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Take-Two Interactive and Sony Sued Over GTA
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Take-Two Interactive is being sued by the parents of two kids who killed a man. I remember reading about the killing incident a few weeks ago, but this is the first I've read about an actual lawsuit. The part that I found most interesting was that Sony will also be named in the lawsuit because GTA was exclusive to their console." Update: 09/18 16:27 GMT by M : The Independent has moved/deleted the story on their site, breaking our link. We've already mentioned this story anyway.
Perhaps the parents should sue themselves for buying the cosole and the game in the first place?
I don't believe it.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
IAXM (I *AM* Ex-Military), and I don't seem to remember combat training for shooting floating eyeballs and zombies with RPGs...
Strangely, shooting a gun required things like using sights rather than just pointing in the right (compass) direction... Ah the old days...
For us carnivores, "Sucking the marrow out of life" isn't a transcendentalist philosophy but a practical instruction.
The part that I found most interesting was that Sony will also be named in the lawsuit because GTA was exclusive to their console.
Does that mean Microsoft can be added to the lawsuit in 2004? They have tons of cash and would be a great target to add to this frivilous suit.
Why the parents of the kids who committed those killings? I would have expected the relatives of the victims to sue Take-Two, but the relatives of the killers?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Oblig Penny Arcade
So if this game is so bad that it caused these kids to go out and commit this crime (no, I don't actually think there's a causal link) , then WHY WERE THE PARENTS LETTING THEIR KIDS PLAY IT!
Reminds me of a great bumper stick I had just seen recently, read:
DUMBASS
It's Lack of Parenting
NOT
Video Games
*DrugCheese rants*
This sounds very similar if not identical to Kids Kill, Victim Sues Game Maker.
We should also sue the electric company, for without their power they couldnt play the game. And oh yea, lets not leave out the TV maufacturer. Maybe we should even sue the person we bought the house from, since this is where they played the game.
Seriously, give me a break. How about parents stop blaming everyone but THEMSELVES for their kids actions.
Don't Tread on Me
Grand Theft Auto and its three sequels are designed in Britain and have topped the UK and US games charts, selling more than 20 million copies in the past five years.
And how many of those 2x10^7 kids became killers?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Sony isn't being sued because GTA was PS2-only, they're being sued because GTA was available on the PS2.
If it had been available on other platforms, the other companies probably would be named in the suit also.
Of course, that's stupid if you assume (as is most plausible) that the kids probably only would have played the game on a single platform of their choice, whatever they happened to own.
But then, the very idea of suing a game manufacturer because their game inspired real-life crime is stupid.
People are responsible for their actions. Actually committing a crime? That's a crime. Depicting fictionalized crime as a form of entertainment? Not a crime. There shouldn't be any civil liability either -- all liability should fall on the heads of the dumbasses who thought it'd be a good idea to imitate pixels.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Right, because, obviously, America's children are so influenced by everything they see or hear that it must be the game's fault. Sure, the kids say they were trying to recreate scenes from GTA, but come on... this shows a serious lack of the consequences of their actions, not any sort of thing that GTA will help or hinder.
If console and computer games can so easily influence kids, then how come we don't see hoards of them acting out Everquest or Soulcalibur scenes? Where are all the kids running around collecting rings after playing Sonic for five hours in a row? Huh? Answer me that...
This is nothing more then an attempt to shift the blame. Parents don't want to think that their kids could ever do this on their own, someone or something must have "made them do it". Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Buckner... your kid is fucked up. He deserves to go to jail and learn the consequences of his actions.
As for the lawsuit, I hope it summarily thrown out.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
the game company (take two) probably doesn't have that much money. but sony does.
i hope this gets tossed out of court. fast.
eric
If they think it's OK to sue the game company for making a violent game, then shouldn't the parents be sued for allowing their "minor" shildren to purchase and play such a violent game.
As parents, don't we assume some sort of responsibility for our children's actions?
You can't make nearly as much money sueing them. They're probably hoping for a quick settlement to save sony/take-two from going to court and potentially getting more bad press.
When are parents going to start taking responsibility for raising their own kids. If you're not going to spend the time to instill enough morals in your kids to know that killing is wrong, you have no business being a parent let alone blaming a video game for your poor parenting...not to mention the parents are probably the ones who bought them the console and the game. These are probably the same parents who are suing McDonalds for getting them fat. Total lack of accepting any responsibility, this is what today's parents look like.
Why is that parents expect the world to babysit their children for them. Just because games like this are made does not mean that someone who cant make the difference apparent in their head can be left alone with it (not to remotely say the kids killed the guy because of GTA). There are alot of people that enjoy games like GTA and never do anything.
Parents just need to spend more time paying attention to their children and what they can handle or not.
If the parents lose, will the kids go to foster homes and get sterilized? I hope so!!
Parent of 2 kids, 0 felonies.
Doesn't GTA have a mature rating?
Either way, a game isn't going to make some kid go out and pick up a gun and start killing people. There were serious problems there before the kid started playing the game. This is the parents trying to deflect the blame away from their poor parenting skills.
You also have to ask where these kids got the guns from. What parent leaves guns lying around that their kids can get access to.
Take responsibility for your own actions and stop trying to pass the buck.
Thank God! It's good to see that at some people are doing what needs to be done to protect our children from having to take responsibility for their actions.
...Of course that doesn't work so well for protecting their victims....
"I planned within my means and got a fixed rate mortgage, so where's MY bailout?" -cafepress
So if you rape someone, can you sue the Porn Industry because they sometimes portray rough sex?
If you run someone over in your car, can you sue the makers of Matchbox cars because you used to run over your GI Joes or whatever with them?
Lets just sue {insert deity here} for creating these people in the first place... maybe we should sue the aliens that put us here, or the cosmic rock dust or whatever it was...
These people need to be smacked. A good pimp smack.
I mean, what the hell? People have been shooting people for years, GTA is nothing new. Its just got better graphics.
How rediculous.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
i got a new plan:
1.) buy gta 3
2.) kill that bitch english teacher who always marked me down for incorrect semicolon usage ( damned c++ syntax leaking into my writing )
3.) parents sue take two/sony
4.) parents pay bail
5.) runaway to southeastern mexico and live it up on a private beach under the name 'juan sanchez'
if they would've completed the mission's objectives. The giant MISSION FAILED that popped over their heads should've been a give away.
*runs up to passanger side door of police cruiser and tries to open door; runs to drivers side and drives away*
What is music when you despise all sound?
Do you want to back that up with some evidence?
Even if it's true, it isn't against the law to give out ideas. In fact it's a constitutional right.
Wouldn't that be a refreshing take on these foolish lawsuits? Have the game developer team up with Social Services and sue the parents for doing such a poor job raising their children that they would commit murder. Having the parents suggest that a video game could cause them to commit such an act only strengthens the case that they were unfit parents.
What about the twinkie? - Dr. Peter Venkman, PHD
Where were the parents of the two accused killers when they were playing GTA in the first place? Yet another example of the "Victim Culture" the legal system has steered us towards.
Trolling is a art,
did the parents not see the huge M on the game meaning MATURE. Maybe the government should take the kids away form the parents. how come parents that hit their kids (and the kids hit other people) have the blame put on them. but (thank you mrs clinton, *sarcasm there*) when the government has a system in place to allow them to make better decisions about what their kids watch its the game companies fault. PARENTS IT'S YOUR OWN F___ING FAULT. YOU ALLOWED THEM TO PLAY THE GAME. now please be quiet and stop wasting money that could be spent of making GTA4 better.
I think the mature rating should make this a no contest case in court. The parents shouldn't have been letting kids under 18 play a game clearly marked for mature audiences. Chalk it up to another case of eternal parental stupidity. Darwin was right in this case.
Blair and Bush kill thousands of Iraqi civilians in a war based on illusion and fabrication and the term 'acceptable collateral damage' is applied.
2 kids pop one person and Sony/Take-Two are claimed as responsible for the unprovoked violence.
The world is schizoprhenic...into madness we will all descend...
George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney are in for at least $300 mil for setting a bad example for our youth by starting a violent unprovoked war in the middle east
CNN owes $500 mil for it's gratuitous, jingoistic, spoon-fed-propaganda coverage of the war
I figure that the parents of the kids gotta be in for about $2.5 billion apiece
And Joshua and William Buckner, since they are the ones who actually committed the crime, are in for $400 billion each.
Referring to The Manchurian Candidate, a 1962 film in which American soldiers are brainwashed into becoming fighting machines in the Korean war, Mr Thompson said: "We have got a nation of Manchurian Candidates who are training on these video games."
Next on the list of plantiffs -- the Bicycle Playing Card Company.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
2 kids just killed themselves after listening to black sabath
and another killed his sister after playing d&d
and i drove to fast to work after playing gran turismo
total crap.
!(^((ri)|(mp))aa$)
I'm just waiting for the family of victim to sue the parents for letting their kids play a game that made them become savages.
The game industry can then sue the government for not providing proper safeguards to prevent children so influenced by a fictional game to own such a toy.
And then we can all be happy because the government will be at fault, and no one will have to take responsibility for a brutal crime committed soley by two individuals.
Why is it that whenever somebody kills or hurts somebody else, it always is everybody else's fault but their own?
No sig. Go away.
hahahhahahhhahahahaah, lol
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
"Miss Bede and the family of Aaron Hamel plan to sue Take-Two Interactive Software"
NOT
"Apparently Take-Two Interactive is being sued by the parents of two kids who killed a man."
Does anyone proof read?
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
Wow, is that so? If that's their position, then why did the kids' parents let them play such a game?
Get out of that. YOU CAN'T.
That is quite the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Christ, have you not heard of the concept of free will? No-one forced these kids to do what they did. Really, if it wasn't for the fact that America is the only superpower these sort of legal cases would be the laughing stock of the world - featured in the 'quirky' column of the daily newspapers.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
I found a great place where you can find nerd news like this! Here is an article on this very same lawsuit on a website called "Slashdot"
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Yes, the parents are to blame, for sure. But I for one have experienced the mental shift after playing games like GTA3 (Carmageddon, mainly), thinking thoughts while driving that I probably would not have thought apart from the game experience ("Maybe I should just blow this light..."). Did I kill anyone? No, but I can see how their actions could be facilitated by game experiences that are becoming increasingly realistic.
Oh, wait. They do.
So, the parents buy a game that states persons under 18 should not use the game w/o parental supervision. Then they let the kids play the game unsupervised, knowing (at least from the game packaging) the the game is violent. Oh, and the kids also have access to a rifle, which they are too young to legally possess in Tenn. This is who's fault again?
Somebody call the Department of Family and Childrens Services.
As people have been saying here I think its all down to the parents
I mean where did the kids get the weapons from?
The parents should be fined for starting a lawsuit so absurd and wasting the tax payers money on it.
God bless US of A
Why sue the companies who produce games, but not the company who manufactured the gun that these kids used?
HH
--
No one is responsible their own actions; it's either video games, violence on television, music lyrics, or the movies.
How absurd.
Let's get real: It's generally lawyers that generate these ridiculous lawsuits. They see a cash cow, and they bring the families on board.
Yeah, sure, in some cases the families are totally
part of the greed and delusion, but let's lay the blame where it belongs: This international litiginous climate created by blood-sucking ambulance-chasing lawyers.
It's a standard reaction on behalf of the parents and a sad one. There are kids who will go out and do terrible things, but violence is not exactly a new thing in human history. If anything, todays' societies are remarkably non-violent compared to past ones.
For the parents - especially of the killers - it's an attempt to find blame somewhere. I feel sorry for them: since Freud's time, parents have been told "you are responsible for the way your kids turn out", when in fact many studies show that parents are amazingly irrelevant to their children's character. One long twin study showed approximately 50% coming from genes, 45% from unknown sources but presumably peer influence, and 5% from parents.
There is violence in our genes, but it generally needs a certain kind of culture to bring it out. The place to look for the causes of such killings are the youth cultures these kids hung-out in. There is no evidence at all that violent games or movies influence children, but it seems clear that violent children prefer to express themselves through violent games, virtual or real.
Court cases like this resolve absolutely nothing, because they divert the discussion in meaningless directions. Let's ban all violent games and movies... OK, will that change anything? Take a look at (random selection from a large pool) Uganda, where the kids watch no movies at all, yet 10,000 young (5-12) killers roam the north.
It is very difficult to change a violent culture, but it is possible.
The first thing is to understand the way violence is propagated. Like all youth cultures, it goes from youth to youth, bypassing all adult control. You have to work at this level, thus.
The second thing is to understand how individuals get drawn into violent behaviour that reinforces itself and finally becomes habitual. Can a young man turn to authority for fair protection? If not, he is more likely to use his own force for self-protection. Can a young man who uses drugs turn to authority for help? If not, he is likely to resort to retribution and violence. Can a young man escape from a violent or oppressive environment? If not, he will eventually give up on himself and "go postal", taking his own life but first taking the lives of as many of his peers as he can, in an attempt to regain some face.
I think it's clear that the rigid and somewhat intolerant mentality of adult-youth relations in the States is a large part of the problem.
