Chief Censor renews call for social responsibility

Press release about the Office of Film and Literature Classification 2002 Annual Report

Office of Film and Literature Classification
Thursday 14 November 2002

Chief Censor renews call for social responsibility from distributors

Chief Censor Bill Hastings plans to inform the music and arcade games industry of their legal obligations in the same way that he informed the computer games industry of its obligations.

"The computer games industry is to be congratulated for showing social responsibility and submitting more games for classification," says Mr Hastings.

The Classification Office hopes to encourage the music and arcade games industries to behave in a similar manner.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification's 2002 Annual Report released today notes that the Office has only classified one arcade game since it opened in October 1994 and has received no enhanced CDs. Both are covered by the definition of 'film' in the Classification Act and therefore must go through the classification and labelling process before being released.

By contrast, it was heartening to see the Auckland War Memorial Museum and the AIDS Foundation demonstrate social responsibility by voluntarily submitting material. The former submitted works from an exhibition on body art while the latter submitted a safer sex booklet entitled Hard Copy, before distribution.

The computer games industry submitted 60 games for classification in the 2002 financial year. This represents a 172% increase over the previous year.

ENDS

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