"Better dead than red!"

Kotaku has a good little piece on Diablo III, if anyone's interested.

I'm getting ready to go to New York City for a week, so I'll not be updating. I'm looking forward to doing the tourist thing and getting my second glance at the Big Apple.

Travel is something I love to do. While I was living in Japan, I visited both China and Vietnam. I was very interested to see these communist nations, and was surprised to find that there really wasn't a huge difference in the city life compared to Western democracies. The lives that these commies lived actually seemed very similar to my own.

Nonetheless, this article is a good example of the potential downside of a "communist" government. (The article is from Game Politics, which is a really cool website if you're interested in that type of thing.)

If you are like me, a video game maniac who can literally play games for eight hours straight, then the article represents a horrible alternate reality. Vietnam's authoritarian government imposed limits on how much of one's free-time can be spent gaming.

I've heard of similar practices in China, as well. I can understand that they think its best for people to be productive and not waste their time on games, but it sure chafes me to imagine the government getting in my business.

Freedom truly is precious.

How much control should the government have over internet usage?

Korea is taking strong measures to prevent citizens from staying up all night playing their favorite games. This isn't a new concept; China did something similar back in 2005.

Some places have laws about how late a bar can be open, so I suppose there's a precedent of government intervening in the hours that we're allowed to engage in behavior that may be harmful to ourselves, but I'm not convinced that a lack of self-discipline with video games is the same thing as imbibing powerful intoxicants.

When China did this, it made a lot of news but I personally didn't find it to be incredibly worrisome; China is an authoritarian dictatorship. South Korea, on the other hand, is supposed to be a democratic republic... and I'm a bit shocked and quite worried about this type of heavy-handed authority being used in a nominally free society.

Do you think this type of thing is justified? How much authority does the government have when it comes to limiting freedoms in the name of the greater good?