Banning violent video games goes further in the wrong direction. Now we make criminals out of those youngsters who want such games. Excellent.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
big companies get sued, because they have money.
the only solution is to get judges educated on the facts and get them to dismiss junked up cases like this, and to educate the public, so that juries don't reward these ill-advised dollar chasers.
Take-Two got named because they have money.
Sony got named because they have money.
the sony link is just as tenuous as the core take-two link, so why not add them? who knows, by the time this suit is over (well into 2004) they may well try to add microsoft to the suit (when gta is no longer exclusive to sony) because -they- have money.
sociological tests have shown a -correlation- between violence in media and violence in kids. they have -never- shown -causation-.
what we do know, is that primarily kids emulate behaviors they see. whether it is on tv, in the home, or in video games. depending on the reactions to that behavior, they learn to modify it as necessary to meet their needs. if they are taught that aggression is wrong, and carries penalties, -no-amount-of-violent-media-can-reverse-that-
in other words - the rest of us millions of people who have played GTA don't go shooting people because our parents/society instilled in us that it wasn't right.
so either the parents failed to raise their children to be responsible (they are at fault) - or the children possess a chemical imbalance which prevents them from knowning right from wrong (they are insane). but in no case can it be the fault of a media company.
alas - you don't make a million dollars suing yourself. they've got dollar-signs in their eyes, plain and simple.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
The article mentions that they were trying to recreate a scene from GTA. Does anyone know which scene specifically shooting a .22 at people in cars refers to? I played through Vice City and don't remember sniping folks in cars. (Could be wrong). I DO remember doing other things to people in cars though...
Had they had driven to the mall and tried to break all the windows in under 5:00 minutes, would this might be a legitimate case?
The $100m legal action involves Joshua Buckner, 14, and his stepbrother William, 16, from Newport, Tennessee, who shot dead Aaron Hamel, 45, and seriously injured Kimberly Bede, 19, on 25 June..
...Miss Bede and the family of Aaron Hamel plan to sue Take-Two Interactive Software, which publishes Grand Theft Auto, for liability in a wrongful death lawsuit.
So this is the same old story.
I guess the NRA can now add video games to their ever expanding list of things that kill people (guns and god excluded).
and for buying an "M" rated game when the kids don't meet the recommended age suggested by the rating.
"The two boys told police they shot at vehicles on a highway near their home with a .22 rifle in an attempt to recreate images from Grand Theft Auto."
Should obviously be
"The two boys hired a helicopter to look down on a car driving in an erratic fashion on a highway, insisting that the pilot rapidly gain height everytime a driver stepped on the gas, and nearly crash back down to earth everytime they braked in an attempt to recreate images from Grand Theft Auto."
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
When an individual (adult or child) expresses intrest in means of mass murder or the ownership of wepons a parent should become more conserned about the childs state of mind, psycology and general well being.
Violent video games are more likely to stall a violent act rather than encurrage same as the game provides a vertual relase for that activity.
A presistant myth reguarding violent video games is that they are effective military trainning simulations. This clame appears to be a flat out lie put forth by one of the many making money selling books that blame violent video games.
Aimming with a mouse is entirely alien to the use of a gun. Moving with a keyboard is not like moving with your feet. The game is scued in other ways as well.
I am reminded of a project where a survalence mapping computer was created and then programmed to play Doom. This game used the real movements and firing from a realistic gun to move around and shoot inside the doom gamming environment.
If your child builds such a complex and expensive system purely to play a video game then maybe you could say the game is a useful trainning simulation.
However even then your child will need to fix the gaming "physics" to more closely match reality before the game could do the job.
The amount of work and effort needed to turn violent videogames into useful trainning simulations is so much that should a kid actually do it there should be no doupt the parents aren't aware of what there kids are doing.
I don't actually exist.
"We came home and found our son lying dead on his bed from a gunshot wound. He had his headphones on and there was an Ozzy record on the turntable[1]. So we called our lawyer."
GF.
[1] An archaic device used to create an analog sound stream from an arm with a small device that amplified the sound made by a needle rubbing a vinyl platter etched with a spiral groove starting on the outside and slowly going toward the center. The vinyl platters were called "records" and were interchangeable. The "record player" rotated the disk in a circular motion while the arm tracked the groove as it moved from the outside to the inside of the "record"[2].
[2] In the southern hemisphere, the "record" spun in the opposite direction.
Lots of petrified grits
The court case could help to decide the debate over whether violent video and computer games cause aggression in children
What's wrong with actual verifiable FACTS deciding debates, instead of court cases?
Something oddly was missing from the article, parental responsibility. I thought if parents left guns and ammo out in the reach of an underage kid they are held liable for what happens? Parents should also make reasonable attempts to monitor their child's use of mature materials, such as video games and let's not forget movies where frequently REAL guns are used in REAL life to fake killing and blowing up REAL people/stuff. So I want to know why a district attorney isn't suing the parents for negligence?
The counter-suit: Sony-RockStar-TakeTwo vs. parents of two dumb ass kids. I mean seriously, I would be suing the parents of the kids who did this because they neglected to instill any sort of common sense or "morallity" in their children. Their lawsuit is baseless. To blame it on a company that made a video game and sue them for it is simply another case of profiteering after a tragic incident as well as redirecting the true blame. These kids parents ought to be shot themselves for obviously neglecting their kids (they claimed they were "bored") and not keeping firearms out of their little hands. The fact that they are looking to cash in on this only tells me that they are really shitty people to begin with. I hope, that if they do sue and do win by some terrible glitch in the legal system, that they give all of the settlement to the families of the victims. Otherwise, I hope they die.
There is nothing I hate more than the parents of the children that pull this shit off. I believe it all lies with them.
...can a person commit a murder, claim they got the idea in a computer game, sue the makers of that game, and get away with it.
If I remember correctly, one of the suspects is 17 yo, and when goes to youth prison is released when he is 18?? That is one year for committing a murder. Wow.
The sensible, civilised world looks at this and wonders how come the country hasn't fully collapsed over it's own stupidity yet.
Wouter (Dutch citizen, living in Hong Kong).
I can't seem to figure out whether these people are after money or just avoiding responsibility. I'd like to think that they're after money, as I'd prefer to think that at least half our population is smart enough to know when they've messed up.
" ps -ef | grep -i parenting "
"Poor genetic material. I'd blame your parents."
I usually rant on about how rediculous I find these lawsuits and get pissed about how people just can't seem to take accountability for their own actions. "Oh, Billy just shot you? It doesn't matter that I didn't train him proper firearm useage, had one readily available to him, and didn't teach him it's wrong. I'm suing a game company."
However...the part that REALLY scares me is the fact they're suing Sony because that was the console it was on. So when people start suing movie directors and studios for violent movies, does this mean they'll also be able to sue AMC theaters? Unfugginbelievable...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Apparently Take-Two Interactive is being sued by the parents of two kids who killed a man.
That isn't apparent to me. The story linked to says that "Miss Bede and the family of Aaron Hamel plan to sue Take-Two Interactive Software, which publishes Grand Theft Auto, for liability in a wrongful death lawsuit. "
Miss Bede was seriously injured. Aaron Hamel was killed. They were not the parents of the kids.
I don't agree with suing the game company, let alone Sony, over this, but pretending it's the parents of the kids doing the suing makes it sound roughly 23 million times more absurd than it is.
OK, two things:
1) Why were a 14 year old and a 16 year old allowed access to the rifle?
2) Why were a 14 year old and a 16 year old allowed access to a game rated Mature?
Perhaps the parents should try to answer these questions before taking a stupid case to court.
ITs obvious that the parents didn't raise their kids well, since they arenot accepting any responisbility. I wonder how long the parents were allowing them to play the game before this happened, and did they actually take an active interest in their children?
Its another case of something being blamed to avoid responsibility and it again shows the sad state of this sue happy country.
Oh well.. back to enter the matrix.
Just realise the reality of the situation..... There is no reality.
And if anyone says otherwise I'll fucking kill em.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
Although I of course hope that this case isn't won by the parents of the kids that committed the crime, it would be interesting if the relatives of the people who were killed then came back and sued the parents. After all, at that point you couldn't deny that the parents of the kids were responsible for their care and yet allowed them to play, as they would have at this point proven in court, a dangerous and influential game. If the worst happens and the parents win the case (or settle) then I'd love to see them get bitten for it.
Seriously when are we supposed to be able to know that hurting other people is bad? I would have thought that maybe around the age of 6-8 at the latest you are supposed to know that hurting people is bad.
Can't we ammend the law in these cases. Give the jury an two extra question, 1 do you think the parents should be put to death and 2 how long should we torture the lawyer.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
These games are available everywhere else in the World - yet no other country has known such instances. Why? Gee, lemme think... hey - maybe if the kids never had access to guns, this wouldn't have happened?
They should sue Smith & Wesson / the NRA instead.
That is quite the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.
No, I've heard more ridiculous things. Just the other day, SCO was saying that they wanted Linux users to...oh...wait. Wrong topic.
Christ, have you not heard of the concept of free will?
Free will is a useful illusion. Really. I was just compelled to write that. And that. And...
No-one forced these kids to do what they did.
Good thing we aren't letting kids read the Bible. Then, they'd be getting slave, concubines, and stoning people for having mildew in their houses.
Really, if it wasn't for the fact that America is the only superpower these sort of legal cases would be the laughing stock of the world -
"only superpower" and "laughing stock of the world" are not mutually exclusive, you know.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
it is the people who were shot, not the shooters. Miss Bede and the family of Aaron Hamel plan to sue Take-Two Interactive Software, which publishes Grand Theft Auto.... Click the link on the article and read it.
These 'kids' are 14 and 16 years old. If they can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality by now, the fact that they killed one person and injured another is beside the point. They should be locked up forever since they will always be a threat to those around them.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
The only fair ruling to this would be that yes, the game may have been influential: BUT, the responsibility of the parents' was far greater than that of the manufacturers. This being the case, any amount awarded to the parents should be used as a base number for the 99.999X (percentage of PARENT's responsibility) award granted in return to the manufacturers for libel.
Any spoon would be too big.
This isn't a cup of boiling hot coffee in the lap that resulted in 3rd degree burns. You shouldn't sue when it's your own fucking fault for being stupid.
Opening one of those cheap cups of boiling hot coffee over your lap doesn't count as stupidity? You're much more generous than I.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Intel makes processors that are designed to run the vile murder/robbery simulators! Sue them!
Sue the ram manufacturers as well. Without their complicity, children could never have any ideas of larceny.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Perhaps we should be looking for other influences. Millions of kids play violent video games and are not worse for it. The Columbine murders have been linked to antidepressants. Perhaps there is a similar link here?
IANAL, but surely it would be a case of pointing to the 18+ sticker on the box and saying "case closed"?
First off, the parents should have never let them buy the video game. I am not a proponent of the side that says video games make you want to kill. That's not the real issue here. First off, I'd never let my kid play/buy that game. End of story there.
Second, WHY did the kids have access to this rifle? Why was it easy for them to get it and go and start shooting off of a freeway? Guns are nto dangerous unless the people who own them are careless and it sounds like the parents were very careless and they should be the ones to sit and rot in jail or at the very least have the kids taken away for child endangerment. I am not saying the kids should not be punished, but the parentys have to have a hand in this also even unwittingly.
With all that I have said above, it needs to be said.....VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT TRAINING GROUNDS unless your the military and then there is no semblence of realism like there is on a military simulator. Comparing the two is....idiotic.
Gorkman
In related news, RockStar Games sues The United States of America, for influencing them in making the GTA series.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I don't understand why the teenagers and the teen's in the columbine case had guns *at all* I live in the UK so guns are not available but if they where and I needed a fire-arm for some reason I would keep it in a locked cabinet and not give my teenager access without supervision... that is the issue.. if they didn't have guns the worst they could have done was go out and shoot people with water pistols
If this is what happens when they get bored, I'd hate to see what will happen if the kids were angry.
Seriously, if these kids started shooting because they were bored and didn't think anybody was going to get hurt, they got bigger problems. If they don't have the mental capacity to comprehend that, remembering to breathe or how to walk should also be impossible.
for using a scapegoat for their poor parenting and screwing up the game industry.
I figured I'll go after Michael Moore. He made Bowling for Columbine, and that movie portrays people who own guns. Since I can see people brandishing guns in the movie, I have to assume that kids would be arbitrarily ('cuz kids imitate what they see on TV...) be enticed into owning or using a gun out of peer pressure from the people portrayed in the movie. Also Marilyn Manson's in the movie. So he's to blame too...
Things you must never take blame for when your kids kill:
Poor Parenting
Owning a gun
Keeping Gun loaded
Not owning a gun lock
Buying the game/console
Not monitoring your kids spending habits
Not snooping in your kids lives
other media outlets (keep focused on that one media outlet as the only source of blame, ie, ignore DC sniper shootings)
So for your best bets, stay away from these topics and keep focused on one aspect of their lives. That way, it makes it look like that's the only thing THEY did and that your crappy parenting skills resulted in them playing it too much to the point that they HAD to kill.
You sound like an idiot
However one point you make is true. A study by an ex army fellow showed that the training in simulators where a soldier shot a simulated human would improve their real true-life kill rate phenomenally; and not just because it was more practice, it's because for most people, police/army/marines etc the instinct to NOT kill another human being is a strong one. Training can get past that in simulators that show moving simulations of 'live' people in a way that pop up targets do not.
