public policy officer for Activision-Blizzard, issued a statement praising the decision, “It should now be unambiguously clear to proponents of these quixotic laws that they cannot pass the most basic constitutional litmus tests. Similar restrictions on freedom of expression have been argued more than a dozen times in federal courts – and now the highest court in the land – with the same result. The constitutional protections afforded newspapers, books, films, music and other popular entertainment apply to computer and video games. ”

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) president Patricia Vance also issued a statement today praising the Supreme Court’s decision. “ESRB welcomes the Supreme Court’s decision in this case, especially given its validation of the ESRB rating system as an effective and reliable tool that parents use to decide which video games are appropriate for their children and family,” said Vance, citing the fact that the Supreme Court decision mentioned the ESRB’s rating system posted prominently on most video game packages. “In striking this law the Court has made clear that the video game industry effectively empowers parents to be the ones to decide which games are right for their children.”

Video games foment the experience of a new media

This sort of problem isn’t going to stop here either, video games have entered a new and different era of expression and communication not envisioned by California’s law: they’re also highly social. Social games represent an entirely different horizon for children to encounter exactly what the law sought to protect them from. In fact, the ESRB may put their ratings on games, but even popular games like Rock Band include a warning noting that they cannot rate online interactions.

Microsoft already has an Xbox 360 in a vast number of American homes and may start looking to it to become the center of social entertainment. Video games and video game consoles have become an instructable part of the fabric of our daily lives and what the indstury learns from how our culture uses them to communicate, interact, collaborate, and join together will inform the next generation of social and user interfaces in how to leverage our use of machines to augment our lives.

Even some of those violent video games the law rang concern about happen to be adding highly social components (such as Battlefield and Call of Duty) and undoubtedly there will be a multitude of minors on that social network—and across the entire world, not just in the United States.

Legislation like the one passed in California may, on its face, look like a good idea (because it strikes chords with our basic instinct to protect children from harm) but in the end it ignores all the important questions about how we as a culture control and guide our own interactions.