While game developers and retailers have, for the most part, voluntarily fallen in line with the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in branding adult games and restricting their sale to minors, some on Capitol Hill still feel Uncle Sam should play enforcer. A new bill before Congress would mandate ID-checking with the sale of M- and AO-rated video games, and slap $5,000 penalties on retailers who fail to comply.
Tag Archive: Capitol Hill
Zillow Real Estate Service Goes Mobile
Upstart real estate valuation site Zillow has caused a few waves, first with its “what the heck is it?” marketing launch, then inking a deal with Yahoo to provde home valuations in Yahoo Real Estate listings. Basically, the idea behind Zillow is to provide real estate investors and home buyers with estimates—er, Zestimates—of a property’s market value, along with other key information about the property which is otherwise available but time-consuming to collect. Zillow then plugs the numbers into a proprietary formula and offers its best guess about the value of a property. Some people love Zillow; some people hate it; you can generally guess from their reactions where Zillow’s estimates fell in relation to their own personal assessment of the property’s value.
Microsoft proposes law on junk e-mail
Like several bills already proposed or being drafted, the software giant wants increased penalties for the fraudulent practices of many spammers who peddle diet fads, get-rich-quick schemes and pornography.
But the company is also pushing for an electronic seal-of-approval system for all e-mail marketing, to ensure that legitimate marketers meet high standards and to help consumers weed out unsavory or unwanted spam.