So essentially yes, GTA is a killing simulator. You get to point a weapon at a simulated person, and blow them away. or drive over them. or beat the living daylights out of them with a baseball bat. Breaking down that instinct NOT to kill people is breaking down some of the most basic instincts that keep a society relatively intact.
So that being said, if you can accept it (and the book about it is quite compelling) indicates that yes, games like GTA are killing simulators. Combine that with the impetuousness of youth and you have a volatile combination. Perhaps we should ban kids from playing games like thi....
whoa hang on there are already controls over kids buying these games! Therefore the reason the kids are playing these games are the parents
The parents of the children who shot, killed and injured these people trained their children to be killers. That's where the responsibility lies and why
Did they shoot him? Run him over? Use a baseball bat on him? Pound him to death with bare hands? If a case like this wins, then any crime or "naughty thing" ever portrayed in a video game should be held accountable for a law suit as well...
Honestly, there isn't a way to kill a person in real life that hasn't been done in GTA (except for using knives), That's why the ESRB rating was created in the first place... Unless I'm mistaken, it's the parent's job to make sure that these kids don't play these games. Take-Two isn't trying to be the parent of children nor should they, the game was specifically marked for a more mature audience. If anything, these parents should have their kids taken from them since clearly, they would rather that TV and video games do the job of parenting for them.
This sort of thing happens every day, people kill other people with baseball bats yet no one sues the MLB do they? And why should they? It isn't their fault that your kid has an abnormal tendency to swing at things with large pieces of wood. They play the game and show how much fun it can be.... So to can be held true with GTA, it is very entertaining. But just because a kid shoots someone or runs over someone or blows up someone with a grenade doesn't mean that it directly stemmed from a video game, it is a tendency towards violence that causes these sort of things. If the child has a tendency like this, it is a parents job to recognize it, that's their job... Not a video game's.
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
I'm trying to understand how video games totally override's someones ability to discern right and wrong. They fact that they were bored and just started killing people is rather scary. But is lack of immagination the only thing that prevented them from being killers? Couldn't they have easily watched the footage of the twin towers and get the idea to fly or drive into a building? Did Pac-Man promote gluttony? Did Donkey-Kong promote animal abuse? sigh....never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups....
So the kids are complete idiots who don't seem to be able to use their brains for anything and the parents are looking for someone to blame. I guess that sums it up.
//m
the makers of Pacman (Namco?) because every time I see a tennis ball, I have to eat it.
Uh, ever heard of knowing the difference between right and wrong, fantasy and reality. Ever heard of NOT BEING A FUCKING DIPSHIT? Incite my balls. Some fuckhead parents give their dumb-fuck kids a game meant for people that KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A FUCKING GAME AND REALITY and suddenly is the fault of the game makers that the kids are TOTAL FUCKING ASSCLOWNS? Fuck that. That is bullshit, straight up. Incitement to commit a crime is standing up and saying "I want you five guys to go and rape that woman." Incitement to commit a crime is NOT a depiction of violence.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
The game is rated 18+ for a reason. Those kids should never have had access to it, nor should kids be able to have unsupervised access to a loaded rifle. What the heck is going on in Tennesse?
I'm don't believe that video games CAUSE people to commit crimes like this, but these are obviously two screwed up kids in the first place. So when you let them play this type of game and give them a loaded gun to play with when they're "bored", you are playing with fire.
Why did they let their idiot kids watch violent video games and play with guns.
The parents should be charged with manslaughter because of parental negligence.
The parents should be sued and brought up on charges.
Reading articles about the GTA lawsuit and the Everquest, it outrages me on how little responsibility the parents take for the actions of their children and how little they hold their children accountible for their own actions. The Everquest mom let her son play the game and he was 21 years old. The GTA parents let their kids play a game that was rated for adults.
Many people like to point the finger at other things besides themselves. Outside forces caused them to do it. The sad fact of reality is that we live in the outside world. There are things beyond our control that may try to influence (drugs, crime, moral decay). We can control ourselves and not be influenced by them.
Many people will say that these games are beyond anything previously experienced. They point to all sorts of studies on how games influence violence. Evil is as old as time itself. There is a very old book. It has tales of patricide, matricide, murder, rape, incest, polygamy, adultery--every ill we know. It's called the Bible. How come none of these parents ever sued the church because it is a bad influence? Because if the silliness of it would get the lawsuit tossed out of court in a heartbeat.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
outrageous!
"The $100m legal action involves Joshua Buckner, 14, and his stepbrother William, 16, from Newport, Tennessee..."
The game is clearly certified as R-rated or over-18. It is clearly not designed for youngsters.
This is yet another outrageously frivolous lawsuit where parents sue someone else for their ignorance of most basic parental responsibility; supervision! What's most outrageous about it that they want a $100m! so kill a man and earn a $100m! now talk about predatory attorneys who have no idea what the connection between law and ethics is. Those parents are no different from those who feed their kids junk food 'cos they can't be bothered to prepare healthy food then sue mcdonald's for making their kids obese.
Such parents shouldn't have kids if they're not prepared to look after them, are willing to blame someone else and willing to shamelessly seek to profit from lousy parenting!
Those profiteering attorneys deserve midaeval style torture, that'll teach them something about the basics of human morality and societal responsibility.
Just how outrageous can things get!
Here's a virtual +1 for you.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
I'm not an American, so correct me if I'm wrong. In the US, wronged parties in lawsuits are often awarded punitive damage. Large companies can be fined for huge sums, totally out of proportion to the actual damage done (e.g. the McDonalds coffee lawsuit). The idea is that the punishment should be large enough that it will actually affect the offender. This is in principle a sensible approach; it can prevent rich people or corporations breaking the law because they can afford to. The flipside, however, is that it encourages what economists refer to as rent-seeking behaviour, capturing existing wealth (in this case through lithigation) rather than creating new wealth. We can all come up with numerous examples of rent-seeking behaviour in the past few years, indeed, some people fear that the entire US is in danger of becoming a nation of rent-seekers. Maybe the potential wealth gain through lawsuits and such are simply too big to resist. Maybe the punitive part of the fine should go to the government (which in principle is owned by the people). This would keep the advantage of punitive fines, while discouraging people from starting lawsuits primarily for personal gain.
Chain those fuckers up. Control your animals. My dad did, not that he was abusive;-)
...are they going to sue the gun manufactureres as well for providing the means to kill? And how about the auto manufacturers for providing the target for the kids to shoot at? And how about the city engineers who planned and built the streets providing a venue for the targets?
C'mon. If they're going to sue anyone, sue the parents--they're the ones who are ultimatly responsible for the actions of their children. Yes, it'll be a tough lesson for them to learn, but isn't that what lessons are for?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Let me guess, this will end up like every other "blame the media" lawsuit whether it is against a rock band, a movie or in keeping with the times, a video game: thrown own of court by an eye-rolling judge or found laughable by an eye-rolling jury.
Parents: give it up, this tactic has never worked because it is damn near impossible to show causality for mass media that is digested by millions.
Yes, someone has to blame for your kid killing himself/someone else...but expand your definition of someone to include "that's life" and you'll might feel better about things. Millions of kids (many of which listen to, watch or play the thing you are blaming) do not end up this way. The few kids that do fall into a statistical expectation...either due to problems with their upbringing, their peers, their parents or their gray matter. Welcome to the world we live in.
Go to the hardware store, buy a hammer and then threaten the jury members by beating them up and smashing up their cars.
Kick in the Head
The Republicans are just as guilty, but they prefer a different approach - outlawing such games altogether (along with porn, rap music, and anything else which offends their Christian fundamentalist supporters), the First Amendment be damned.
I think you need to lay off painting with a big brush my friend.
Joe Lieberman is the main asshat. Not the entire democratic party.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
If my son decides to go bomb someone and take their house? After all, he's been seeing it on the news for months. Makes just about as much sense.
From the article: Points, ammunition and more weapons are awarded for completing missions that include stealing cars, crashing them, shooting pedestrians and other motorists, drug dealing and beating up prostitutes.
Good thing they aren't trying to make the game look bad, or anything. Just so you who have not played the game know, while you *can* do all the things mentioned above, the missions don't require you to do more than steal cars (sometimes), sling dope (in GTA:VC, on an extra mission that isn't required to beat the main story) and shoot criminals (you are never required to kill a random pedestrian or motorist in a mission, nor are you ever required to kill a policeman) and while there is one mission requiring you to beat up a pimp, there's no mission which requires you to beat up a prostitute. It is true that jacking cars is a crime, and so is killing criminals (slinging dope, while criminal, is not in the same league). That is enough of a basis for argument about the game, but making it sound worse than it is doesn't really help anything. The mere fact that you *can* do bad things is irrelevant, unless you wish to argue that everyone on the planet should be locked up because they *could* kill other people, if they wanted to.
Now, for those of you out there who are up in arms because stealing cars and killing criminals is bad enough, please remember that you have to be of age to purchase this game. By the time kids are legally allowed to buy this game, they can also watch NC-17 movies and have probably been watching R-rated movies for years and years, in which stealing cars and killing criminals (and cops, and innocent people) is not only routine but by now ennui-inducing. Anyone who shoots random people in real life has more problems than what video game they're playing. Opponents of video games would have you believe that children are incapable of distinguishing between tv and real life. The mere fact that people entertain this ridiculous supposition is evidence enough that our society is out of control. When I was a child, I played many video games, and not once did I believe that they were anything more than games. I've been a fan of television for my entire life, and I've never once confused a tv character with the actor. Never have I known anyone who did not know that tv characters are just pretend. I once asked my (then) 3-year-old niece if she thought the genie from Aladdin would come visit her, and she replied 'no, he's just on tv, silly!' Please, people. Use common sense.
http://xkcd.com/386/
i'm not anti-atty (am dating one even, immigration, this is a cheap plug for you h1-b folks :P ) but this guy is the type that gives them all bad reps. maybe sco consulted him first and got his legal opinion that open source is immoral.
this f$#@$ing guy is just a christian morality crusader with fringe ideas always running around seeking attention. i just can't understand why anyone (ok, well, stupid people in tennessee grasping for straws don't count) lets this guy represent them.
its like falling out of the ugly tree and getting sponsored by the editors of rotten.com in a beauty pageant. don't these people see the folly of the case?????
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
The article reads:
This should instead read:
Hope this helps.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
"Another study found that people who had played violent video games were more likely to have aggressive attitudes"
And this tells us what? The way it's worded, I expect they're using it to argue that games cause violence. I bet what was actually found was that most if not all of the people studied were probably drawn to violent games BECAUSE they had aggressive attitudes. That to me is common sense. You really think someone with pacifistic tendancies would want anything to do with a violent game?
... should sue the shitty parents for plopping their kids in front of a tv, ignoring what they were watching and what games they were playing, and expecting the state school system to raise their kids for them.
Yvan Eht Nioj!
I was thinking we should make a videogame where the mission objective is to kill ambulance-chasing lawyers.
What a recursion that would set off...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Thanks to him, I think it's perfectly normal to have a secretary working 'under' me.
Just a question, an observation.
In our Society you can SUE anyone for anything. This in its self is not the problem.
The problem as I see it is the people on the Juries. Why do Juries award such huge awards????
If we as potential Jurist knew and UNDERSTOOD what we could do as a Jurist.
We would probably not see such BS brought to the Courts.
It is not up to the Lawmakers/ Government to decide for us what should or shouldn't be allowed to goto Court.
We as Citizens, the people who serve on Juries should be the only ones to decide the validity of claims made in Court.
I hope the Jury for this case finds Sony/Whomever not Liable and the Parents %100 liable.
Does anyone know if the Victims Families are Suing the kids parents?????
http://www.Slaveway.com
That'll be laughing out loud. But how does LALL = LAughing out Loud? Where does the final L come from?
--
This sig is inoffensive.
you know, I grew up playing video games...as most of you did I'm sure, so my question is simple.... how many of you have gone out and killed people because you saw it in a game. Not many I'd hope. I find it strange that parents are willing to let a playstation babysit thier kids, and then have the unmittigated gaul to get upset when the kids do something stupid like this. The gaming industry has started (though not effectivley) to get serious with the game ratings, meaning if it has an M on it, you have to be 18 to purchase it. so either the parents bought this for thier kids....or just diddn't really care what they were doing untill somebody dies. maybe im strange , or maybe its from growing up in the south, but i can remember when parents actually raised thier kids, and you could punish them accordingly without fear of a lawsuit from some silly organization. its only a game....its not real...if you can't teach this to your kids, or if your kids are to stupid to understand the difference between a game and reality...then they don't belong in the same room as a playstation. "Of all the things I've lost... I miss my mind the most"
You're a shining example of what's wrong with a two-party system. Automatically point to the other side when something wrong happens. Stupid lawsuits aren't the domain of a single party. There's plenty of stupidity to go around in any political party.
Blow me. Being an asshole and being a COMPLETE DIPSHIT THAT SHOOTS PEOPLE BECAUSE OF A VIDEO GAME are two entirely different things.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
...is where'd they get the gun? If your kid is playing around with a gun, I think as a parent it's your fault.
