Resist Further Censorship of Videogames

We the undersigned, hereby submit this petition against the ICRCs intention to influence laws internationally, designed to limit the content of video games, specifically content that the ICRC considers as 'violations' of International Humanitarian Law. Although we recognise and support the need for awareness of human rights and the nature of actions constituting violations of those rights and of the rules of war, we do not recognise the fictional computer generated depiction or actuation of, what would in the real world, be 'violations' of human rights or the rules of war as being subject to either the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Geneva Convention, as they are wholly virtual and have no basis outside of a computer generated environment.

A close concensus between three major dictionaries (Oxford English Dictionary, Webster's and Dr Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language) defines a 'being' as an entity, as something with in a state of corporeal existence. Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention specifically employ the phraseology of 'human being' and 'person' to define beings under the protections of these treaties and agreements, neither of which could either on a biological , philosophical, theological or legal level be used as a to describe virtual representations of humans, as they are no more a being than a character in a book or a drawing of a person. The nature of NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) is that they are not persons, being neither corporeal nor sentient, but are sophisticated lines of compiled computer code designed to give the appearance of persons and exhibit behaviour determined by the game engines AI according to the game physics, within the virtual environment of the game.

If fictional depictions of 'violations' of human rights or the Geneva Convention (either virtual, or even literary) were to be prohibited via the ICRC influencing governments to legislate against such scenarios, the producers, directors and actors of movies would then also be guilty of 'committing war crimes' or 'violating human rights', despite the unreality of the situation. By extrapolation, even fictional writers would be guilty by virtue of the fact that the 'violation' would not have taken place without their penning it.

We charge the ICRC that it has employed wholly fallacious reasoning, both in it's classification of 'virtual violations' (as the ICRC are not technically equipped to define contemporary understandings of what constitutes personhood), and despite whatever powers granted to the ICRC by the Geneva Convention, the organisation does not have the justification or authority to influence elements of human society outside of it's sphere of jurisdiction. Furthermore, we contend that it is not the function of the ICRC to alter the boundaries of it's own role autocratically, or to arbitrarily take it upon themselves to influence governments to legislate against things which cannot be understood bureacratically, but only philosophically.

That the ICRC has taken the view that it has is greatly alarming, and only serves to provide further evidence of the dangers of bureacracies with excesses of power, organisations that attempt to use their powers to influence things for which they have the power but not the right to interfere with, and the over-legislation of society. As such, we will hereby resist with any peaceful method this intrusion into our virtual realms.

We thank you for reading our petition and hope that our words have impacted you enough to cause you to reexamine your reasoning.