--trb
Uh, ever heard of incitement to commit a crime?
Actually, no. Could you provide some examples?
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
Guns don't kill people video games kill people.
"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." --Old German Proverb
Man...maybe I can blame my being overweight to playing too much Pac-Man as a kid. So I can sue Namco and Atari and Midway, right?
With this in mind, I am suing the /. editors for malfeasance in office.
I'll be rich, RICH I tell you!
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
It's a fact that many people should not be allowed to have kids, the way they raise them.
I can take one example that happened last week:
I work in a small kiosk, and a lady brought along her 2 annoying little kids that ran around the kiosk yelling and doing whatever they wanted.
The lady obviously thought the kids made too much noise, but she didn't yell at her kids. In stead she tried to make *me* yell at them for her.
"Calm down kids, or else the man will be angry at you!" she said. Then when I didn't get angry, she got frustrated and said to me "But!? You're not going to yell at them?!", obviously annoyed that I didn't do what she wanted me to do.
That *really* pissed me off! Bad parents can't yell at their own kids, but must rely on other people, so they don't appear as the mean one.
--
Will work for bandwidth.
Shouldn't the parents have the guns locked up in the first place!!!!
"The universe is my dwelling place and my house is my only clothes! Why are you entering into my pants?" - Liu Ling
I mean, first, their kids are complete morons and criminally stupid. They deserve all the prison rape they get. Then, they *sue* becuase their kids are criminally stupid.
Let me add my vote to the number of people who have played GTA games and managed to not kill people.
And while we're on the subject, from what I understand, they were shooting at the sides of semi-trucks on the highway, just like in GTAIII. Excuse me, but I've played this game a few times, and I don't remember this part at all. In fact, the only semis in the game have no trailers on them!
Today on a road I used to drive nearly every had had someone shot. This is very odd for Australia and the hand gun used was found at the scene. I wonder if it was road rage. Considering there are about 100,000 clueless drivers driving that road every day, it wouldn't surprise me. Its a top quailty road and over 95% of the people are driving under the speed limit of 100km an hour. Its a road safty experts wet dream and its only 4 times more deadly than any highway like it anywhere in the world. Nothing like people driving on the highway at 1/2 the speed limit to keep things moving smoothly.
And he did a lawsuit in the Paducah Case.
And he threatened to sue the US Army over the "America's Army" game.
bun-fhuinneog agam!
Why the heck didn't they shoot the person coming to arrest them
Maybe the "M" on the box is not enough for parents. They should probably do same thing as with tobacco and take half the cover of the box to write "Warning this game might cause people with mentality disorder to go out and shoot people at random"
Activison is sued for 55 year old man's death - apparently he played Pitfall constantly since 1983, and recently tried to jump on an alligator's head to cross a swamp.
personally I believe that violent video games are an outlet for us to act out our repressed agressions that we naturally have. If anything these kids should have been less violent after venting in the form of a video game for 3 hours. I mean, if ass-jerk cuts me off on the freeway, instead of running him off the road, I'll go home and run over a few civillians with a fictional tank.
"The two boys told police they shot at vehicles on a highway near their home with a .22 rifle in an attempt to recreate images from Grand Theft Auto"
What I find interesting is their bluntness here. The devil made me do it, has never held up in court.
Does GTA give children instructions on how to kill people? Does GTA provide the children with access to firearms? Does GTA endorse children to play it?
By all rights the parents should be criminally charged with endangering a child for letting them have access to fire arms. I'm sure they don't run a local ring of illegal gun trade. It surely, like most crimes involving gun play and children in america, was obtained from the parents cabinet, den drawer, or any other obligatory gun deposit of modern suburbia.
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
...Video games causes violence BS. Lets cash in on getting shot!
The reality is no more simple than this:
Stupid people will do stupid things.
You can expand stupid to people not brought up well...people who have been mistreated etc but I prefer to classify them as stupid when they DO STUPID things.
Doesn't matter if they played GTA all day...or watched backyard wrestling...or if they saw faces of death and got interested. Next thing you know they might be at a zoo clubbing seals.
Video games don't kill people....stupid people do.
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
No. 100% genuine. Here's a quick link:
h 07 0803.htm
http://www.rnc.org/Newsroom/RNCResearch/Researc
It's not video-game related, but it shows who eats out of the lawyer's trough.
A couple of weeks ago my niece(9yrs) and nephew(11yrs) stayed at my mother's on vaccation. We watched some generic family movie on tv. It was past 8pm, but I thought that watching that movie'd be perfect. Y'know, vaccation and all. Wrongo. The TV channel advertised the usual 10pm sex, crime&drugs dreck during commercial breaks. Even the ads sported lots of nudity and stupidity I wouldn't want my kids to watch. I never was bothered about this, but having those kids next to me made me take another viewpoint. Face it, kids are exposed to stuff they won't be able to cope with. Without parental guidance god knows what will become of them. Society acts irresponible. I don't say that violent games, movies and so forth shouldn't be produced. But each and every one of us should try to keep it out of their hands.
20 minutes into the future
Reminds me of a bit from George Carlin that went something like this It doesn't take a fscking village to raise a child. It takes a mother and a father.
No, the real problem is that the Democrats are on the side of lawyers and block every bill that will reform these lawsuits.
Maybe I'll have to link to a zillion articles, because you guys would rather just blindly disbelieve rather than do a couple simple web searches.
This is all because a some parents just don't care what their kids do. It is a 'good' thing to buy a console as a babysitter and let the kids play. The same parents don't care to check what kind of games their kids play. They don't care about age ratings when they buy the games. But after their kids do something incredibly stupid they wake up to reality and start blaming everyone else but themselves. It still is parents' responsibility to raise the kids. Not some plastic box with neato controllers.
Its not lack of parenting, and its not video games.
Its all Judas Priests fault!
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Tennessee has no Child Access Prevention (CAP) Law and has no Trigger Lock Law.
So first off the parents of these kids basically are under no liability for the apparent availability and possibly unsafe storage of their weapons. Yet they have the gall to blame this tragedy on a game clearly marked for adults, which they most likely purchased for their kids.
Don't even get me started on their lack of responsibility as parents to at least be aware of what their child is watching on television or playing on a game console.
Parenting is more than breeding and feeding.
brightloudnoise.com
Maybe kids should come with warning stickers.
[WARNING! This child was raised by incompetent and/or indifferent parents]
What were those parents thinking letting their 14 and 16 year old kids play a game that has an 18+ rating? (at least in the UK from the article) Or (if they're liberal parents) what were they thinking letting their kids play that game unattended? Do parents and kids live in the same house? Do they talk at all? Was there any contact since birth?
Have those boys parents already been sued by the (families of the) victims for negligence? Is this some form of preemptive blame shifting?
My apologies for the rant but this is just so far out there I almost feel I've been transferred to another galaxy in my sleep.
If the game had no rating or a 14+ rating in the US it would be a slightly mittigating circumstance in my view but even then the parents had better start by finding where they themselves went wrong before the let the lawsuits fly.
The Democrats vote as a block to oppose lawsuit-reform bills. One Senator can't block a bill, it takes at least 41.
Do a web search. All the info is easy to find.
I played this game mostly on my PC. Perhaps they should sue the maker of my mainboard, hard disk, and video card too?
Have you painted a shed today?
...where these two kids learned to take responsibility for their own actions.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
See the links to the FEC in that article? Research it yourself.
If the RNC says the sky is blue, do you automatically assume the sky is yellow?
This reminds me of a report I did way back in the college days involving Roleplaying Games, but I think it applies here. When you're playing a game you willing suspend disbelief. You know when you're really into it, mashing buttons and trash talking the guy across from you on the LAN, you do believe it's real. But then the level ends, you get up and get a beer, and you know it's only a game, just 1's and 0's. There are some people who can't do that, they are insane, they have a physical abnormality in their brain that prevents them from being able to distinguish reality from fantasy. Provided that is the case here, and not just a cop out, then there is no way that the hardware or software manufacturers can be held liable. It would be akin to suing a company that makes woodmaking or other sharp tools because someone with depression used them to kill themselves.
Before you know it... they will start suing saturday morning cartoon makers. Watched them this past weekend with my kids. You want to see fantasy and violence? Spend an hour or two and be surprised.
;-)
Sure GTA is a violent game. When I was a kid I played very violent games and nobody is dead... yet
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
People who produce children who murder should have their DNA removed from the gene pool. Sterilize the children and the parents. I might just sue them for producing menaces to society!
so let me get this traight, after the 4th game in a series all pretty much abotu the same thing you don't know what the game is about (point 1) it has a mature rating for 17 and over (point 2) the parents, mayeb after seeing the youths play the game don't take it away or at least say something about it (point 4) AND NO ONE IS BOTHERING TO ASK WHY A 14 YEAR OLD AND A 16 YEAR OLD HAVE A 22 CALIBER RIFLE (he shoots he scores) come on people get a clue, be a parent, take some control, and for cripes sake, quite blaming everyone else. we grew up on these games and for the most part have no problems with reality, we were told by our parents, hey it's fake, don't do it in real life, i mean come ON! and if the court awards the parents, i swear, im moving to the moon, pronto
Once again parents are trying to pass the buck for their own errors. I hope the judge seriously slaps these people down.
Amazing... the threads here could be material for a study of how few /. posters bother to even read the article before posting their insights based on an emotional reaction to the article summary. Clue coming:
The submitter summarized it wrong. "Apparently, Take-Two Interactive is being sued by the parents of two kids who killed a man." Yeah, apparently... apparently (no, obviously) wrong. Article states that family members of the murdered man and the injured woman are suing the shooters.
This is, I know, an extremely controversial discussion, because it seems to hit at the core of everything we've been taught about how we become who we are.
The basis for my statement that parents are less important (how much less is debatable) than peers comes from the book "The Nurture Assumption", by Judith Harris, written in 1998. It's an excellent book, for which Harris was flamed to pieces by the establishment for daring to suggest that we are not entirely the products of our upbringing (thus the title of her book).
The low impact of parents can be seen in two specific cases.
One, difficult to find, is twins that are raised separately: compare the types of family they are raised in, compare the peer groups they grow up in. I can't point you to specific examples, sorry.
Two, much easier to find, is immigrant children. Observe how they learn the language and habits of their peers much more than the language and habits of their parents. I live in an immigrant neighbourhood, and it is a striking effect.
The point is this: blaming the parents is an old game that delivers no results. Look elsewhere, and perhaps there is a way to resolve the problem. It is unfortunate that the science of psychology is so firmly rooted in a mentality that is becoming more and more outdated as we discover just how much of our nature is carried in our genes and in our cultures, and how cultures are spread much more horizontally than vertically.
Which is why children sing songs that are sometimes hundreds of years old, and which no parent has ever taught them.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Parents take responsibilty for their children.
It's 10am, do you know where your children are?
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
"... Sony will also be named in the lawsuit because GTA was exclusive to their console."
GTA 3 is also available on the PC. Why not sue Microsoft, creators of Windows and DirectX, for allowing the game to be played on the OS? While they're at it, sue Intel, NVidia, Corsair, Asus, Hitachi (cause there's got to be a Hitachi chip in that computer somewhere), Kensington, SonicView, Plextor and Lian-li?
After all, those bastards should have to pay for what they did. They need to be more responsible? Don't these companies know they are raising these children??
I know that if I ever have kids and get a divorce, I'm gonna sue Microsoft and Toyota for alimony!
...that it's not the parents of the kids that are suing Take Two and Sony, it's one of the people that was wounded and survived the shooting. If you read the article it states that "Miss Bede and the family of Aaron Hamel plan to sue Take-Two Interactive Software, which publishes Grand Theft Auto, for liability in a wrongful death lawsuit. Take-Two owns Rockstar Games, which is based in Edinburgh and designed the first version of the game in 1997. Sony will also be named in the lawsuit, because Grand Theft Auto was made exclusively for its Play- Station consoles. Sony declined to comment on the case."
It doesn't actually say anything in THAT article about the parents of the kids suing anyone. Improper titling, or false attribution?
--Obyron
From the article:
Points, ammunition and more weapons are awarded for completing missions that include stealing cars, crashing them, shooting pedestrians and other motorists, drug dealing and beating up prostitutes.
I don't know about Vice City because I haven't played it, but for GTA3 the above statement is rubbish. You're never required to shoot pedestrians or other bystanders, nor do you deal drugs or beat up hookers. Nor do you ever have to directly target the police. In fact, many of the missions in GTA3 involve busting up a rival gang's drug operations. Kind of ironic that a game with this level of violence carries an implicit anti-drug message.
As for the lawsuit itself, it's simply another example of parents trying to cover up their own failures by blaming the media. These two kids could just have easily been playing America's Army and decided to go on a fantasy hunt for some terrorists. BTW, this game's level of tactical violence is far more realistic than any GTA game, yet it received a 'T' rating. And this is a recruiting tool commissioned by the Army. But I'm sure it will be OK if America's Army turns kids into murderers, so long as they're in uniform and Defending Our Freedoms.
A few years ago, the mother of a child who was killed by one of his friends sued Midway, saying the friend was inspired by Mortal Kombat. She lost. An article I found about it said...
:)
U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton found that the lawsuit brought by the victim's mother failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Thirteen-year-old Noah Wilson died in November 1997 when his friend, identified in court papers as Yancy S., stabbed him in the chest with a kitchen knife. Noah's mother, Andrea Wilson, sued Midway Games Inc., claiming that Yancy S. was addicted to "Mortal Kombat" video games and that he was so obsessed with the game that he actually believed he was the character "Cyrax." Wilson argued that Yancy S. was mimicking Cyrax's combat moves at the time he stabbed her son.
But Judge Arterton held that the video game is protected by the First Amendment. While Wilson had argued that "Mortal Kombat" differed from books and motion pictures by virtue of its "interactivity," Judge Arterton said the plaintiff failed to offer a persuasive reason for distinguishing the technological advances that led to the game's creation from developments at the turn of the 20th century that ushered in the motion picture.
You can read the entire article here. Part of me is seriously hoping that the defense can use this in the trial, but then IANAL, so I don't know for certain either way.
Just my $.02...
Do these parents realize they have absolutely NO case whatsoever?
There's something called a rating system. GTA is obviously rated M, so those kids shouldn't have been playing it in the first place.
Parents like that make me sick. They want to point fingers and blame others because they fucked up raising their kids.
Sorry, nobody's fault but their own.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
You're somewhat correct.
It's worth considering that you don't have to defend the lawsuits to oppose the outlawers. It's also worth considering that the outlawers have rarely been successful at outlawing any kind of "content", while these lawsuits happen every day.
And the outlawing problem is hardly a Republican-only one. See breast-implants, cigarettes (soon), cell-phones, SUVs (someday), political-advertising, guns, fireworks, ten-commandments tablets, and a host of other things for examples of things the Democrats have outlawed.
Republicans (as a group) are wrong sometimes. Democrats are wrong THIS time.
I found most interesting was that Sony will also be named in the lawsuit because GTA was exclusive to their console.
Ummm... so what have I been playing on my PC? I could have sworn it was GTA 2, 3, Vice City... etc...
Should they sue PC makers as well?
"There has been a wealth of research to show that children's brains process these video games in a different way from adults'. They cannot differentiate between fantasy and reality, so they play these games and then think if they do the same thing in reality, it's OK, there will be no consequences."
The problem with the above statement, made by Jack Thompson, attorney for the families, is that we're not talking about children here. At 14 and 16, the perpetrators of this crime are not children. Now I know that some people try to pretend that teenagers are children but they're really being dishonest and even deceitful when they do. Teenagers are not yet adults, but neither are they children. They are minors, but all that describes is their legal status, not their degree of maturity. Neither an 18 year old nor a 40 year old are minors, yet no one would try to claim that made them equally mature. The two young men in question are not children, they are adolescents, a stage in human development that is not usually given its due. For this lawywer to claim that someone that age is unable to discern reality from fantasy or understand the consequences of his or her actions shows a careless disregard for the truth or perhaps even an inability on the part of this lawyer to discern reality himself.
The left wing in this country have suceeded in creating an environment where no one is held accountable for the consequences of their decisions. The lamest of excuses, like "I saw it in a video game," or "I ate too many twinkies" are sucessfully used to deflect blame onto third parties.
Responsibility for this crime begins and ends with the two young men who perpetrated it. As far as the things that might have influenced them to commit the crime, why aren't their parents pointed out? If a video game can influence someone to do something so horrible, what does that say about how their parents have raised them?
The sad sick truth of this story is that Sony is being sued not because it is responsible for this in any way, but because it has deep pockets and is likely to settle out of court because it will cost them MORE money to fight it.
The only people who win in a case like this are lawywers, and they do so at the expense of society itself. Jack Thompson should be disbarred for filing a frivilous lawsuit.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
If I was a parent or relative of the victims I would be suing whoever allowed the access to the firearms that did the actual real damage here. Probably would get less money but at least I would get who is really responsible here.
The victims were shot. Remember that.
Maybe they should sue the manufacturer of the ammunition that did the actual killing.
Exactly.
They said "We never meant to hurt anybody..."
But they were retarded enough to think, despite in GTA when you shoot someone them dying, that no one would get hurt. Something was definitely wrong with the mentality of these two kids. That's what needs dealing with!
Greg Dean summed this all up about 10 months ago VERY well.
d =8 23
http://www.reallifecomics.com/daily.php?strip_i
I want to sue the parents for spatting forth upon this earth, two children stupid enough @ 14 and 16 (16 being able to legally drive a car alone in Tennessee) to go out and do this.
These moronic parents are suing the people who create entertainment because they never took care of their children enough to realize these two little morons would go outside with a gun (where did they get the gun btw?) and shoot into traffic.
On the topic of the gun, I'd like to see charges...yes, criminal charges pressed against the person who left the gun accessible to these children. While the 16 year old could legally drive a car, he CANNOT utilize a weapon, and while IANAL I do believe that even in Tennessee, it's illegal to knowingly or unknowingly provide children with a weapon. Charge the idiotic parents with conspiracy to commit murder. If these lawsuits against video game makers are allowed to proceed and win no less, then these parents should be held responsible for their part in all of this: not watching their kids and allowing them to KILL people.
Try direct responsibility before you go off and blame a video game maker with more money then you. I simply hate the fact that people blame others because they have money, when it is clearly the fault of the person bringing the lawsuit.
By this we should all go out and sue Microsoft for creating a clearly unstable and poorly secured operating system that has allowed the propagation of millions of viri, worms and more. These issues inherent in Microsoft systems have cost millions in bandwidth, time, and have even forced universities and ISPs to cut off their customers. By these moronic parents idea (and the lawyer no less, but they, they're scum) we'll be setting a precident that video games (much like TV in the 90s) is responsible for our children's issues, not the parents who decided to fuck and produce them.
I HATE the fact that I'm forced to deal with the utter stupidity of the people around me. I find that the only recourse I have is to stay inside and play GTA. (Had to stick some humor in that long ass rant)
Damn-it, bring criminal charges against the owners of the gun! Okay, now I'm really done.
Your first clue should have been where the kids were from. This is what happens when brothers and sisters marry.
The USA is full of pussies these days that are afraid of weapons.
9/11 happened because people were afraid of the sharp metal pointy things. 30 years ago everyone would have been around knives all their lives and would have fought back and won. Or they would have died trying because they believed they could win. Still, 5 guys against 200 passengers isn't a fair fight with machine guns, let alone box cutters.
If kids were taught about guns and other weapons from a young age, and - the important part - ALLOWED TO FIRE THEM in a safe way (i.e. at a strictly controlled firing range under lots of adult supervision), the fascination with guns and shooting and weaponry would not exist, and people would in general be safer - within a generation's time. They'd know what happens when you pull the trigger, and wouldn't need to go behind anybody's back to find out.
Now, I don't know how this can be accomplished. Mandatory military service isn't the answer, and a civilian pro-gun movement will just end up being corrupted by the jesus freaks and the boardroom-fellating neo-conservatives.
All I know is that when kids are around guns regularly, there's no mystique attached to them, which means that they're less likely to be used appropriately.
....for giving me Pac Man fever! Wakka wakka!
"Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space..."
This issue continues to come back up, time and time again. Whenever there is a killing or attack by someone under the age of 18, ANYWHERE, games, television, and other items which identify the current culture are being put to blame.
If it were necessarily true that kids follow games, then why aren't MORE kids out there killing and maiming? The mentality is set to a small group. If there was a mass hysteria, sure, maybe then there would be something. But for God's sake, people, it's a video game! I played them on the Commodore 64, Apple 2, Atari 2600, Intellivision, and the original Nintendo when I was a kid!
Did they have an effect on me? Well, as a kid, I never knocked over a turtle and kicked it away a la Mario Brothers! I never stole a car and took it for a spin around the city like many racing games! Hell, I never went out and had sex at age 12 because of all those crappy sex games the C-64 had available for it, either.
So the question remains: why are kids being blamed, and in this case saying, that they learned the behavior from TV and video games? Simple answer: their parents and the media. Parents today are worried about their kids, and they have every right to be. But what do they do? (And I have noticed this with friends and family who have children of various ages.) When their kid is in trouble, they ask them where they learned it. "Was it on TV? Was it in those video games they play?" The parents are giving the kids the scapegoat the kids want and need, and the companies that make the games are the ones getting in crap. The media blows all of this out of proportion, with CNN reporting hours-upon-hours of how the games are corrupting the youth.
Grow up, people! Yes, some people may be influenced by games, but those people need some form of attention and intervention; it will not go away by removing one video game. Take some responsibility for your own actions, and that includes random blaming of games and television for acts which are probably rooted deeper into the kid's psyche (although I am not a psychologist).
Given that God is infinite, and the Universe is also infinite, would you like some toast?
they have no one to blame but themselves.
They used "The Glass Teat" to abrogate their parental duties of supervision and provision of moral authority, and their kids turned out, quite predictably in such an ethical vacuum, to be a couple of socio-psychopaths without a shred of compassion or empathy.
What did they expect?
I'd like to hold them up to public ridicule and humiliation.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The older you get, the more input from your parents you have had, and the better chance you have to understand right from wrong. Teaching you this is the parents' responsibility. I propose that every crime committed by a minor is partially the fault of the parents. However, the parents are not the only input, and society also attempts to teach us right from wrong. While those messages are confused by all the other things "society" is trying to teach us (see: commercial messages) they are still valid. If nothing else, the body of law is available, and the actual laws themselves are available to anyone who is willing to go to the library, or in many cases, look them up on the internet.
As the parents must share the blame for anything their children do, I propose the following system. When a minor is convicted of a crime, their parents should share in the punishment, based on the age of the child. I suggest that we simply assign a percentage of the punishment to both the parents and the child, divided into portions based on the child's age. For instance, a nine year old is half of the age of majority, so half of the punishment is assigned to the parents. As each parent is equally responsible, we can then assign the same punishment to both of them, either by dividing it in half (I don't like this idea) or by assigning both of them the full percentage.
Hence, when a 12 year old shoots someone, 1/3 of the punishment goes to the parents, to reflect their culpability in the whole affair which derives from their parental responsibility.
In a perfect world, I'd also be in favor of sterilizing those whose children take or attempt to take the life of another, so they can't fuck it up again, but I'm sure in the interests of freedom that suggestion will be loudly decried. Why someone else is allowed to have freedom in the process of taking it (without life, there is no freedom, obviously) from other people is beyond me, but regardless, do not throw my baby out with the bathwater of this final paragraph.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Where were you while your kids were playing these horrible games? Why weren't you monitoring them? Sounds like bad parenting is at fault. It's not the legal system's responsibility to raise your children.
Let's outlaw video games, let's outlaw violent movies, let's outlaw music and pornography, let's outlaw religion.
I think that video game manufacturers should modify the themes of their games to a more self-destructive approach. Maybe a "Die Man" game, where the winner racks up the most successful and inventive suicides. This would help ensure the appropriate children are removed from the gene pool before polluting it too much.
Stupid children deserve to die.
Well said! I play video games that can only be described as horrendously violent (Postal 2 is rediculously funny) for a good chunk of my life. (5-6 years of gaming, that's for sure.) Hell, I even did it for a LIVING for 2 years.
I know the difference between video games and reality. The reality is that you can get away with violence in games because it's just that -- a game. Anybody who uses a game like Grand Theft Auto as inspiration is a total farking idiot.
And any PARENT who tries to hold a video game maker responsible for their own faulty parenting is also a total farking idiot. Moreso, in fact. If THEY had raised their kids (instead of relying on video games to do it for them) then maybe the kids would have the knowledge and values required to realize that it is just a farking game.
*Shakes head at idiot parents*
This should be read: Sony will also be named in the lawsuit because they have tons of money and a jury will surely punish that big, evil corporation by giving us helpless victims (the parents of murderers) cash.
Honk if you're horny.
For Grand Theft Time-O...
-- Bird in the Bush: The Renewable Energy Blog http://www.birdinthebush.org
The lawsuit is being filed by one victim and the family of the other victim. The morons doing the shooting aren't involved in this aspect of it (unless they are asked to testify that the video game made them do it, which we all know is just stupid).
My favorite quote from the article:
It's nice to see that this guy is a complete moron, and this isn't just an isolated incident. What does he expect when he fires a rifle at people? They'll just respawn or something? Sad...
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
But doesn't the intent of the incitement hold bearing? If the game was not intended to influence people to go out, shoot people, run over people, pick up hookers, etc. then I do not think that there was any intentional incitement and as such the liability for the organization that 'incited' the act would be minimal, if held liable at all. If video games truly incited people to do various things, I think I would have taken on my fair share of gorillas with barrels by now and ghosts who can be eaten once I digest a nice, flashy, glowing Power Pellet.
Given that God is infinite, and the Universe is also infinite, would you like some toast?
Because the parents don't have millions of dollars. That's right, these people are trying to make money of a tragedy. If the lawsuit had anything to do with right & wrong they would be suing the parents. It's shit like this that makes ME want to go out and shoot people who start lawsuits like this. I wonder if they would have to sue themselves for inspiring me to shoot them?
Just sue the victims for presenting themselves as digital characters? Or maybe they should sue the people who make the weapons and ammo poseurs. Thank god they didn't pick up hookers, take them to the park, and beat the money out of them.
It's obvious these people don't care about making a statement and trying to prevent this in the future. If they did, they would be making sue every one of the other parents paychecks would be garnished for the rest of their lives. By going after deep pockets they paint themselves as the type whose grief follows the greenbacks. What are they asking themselves? "I'll teach them to stop making violent games." Yeah right.
So here's a question...why don't we take responsibility for our actions today?
When was the last time you were late to work "because your alarm didn't go off"? (of course, you forgot to set it)
Late to dinner because "the boss gave me too much work" (of course, my time-management skills suck)
Didn't have that module finished and checked in to source control by the deadline because COM sucks/the network was slow/bugs in the compiler. (not to mention I was reading slashdot)
We have met the excuse makers - and they are us!
Ok, I'm off late to a meeting because...my Outlook reminder didn't go off. (and I was replying to this doggone post)
All of the GTA games have also been released to PC and most to MacOS. Sony should not be a part of the lawsuit if that is the reason.
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
The victim's family, not the perps family, is suing, and the kids explicitly claimed GTA as their motivation. This may not prove that violent games make violent kids, but these ones made clear their influence.
If I told my neighbors' kid it'd be a great idea for him to start shooting up the streets, and he did, any just society would find some punishment for me as well as for the overly impressionable kid. What can I say? The corporations wanted human rights..
...All of them have also appeared on the PC. The first 2 or three appeared on the PC first and GTA: Vice City is also supposed to be appearing on the X-Box. Or so I've read.
You're a parent, and you see a video game in the store with a felony listed as the title, a mature sticker on the cover and dozens of references to perversion, violence and murder all over the packaging.
And then you let your 14 year old kid play it.
A few months later your 14 year old kid is picking off moterists with his brother because they're "bored".
And somehow it's the fault of the company that built the system that the violent game was initially (not exclusivly, initially)?
The world is going nuts.
The Internet is generally stupid
You are all missing the point. Notice that the children involved were male! It is a statistical fact that 100% of all male violence is perpetrated by men or boys. Therefore, all men are inherently violent.
The solution, radical as it may sound, surely is to eliminate men altogether. Breeding could be done by Genuine Artificial Insemination. No male sperm would be used. A DNA sample would be taken from one parent and injected into an egg taken from the other parent. This would be returned to the uterus.
The price - the life of every man and boy currently on the planet - would be a small one to pay for the benefit of living in a society without violence, sexually transmitted diseases, rape, unwanted pregnancy or abortion {which DOES damage the women who have to do it, MORE than you think}. There would be no need for contraceptive devices which either have long-term health risks, or make sex less enjoyable {although any woman who claims to "enjoy" sex with a man is evidently suffering from delusions. Hetero sex is solely a means to an end and its necessity is questionable in any case. As an evolutionary necessity the man may feel artificially "good" following sex with a woman, but this is a typical example of male selfishness. Men get an endorphine-induced "good feeling" from anything that improves their OWN chance of survival. Women get the same "good feeling" from helping OTHER women}.
Beside the obvious advantage of there not being males, and therefore there being no crime or volence, this would restrict breeding to approved couples who would raise their daughters properly. It would be possible to impose a "parenting test" on any couple who wished to start a family.
Your honor, I would like to claim damages from Sony for taking away my parenthood and teaching my kids to kill. I was too busy watching TV to teach my kids any values so I would also like to sue Fox.
I was going to quote you part of the article where it said that the kids said they got the idea from GTA, but it looks like the server's getting sorta Slashdotted right now or something. Anyway, the game did influence them, according to the kids themselves.
You might ask yourself if those kids would have commited that crime if they didn't have access to a .22 rifle. If you were to own one of those things, wouldn't you keep it out of reach/sight of your kids, and at least be responsible yourself if they were to use it?
I don't know about you guys but I'm getting a 404 error from the main link. I found the same story on The Register.
"Following the tragic school shootings in Littleton several years ago, the parents of several of the victims attempted to sue a host of games companies - including id Software, creators of Doom, and Nintendo - creators of such blood filled orgies of violence as Mario and Pokemon."
God I love The Register.If whales learn how to use weapons we're all screwed!
the fuck does that have to do with anything? Suing Rockstar games is retarded, but so is saying that a letter on the box intended to restrict access has any basis in reality. Are you saying that there's a direct correlation between getting access to entertainment targeted at older people, and shooting people? That, had the rating been obeyed, these crimes wouldn't have happened?
I say no. This argument has no scientific basis whatsoever. The rating on the box is there to appease parents, not to prevent crimes. And parents are not rational individuals when it comes to their kids. If they were, they might try raising their children correctly and thereby preventing their kids from becoming sociopaths.
Kids become sociopaths for a number of reasons, but it takes a hell of a lot more than a video game or a porno movie to do it. Being paid attention, having a stable environment, love--these are the things that help someone grow up well-adjusted. In order for a crime like this to happen, all of those things have to be missing.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Maybe the kids bought the game and/or console thorugh walmart or circuit city. I'm 16 and buy my games that are rated M from them, and they don't check it, it is still the parents fault for not keeping an eye on their children, and where did they get the gun? Their parents? It's not Take Two/Rockstar/Sony's fault.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Violent games don't make violent kids. Violent kids latch on to whatever is violent around them. Whether it's the US bombing Iraq, the hundred of shootings you hear about on the news each year, or a game where you can shoot people. If GTA wasn't available it would have been something else. Video game makers are just considered an easy target.
Sony/take are releasing a free cd wich you can ask for that will "patch" GTA and GTA vice city.
Because of all the radical changes to gameplay the game has had to be renamed.
Barbie's dream tea party.
Doesn't every generation see the following one in a negative light?
Wow I guess this means I am no longer responsible for my actions. I get fat, sue the fast food industry. I decide to kill someone, video games made me do it. I want to use drugs, hey man I heard it on the radio. I am hoping that someday people will just take resposiblities for there actions.
Once upon a time, I once I had a great Sig.....then I lost it.
It's the French for god's sake! You don't need an army. They will surrender immediately.
I say good for you. Cheese kills.
DVD players, digital TV tuners, and even regular TV sets have rating controls on them. Don't want little Johnny to watch Skinimax? Just lock out that channel, or put rating restrictions where you have to enter a code to view it. Even the PS2 requires you to enter a code for DVDs rated over your set preference.
Now, why don't game consoles have this same ability? Sure, parents SHOULD watch their kids, but games are already rated. It would be a cinch to implement, and it would help prevent little Johnny's friend from bringing over GTA:XXX and playing it while the parents are still at work. I suspect that this just may be a feature in the next generation of gaming consoles.
This article has apparently been removed from the site already. I searched the whole site and could not find a reference to it. Clicking on the link brings up the famous 404 error from their server.
Can someone post a copy of the article or a google cache of it?
Thanks
I guess the Fresh Prince was right. Parents just don't understand. Sure the TV is a great babysitter. It's always there, always on, always ready to show your kids gruesome violence and hot nasty sex when you aren't checking what they are watching. Videogames are great too. Anything to keep the kids occupied. Wait, my baby is a killer? Huh? What? MY FAULT? Hell no it isn't my fault. I'm a parent, so nothing is my fault. It must be that videogame he played. That's the problem. In fact, I'm suing the game companies. While I'm at it, I think I should sue Smith & Wesson. They make guns right? Obviously they're the problem. Also, I should sue McDonalds for my fat ass. And Dell for all that computer pron I have. Oh, and Western Digital for making the hard drive that it's on. And we have to sue the government, because I'm sure they've done something wrong. Or maybe, just maybe I shouldn't have both a F***ING MATURE RATED GAME for my 4 year old.
"I, for one, welcome our new %INSERT ARTICLE SUBJECT HERE% overlords."
I'm not that worried by the fact that the parents let their kids play a game that was clearly rated MA (with a big warning on the box and nice pics of violence i might add). What worries me is the fact that those same parents allowed their kids to take real guns out to shoot at people "because they were bored."
Letting your kid play a violent game without asking what's up wna dhwat it is doing to them is foolish. Letting your kid take a loaded weapon out with without investigating their activities, that's gross negligence.
They ask me if I'm a cop, or a handgun expert. They make comments about not getting in my way. It is people like these who believe that video games are training zombie killers...
NEWSFLASH! The bad guys are always in the SAME PLACE. I am holding a plastic replica of a gun that is much lighter than a real gun, and which has no recoil. I don't physically have to duck, or fumble to load ammunition while being shot at. I may shoot at running targets, but generally, their speed is constant, and they are not running towards me or away, only across the screen. I know which of the bad guys, in which uniforms, can kill me instantly, and which can only wound me slightly. I also never have to look behind me...
Anyone who believes that my knowledge and skill in Time Crisis could allow me to pick up an actual gun and use it any kind of useful way, is a flippin maroon. Yep, it's about as stupid as imagining that GTA is teaching children how to steal cars, and race them with skill and technique.... As if.
don't mess with those geekgrrls
I was talking about how Democrat legislators vote on lawsuit-reform.
What are _you_ talking about?
The lawyers for the victims got together and said - "You need compensation!" And then proceeded to go after as many deep pockets as they could. The 2 kids parents probably don't have a dime. Why sue them? While they are the ones responsible for raising morons, they don't have the cash. The lawyers are probably racking up billable hours and hoping for a settlement.
my cube has a window...
I guess the Fresh Prince was right. Parents just don't understand. Sure the TV is a great babysitter. It's always there, always on, always ready to show your kids gruesome violence and hot nasty sex when you aren't checking what they are watching. Videogames are great too. Anything to keep the kids occupied. Wait, my baby is a killer? Huh? What? MY FAULT? Hell no it isn't my fault. I'm a parent, so nothing is my fault. It must be that videogame he played. That's the problem. In fact, I'm suing the game companies. While I'm at it, I think I should sue Smith & Wesson. They make guns right? Obviously they're the problem. Also, I should sue McDonalds for my fat ass. And Dell for all that computer pron I have. Oh, and Western Digital for making the hard drive that it's on. And we have to sue the government, because I'm sure they've done something wrong. Or maybe, just maybe I shouldn't have bought a F***ING MATURE RATED GAME for my 4 year old.
"I, for one, welcome our new %INSERT ARTICLE SUBJECT HERE% overlords."
The reason this legal crap happens is because the Democrats cover for these sleazy lawyers at every turn. The lawyers reward them with huge campaign contributions.
The Republicans are trying to fix this lawsuit nonsense. Of course, that makes them a "tool of big business" for taking Sony's side in fights like this. That's right. If you're on Sony's side in this lawsuit, you're a tool of big business.
This lawsuit problem would be fixed if the Democrats would get out of the way.
Please consider this before you automatically support the Democrats next time. Some of us would really like these types of lawsuits to stop.
---
This was originally posted here but it got modded down even though it's factually correct.
Do you realize how hypocritical you sound? "Its not the game's fault, it's not the child's fault, its the Gun's fault." Give me a break you sound just as bad as the people that want to ban the games.
Maybe its time we stop blaming guns, games, and maybe even the parents (though I think at least some of the blame should go to the parents.) Lets blame the real problem...THE FRIGGIN KIDS!!! They are the ones that pulled the trigger, they are the ones that should be held responsible for their actions. It is time that we stop teaching kids that others are to blame for their actions and start teaching them that what they do has consequences.
But hey, thats just my humble opinion,
SirLantos
The flying hamster of DOOM rains coconuts on your pitiful city.
The Hamel family lawyer put it this way:
Translation: "We're going to sue the people with the deeper pockets."The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
Hmm, I guess no one will be modding the parent up, the stupid girl can't even spell "candidate"... doh.
don't mess with those geekgrrls
I've read about this lawsuits on several news sites, and in each of them the reason given by the boys is that playing the video game gave them the idea. Completely missed by all news sources was the fact that a 16-year-old and a 14-year-old had an unsupervised .22 caliber rifle. I find the fact that this part has consistently been overlooked in favor of their uber-lame excuse for doing something stupid and dangerous very frightening.
I submitted this story a week ago. My comments back then were mainly about the lawyer going after the money... not the parents of these 2 kids. How do you let your 16 year old out of the house with a .22 rifle? How do you then let him drive? with a 14 year old?
Where's mom and dad? Dad left? Mom is an alcoholic? Maybe the responsibility ends there. The rest of the world doesn't seem to have a problem with GTA. How did this kid get to buy GTA? Mom doesn't care?
-- No sig for you!
if i've been playing a rally game for the past 4 hours, and i have to drive somewhere i do feel tempted to drive like i have been. i definitly drive faster than i would nomally, and i have a desire to powerslide round corners. I don't know how to powerslide, and i don't drive faster than i can control (at least i haven't yet..) - i don't _actually_ drive like a rally game, but i want to. so i could understand if these kids had nicked a car and driven the wrong way through traffic, - they're quite young and probably bored. this is the kind of thing that happens all the time (although i wouldn't think it's normally influenced by games.. but they can't help.) Shooting someone however is not the same. for one thing, i can't see it as being very fun, whereas joyriding almost certainly would be (i'm not endorsing it, but yes, i think it would be fun til you crashed at least) there is no way anyone could make the mistake of thinking indiscriminate killing would be a fun thing to do unless there is something seriously wrong with them, no matter how long they spend playing unsuitable video games. it is (or usually is) made clear from an early age from parents, school and media that murderers are bad and dealt with harshly. i don't think a few hours (or weeks) of GTA could erase these. there is also the fact about the rubbishness of the shooting system in GTA, which does not make it fun or exciting at all. all in all blame the parents, but more importantly blame the psycho kids.
How about they sue every pc manufacturer as well for allowing it to run under windows - oh yeah guess they'd better sue microsoft too.
Ave Molech Setting
I suppose now you would Google the answers to all the questions. Crap.
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
No, they won't. Sony will be named in the lawsuit because they have deeper pockets than any other possible litigation targets.
I'm just completely sick of the "everybody's fault but mine" culture that's growing unchecked here. Video games have been named in lawsuits before, so, apparently goes the logic, there must be something in it. Bullshit. It's an excuse.
Krill
In most sane countries youngsters are assumed not to know what they are doing since they are still under a state of development that requires parents to teach them and be responsible for their actions.
It is only in some wicked places in this sad world that youngsters are attributed capabilities of adults not compatible with their tender age.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
They said "We never meant to hurt anybody..."
According to my universal translator: when a teenager says, "We never meant to hurt anybody," it means, "We never meant to get caught as a result of hurting anybody."
The real fault here is with the adults who don't have sufficient judgement to discern entertainment from reality (Thus the lawsuit.) It is likely that their disfunctional sensibilities are the root cause. If they can't tell the difference what hope do their children have?
Will Mircosoft also be sued as GTA ran exclusively on a PC in Windows (unless you had a copy of transgamming)? Or will it be ?
Since I doubt we'll ever see a lawsuit involving children going around biting stuff and running from ghosts as a result of playing pac-man then I'll assume its not an issue of video games specifically. If that is the case then couldn't frivolous lawsuit seekers also "assist" people who've been afflicted mentally while playing Monopoly? Suppose a property owner decides to tear down a house and build a hotel. Whats it cost, a few thousand dollars? Well after tearing down the house and realizing that hotels cost more than they do in Monopoly, he decides to sue Hasbro for not instilling in him the consequences of tearing down the house?
You might consider this a stretch but that is obviously something that the victims bringing this suit think is reasonable to have a game provide; the instilling of consequences in all who play their games. Thats the job of those who commit to bring a child up.
The people of this entire country are expecting the public services of this nation to raise their children. In Bush's campaigning he called for teacher accountability. I'm all for that. I'm sure there are teachers who sit back and watch movies and failing the students miserably. But what about the teachers who do present their students with learning opportunities? They have to teach them about sex, because their parents will not. They have to teach them manners because the parents aren't going to. They have to teach respect, although often times they won't get the same respect from the parents as the parents are expecting them to teach their children. Who is going to hold the parents accountable? How are we going to put a stop to the laziness and get back to teaching kids right from wrong before they leave the house and go to school? What happened to spending time with your kids so that you know what they're doing, what they like to do, how they behave in public, the state of their mind, how often their mind is alterred through the use of drugs?
I'm not a parent yet, but I have one of the most well-behaved dogs there are. I don't expect anyone else to make her behave. I didn't expect anyone else to teach her that sit means I wanted her butt on the ground. I spent time with her and she learned. She knows whats right and wrong, made evident by her looking around guiltily before she chews on a flower or digs somewhere. Granted labradors are smart, but if I can do that with her shouldn't a parent be able to spend a little time with their kids and make them more well-behaved and realistic in whats right and wrong?
Oh sorry, I forgot that in the US it is OK to criminilize children.
Stoopid me, how it comes I forget that in the US those silly things called human and child rights do not get in the way of justice.
An eye for an eye...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I am sure you will be fine with giving control of your workplace, your country's economy, the congress, the police, the media, etc. to children aged between 14 and 16.
They are adults aren't they? They are ready to handle the world aren't they?
Once and again teenagers have shown how incapable they are and that is why more legal systems acknoledge the fact that they are not ready to take full responsibility for their acts and normally their guardians are called into account.
This hollier than thou attitude of some people that live in a parallel universe where teenagers are fully responsible people, is frankly only imaginable because they insist to describe it to us. Obviously they have never dealt with a teenager.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Oh, not for allowing people to have and bear arms, 'cause that'd be un-American, but for indirectly promoting gun use.
<Huck Finn voice>"My little Billy-Bob was powahful' good until I bought'n him his first .22, then he up an' turned his-self into some kind of callous introvert shootist. Ah blames the gun makers for a-poisonin' his mind."</Huck Finn voice>
That makes about as much sense as hitting game makers with lawsuits, right?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
They exist not to appease parents but to inform them. At least the responsible ones.
With so little time left after work, commuting, house chores, etc. it is a welcome aid to know which games definitively require parental guidance.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
o my gawd....how lame.
Trying to dodge responsibility like that is so....irresponsible.
The fact of the matter is, they STILL KILLED the guy. Even if they imitated a movie or a game, they are the ones responsible. Just like how you can't say that Hitler isn't responsible for the millions he killed in his vision or his officers who did the dirty work. You can't say that the man in white is responsible 'cause that's what Hitler said gave him the idea, etc.
Why can't ppl not point fingers and be honorable?
MoFoQ gets his pitchfork and flaming torches used almost exclusively for SCO and spammers ready for use.
Lets take a step back.
Again, cuz some missed the first dozen posts clarifying this, the parents aren't suing - RTFA. But while we're on their case:
Blame the parents #1: They shouldn't be able to even view this game. Really? What does the ratings system do? Prevent them from buying the game? Not by a long shot. From the ratings web site:
"Although the ESRB does not have the authority to enforce the ratings at the retail level, we do work closely with retailers and game centers to encourage them to display ratings information and not sell or rent certain product to minors. In fact, many retailers have signed up for ESRB's Commitment to Parents program in which they pledge to use their best efforts not to rent or sell M-rated games to children under 17 without parental consent."
That's not law, that's not policy, it's weasel words. And the list of retailers in the U.S. who DO enforce is about a dozen. Neither the parents nor the retailer nor the ESRB even taken together are so much as a speed bump in this regard. Point: Contrary to what has been posted YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE OF AGE TO PURCHASE THIS GAME. And unless you actually have a means to enforce it, the rating that tells teens they can't have it only does one thing - it makes them want it even more. But everyone could have filled in the blank on that one.
Blame the parents #2: The gun. As has been pointed out, there is nothing required that keeps these kids from getting their hands on a legally purchased .22 rifle in that state. And I'll bet you there's as many legally purchased .22s that you could find going door to door than legally purchased picnic baskets. Point being that they could find one in less than an hour even if their parents were chapter and verse on access and locks.
Blame the parents #3: They should know what their kid(s) is (are) doing all the time and head this off. Right. Most of the people who are suggesting this are not parents. You're suggesting someting that is for all practial purposes impossible. That does not relieve the parents of liability, though.
New tack: "The games and their content is irrelevant, only idiots act out what's in a game." A nice-sounding very loud assertion, allegedly 'proven' by the fact that you or I would never do such a thing. Problem is, that most of educational psychology piles up a load of evidence that shows that children do in fact model behavior from live action, photo depictions, film/video depictions, and there's even third-decimal-place correlations to the age, gender, and role of the modelee to the modeler. And pay attention to the four part "Bandura" research that stresses the effect of attention, retention, reproduction and reinforcement - which are part and parcel of the first-person shooter game design - Feshback et. al simply look at television viewing. Observational learning, or modeling, is a major factor in all advertising, sales, clothing, etc. "I wanna be like Mike" (or Steve, or Linus, etc...) it really knows no boundaries.
Also drawing from ed psych, it's clear that adolescents have a very tenuous connection between their actions and consequences, and have a limited ability to predict or respond to the risk of their consequences. They really do have limited capacity to know what will happen in RL if they do something they have only seen non-RL.
Also, the plaintiffs are not asserting that every video game viewing results in a violent act - they're speaking to one incident, where the facts are feasibly linked, where the kids admitted that they were acting out the game. These kids will be charged with a crime - they are not blameless, they will be punished, the parents will suffer, and in addition, these victims see that if the kids were playing "Parappa" there wou
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
not only does their number grow, the amount of people in close proximity to them that they can kill grows. In 1790 living in Tennessee you could be a crackpot who loved to kill people, but might have a hard time doing it, as there weren't many people around.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Thers no Linuxversion of GTA. The average Linuxer doesn't know what crime and violence are :-p
You have to be very careful when drawing parallels like this.
Our closest living relatives are the Bonobo chimps, and they resolve every conflict through sex. The females have enormous clitorides and they have sex an average of 1.5 times per hour when awake, with other females, young males, older males, even infants males.
All very interesting but rather irrelevant when discussing human sexuality.
Elephants are very sophisticated animals and intelligent, and form groupings in which one male dominates the other males, and "excess" males are ejected and go rogue, being basically useless to the herd.
All very interesting but rather irrelevant to the human family structure.
Human families are built around the mother, and human economics are built around the father. The two are important but for different reasons, and studies have shown that children raised in single-parent families (single mother, not father) are not measurably different in character or tendency than children from whole families. But they are a lot poorer. And poverty is a good road to crime, but certainly not the only one.
And incidentally, a "village" is a whole family. The mother/father/two kids nuclear family is a modern invention designed to allow people to work more efficiently in industrial societies. It is entirely artificial. The only real "family" structure, anywhere on earth, is the extended family, and this is the village.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
God forbid we actually blame the children who commited the crime. It was poor Johnny's upbringing and his environment! It drove him to KILL!
Waah waaah wwaaaaaaah. I hope the judge laughs at this and tosses it out.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
Judas priest and Ozzy already got sued for this shit. It doesn't fly in court. I don't know why the game maker can't just get the damned thing dismissed.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
_____________
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
For raiseing dumb children. Or for not raiseing well disciplined children.
... they had ever finished development of their spin-off title, "GTE: Grand Theft Election".
Fortunately, the Project Leader left halfway through to take a job at Diebold.
Okay, say what you will about bad video games, and negligent parents who bought the video games, or negligent walmart clerks that sold the game to the kids (about which I am in full agreement), but this wouldn't/couldn't have happened if the kids hadn't had guns.
The reality is that kids in the U.S. can get ahold of guns pretty easily, but nobody would go suing the gun manufacturer because their kid shot someone (or maybe I'm wrong here -- they certainly wouldn't win). Guns aren't even rated M for Mature (though they are controlled by laws).
It just puzzles me that people are so worried about the video games warping people's minds when maybe they should be worrying about a bigger issue -- irresponsible children with guns.
To me, giving either a Mature game, or a gun, or even a license or whatever to a child who is not old/mature enough to handle it properly are equally dangerous, but everybody decides to pick one and try to get it off the market. Conversely, a responsible human being can safely operate a car, gun, or video game, and have a helluva lot of fun doing it. Why should the responsible ones suffer because some idiot let their kid screw around with something they weren't ready for?
If some negligent parents let their 10 y/o kid drive, and that kid killed someone, who is at fault? The car manufacturer? I think not! Okay, you don't need a license to play a video game, but the rating on it (just like a R-rated movie) should be just as effective. In most places you also need a license to handle a gun.
I've reiterated my point several times because it just bothers me when people misplace blame -- which in this case should go first to the kids, second to the parents, and third to the store who sold the game to the kids (unless the parents bought it, in which case the parents take another hit on the blame). NEVER, under (at least) these circumstances should the game maker or sony be at fault.
That said, maybe Sony could have done something about it -- put a v-chip-like device on the console, thereby rendering it unusable for Mature games w/o parental consent (though I imagine those are less effective than they claim).
I saw an investigative report into why kids as young as 8 or 9 become involved in murders, and the theory is that much of it has to do with peer influence.
I don't think that anyone could argue that with advances in technology the accessibility of random, shoot-em-up violence imagery in games has steadily increased for young people in the last decades. Where my friends and I were raised on "King's Quest" and maybe "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" (the 2D version with stick figures like in "Bezerk"), youths nowdays have been acclamated to darker titles such as "Carmageddon Splat Pack" and "Max Payne".
With this, a certain segment of kids who are troubled can feed from the idea that violence can be cool and rewarding, and most importantly gain the respect from their peers. We all remember how quickly news of something weird of shocking passes through the schoolyard, and if my childhood friends had caught wind of a GTA-type game and subject matter when I was younger, there would be no end to the talk, fascination, and perhaps even play-acting. How out-of-hand the play acting would have been greatly depend on the strength of influence by parents and teachers and their efforts to halt such behavior.
From the program I saw, once the idea of extreme violence becomes part of a group of children without strong positive influences, even the youngest members can be influenced to be crazier and more violent than the friend standing next to them, especially if his violent actions will draw the kind of "oooohs aaah" reactions that kids often give their friends who are being wild. This group mentality and desire to outdo his peers can be very strong among kids.
Perhaps in these sad cases, there are more than one set of prints on the gun. But ultimately it's the parents are who live with their kids day in day out and have the most control over what they learn and do.
Violent influences + Inadequate parental/teach guidance = Bad things happen
Why does everyone try to blame everything but the the absolute fix-factor: If the kids hadn't had access to guns they couldn't have shot anybody.
Why look beyond this painstakingly obvious solution?
The only reason powerful enough to keep a gun law (written at the days before automatic weapons and when a marksman was someone who could hit a barn door at 100 meters) that results in ~9000 US deaths, more than the normal/capita in the western world, is money for the gun industry.
The right to own a gun is useless without the right to shoot the people who gave you that right.
Open source is the art of letting other people write your bad code.
That was the best thing I have ever read on Slashdot. Let's date.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Aren't parents smart enough to understand what the game contents are for a game named "Grand Theft Auto"?
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Let me start by saying: (1) Yes, I am a lawyer; (2) yes I think these lawsuits are silly; (3) I don't believe the parents have a very good chance of winning.
Whenever this issue comes up, there is the inevitable deluge of virulent "where were the parents!" and "why weren't you teaching your kids values" type posts/comments/rants. Despite the mind numbing banality of most of these, people seem to continue to harp on about it over and over.
What I find particularly interesting is the attempt to ascribe these types of lawsuits to "liberals" and "the left", and the rabid conservative mantra that liberals have "destroyed personal responsibility." (Like fiscal responsibility? largest deficit in history)
I am wary of these "where were the parents" type simplifications. It seems to me that these are all based on a mythical image of the American Family that is taken straight from 1950's television, and has little (or no) bearing on today's society. Where were the parents? Working two jobs that require 60+ hours a week so they can continue to enjoy the "middle class" life in some suburban development near a semi-decent school. By the time Mom & Dad have come home at 6:00 or 7:00 pm and made dinner, they are probably way too strung out from a 14 hour day to be providing much useful moral guidance.
Don't get me wrong, I support working Mom's and Dads. My family is a two-job deal, but we are lucky in that, because I have a high-priced legal education, we can afford full time child care for our tots. Most parents in the U.S. can't do that.
Meanwhile the kids are sitting around at home from 3pm when schools let out, thanks to shorter school days brought about by reduced budgets. There aren't too many organized, safe after school programs anymore (especially for kids who aren't athletic, or aren't into sports, which I'd be a large number of /.'ers can relate to).
Sure, 99% of the people smart enough to read this site were smart enough to separate fact from fancy at a pretty young age. But ask yourself: didn't you do anything stupid at the age of 14 (or 24) that you now look back on and go "whoa...I was an idiot..." The thing maturity brings is an ability to think through the potential consequences of your actions. That's what "learning from experience" is all about. Now, none of us (hopefully) ever decided to shoot at trucks on the highway. But I'll bet a few people here tossed things off an overpass...or put things on the train tracks...or stole a stop sign (guilty)...or any of a hundred things that could have caused serious injury. The kids involved in the GTA case are probably particularly sub-par in the brains department, but they didn't set out to hurt people, they just didn't consider that if you shoot at the side of a truck (a supposedly destructive but not dangerous act) it might have dire consequences if you MISS. (After all, how many of us miss all that often using the sniper rifle in GTA?) So, bad decision on their part.
People are incensed that TakeTwo and Sony are sued. It is descried as evidence of the out of control courts. However, what conservatives never seem to point out is that almost all of these suits are dismissed early on (and if you dig into the ones that aren't, like the infamous McDonald's coffee case, you find the facts aren't as cut-and-dried as you think). In other words, the courts aren't out of control; they are doing exactly what they are designed to do: adjudicate the rights of parties who feel they have been wronged.
One last (semi-random) point. Someone raised a first amendment issue below. That isn't really relevant here. Whether TakeTwo has a right to publish GTAIII is different from whether they can be held responsible for consequences that naturally flow from their decision to do so. (I'm not saying that shooting at trucks is a natur
I'm a lawyer with excellent karma. Something's gotta be wrong.
These people need to be smacked. A good pimp smack
You're a GTA player aren't you? I sense a lawsuit coming on.
Oh, and yes, the above was not meant to be serious...
I never thought much about it, until I witnessed it for real once. In the weekend I was wandering through the games section in one of the stores in town. This little kid (really, he couldn't have been older then 8 years) was jumping up and down shouting 'mommy, can i have this game, pretty please!?'. The game in question was GTA Vice City. So the mother was looking at the box, front and back, and the only thing she said was like - 'are you sure you want this game? did you save some money?'
At that time, I was stunned, basicly, I don't always agree with the rating on the box (or movies etc), but this time, I got almost to the point to step up to that mother. How could you _not_ notice the age warning on this game? This kid was way to young to be playing that kind of game.
In fact, these are probably the same parents that will be shocked when they accidently watch their kids playing this game while they pick up a hooker and beat her to death afterwards, duh! I'm sure their kids are allowed to watch porn too at that age...
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Call the police. Gross negligence (parental negligence) causing death... there's bad parenting, but this goes beyond that.
Truely, if we had to label ever little thing that could possible be side effect X of product Y, we wouldn't even be able to see the labels on Y anymore.
Vasaline: Warning, misuse may case dehydration and overheating possibly leading to death.
I mean, come on, is there anything you can't like to something else? Do I like to shoot stuff because I play GTA, or perhaps it's because I like to shoot things that I like GTA. Should MacDonalds be responsible for people eating too much greasy food. Could computer monitors be the reason I am shortsited... or slashdot the reason I spend too much time reading online
There needs to be a back-penalty for: frivolous lawsuit without justifiable cause.
I mean, think of the relations you could draw if you really wanted:
Sue Mattel: Your sister always left her barbies naked. You decided to rip the clothes off that women in the subway because you thought it way more natural. Or, you took multiple wives because you were influenced by Ken coming with multiple barbies.
Adultery: It was on "Daze of Our Lives", it must be acceptable behavior.
I mean, is there something you can not relate to as "the evil cause of XX" if you really tried?
I think it's as simple as bringing proof that you aren't mentally DEFECTIVE like these kids when you buy a game, the architecture, textures, sound, music, simulation, and 3D models in GTA Vice City are great and you can tell alot of work went into it...Now back when Tomb Raider first came out people freaked about it the same goes for Mortal kombat and frankly I don't remember seeing a girl at school trying to jump off the building and do a flip like Lara Croft. The parents and the children are one without the influences of the parents and friends of each child they will not go out and shoot a gun near the freeway. It is really radiculous to assign blame to a CD that was inserted into the gaming system by these two very disturbed children, I think the comparison of other scenarios that could occur if you were defective enough to play out the game in REALITY is endless and could go on forever all in all the women who got hit should be suing the parents of these children it is the fault of the parents to have not raised and watched their children in a "normal" way and by normal I mean normal enough not to go out into a mall with a boom box playing 70's hits and a mini gun...can't say much else I guess - just my 2 cents. Peace And remember don't let your 14 and 15 year old kids take YOUR gun and shoot cars on the freeway!!!
Update: 09/18 16:27 GMT by M: The Independent has moved/deleted the story on their site, breaking our link. We've already mentioned this story anyway.
Oooooh, so that's what dupes are for... I see!
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
1. Give jr. a gun
2. Give him a violent video game
3. Profit!
Come one here, I think the victim's family should sue the parents of these morons! Don't blame the game, blame the morons who committed the crime! Next they'll be suing Wal Mart for selling the game, or Sony for making the console that runs the game. Or maybe we should sue the manufacturer of the TV. After all, they look so real these days. These are great times to live in... If you're a lawyer!
When will it end? When will people realize that they should be held accountable for THEIR actions? I play GTA and I haven't killed anyone yet. Does that mean the game doesn't influence me? No, it means I have a fucking clue.
personal responsibility? They can say they were mimmicking the game, but they should still know right from wrong.
Get a FREE Sony PS3
Maybe if we killed all the lawyers, the suing would end.
B.S. Sony will be named in the lawsuit because they have the most money. Funny how it's always the fault of the company with the most money.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
Lawer == Left-wing? WTF? Has Rush Limbaugh been whispering sweet bullshit in your ear again? Do you know where that guys lips have been? You better watch it before his programming of your brain is complete.
You are right, the lawer is full of shit. 50% of the time they are, that's what it means to be a lwyer, but you know lawers are right, left and center and they ALL lie to get their way no matter what.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Sue the kids for copyright infringement.
Since I doubt we'll ever see a lawsuit involving children going around biting stuff and running from ghosts as a result of playing pac-man then I'll assume its not an issue of video games specifically. If that is the case then couldn't frivolous lawsuit seekers also "assist" people who've been afflicted mentally while playing Monopoly? Suppose a property owner decides to tear down a house and build a hotel. Whats it cost, a few thousand dollars? Well after tearing down the house and realizing that hotels cost more than they do in Monopoly, he decides to sue Hasbro for not instilling in him the consequences of tearing down the house?
A commonly repeated line among ravers is "If we were truly influenced by video games we played as kids we would be running around in the dark with flashing lights all around us chomping pills and listening to repetitive electronic music..." :)
Doubt it. Say something worthwile and the mods might reconsider. I may be a brash asshole, but at least I make a good point. More importantly, I have the guts to do it when logged in.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
After reading this story, I'm convinced Justin Timberlake is the next one to be sued.
It sells newspapers though.
:)
And thats the whole point. The idea is to sell newspapers. They will pick anything up that looks strange and taut it.
The same applies for TV news. I wish I remebered the movie but it summed it up.... We want news..not dog bites man but man bites dog!
Though sometimes we do get some nice morsels of news
Even a 10 year old knows that. Maybe a really really sheltered/ignored kid wouldn't. If a kid knows that a gun can kill someone, and decided to do it, that demonstrates enough knowledge right there! Only when kids are playing with guns and accidently kill their cousin is there really a question like this....
i.e. if a five year old takes a gun to kill someone bothering him... he knew! otherwise how did he know the gun was a way to hurt someone? In movies and games, guns always kill, so in fact, it's more likely that a kid thinks guns always kill (which they don't, of course) than the opposite. When, in violent art, do people get up after being shot?
Of course, personally I'm against violent art, but we have to face the facts as they are.
-pyrrho
Of course the kids are responsible for their actions, I say try them as adults. But still... out culture is steeped in violence, --steeped--, wtf are we going to do about it? Nothing? We don't care. Not a problem?
-pyrrho
Any self respecting parent who loves and cares about their children shouldn't have to have a law that tells them to lock up their guns. The shouldn't have to be told you need to teach your kids right & wrong. Hell, anyone with common sense ought to know if you keep a gun in your house, or anything else dangerous for that matter ie: bleach, bug spray, fire extinguishers, welding tanks, etc everyone in that house should be aware of it, it's dangers, and how to use the thing properly to be safe. My four year old girl knows not to go whack my oxygen & acetylene tanks with anything. The kids know not to drink bleach. The kids know not mess with guns-even BB guns, especially when they don't know how to fire one. Making laws like mandatory gun locks & things of that nature are mainly wastes of tax money & time. As a parent, YOU should be responsible for educating your child. Laws like these & lawsuits like the one the article mentions are merely ways of shifting blame away from yourself. And could anyone believe that maybe-just maybe-the kids just weren't all there? Alot people just can't seem to rationalize that there are just some fucked up people and there is NO amount of law, lawsuit, or supervision that's gonna change that.
I'm going to respectfully disagree. I believe children need to be told once, twice, however many times it takes for it to sink in. It's not immediately obvious to a kid that guns kill permanently.
I'm going to unrespectfully call that comment idiotic - kids know very well that guns kill permanently. When they use them it's not because they think the people will come back, it's because they want them to go away for good!
I knew when I was about six what gunbs did, thank you very much. Claiming kids are too young to understand anything is to greatly patronize children everywhere and what they are really capabile of. They might have a little problem grasping full moral implications of grey areas, but killing someone with a gun is pretty clear.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I remember when that movie came out, (it as Rated R), there was a scene where the kids lay down on a street on the yellow lines. I remember afterwards, some real kids did the same thing and were killed.
I vaguely remember the parents suing, and I think they won if I remember.
Now I also remember a separate article saying that the video game rating system doesn't hold any meat, like the MPAA rating system does. That being the case, if the MPAA rating system didn't absolve liability, why should the game rating system?
Stolen from the Ishpeckian Network.
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
People kill people.
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Think about it: one of these lawsuits come out every year. Whether it's a band being sued, a movie, or a video game, these lawsuits NEVER win.
So if the lawsuits never win why are they filed? Because it's usually easier and cheaper for the game manufacture, movie studio or band to just pay out a million to settle the case, and that's why they file, in the hopes the defendant will just settle and they'll become instant millionaires.
I think that's crap, and the lawyers and courts should be held responsible for their negligence, otherwise we're just going to hear more of these frivolous lawsuits.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
-Looks at GTA3 and VC boxes-
-Looks around house for PS2-
Oh that's right, I don't own a PS2. FYI both games are out on the PC, have been for some time and I've been happily playing them. Strangely enough, I've never grabbed my gun and gone on a shooting spree. Guess I must be odd or something.
There have been a number of lawsuits in teh past and it is generally held that the makers of a gun are not responsible for those that use it. They just make a tool, if you abuse it, that's your fault. Given the amount of precident, it'd be hard to go against that.
Also, this is the US, you have a better than average chance of having one or more people on the jury that either own a gun, support gun ownership, support the constitution, or all of the above.
Video games are a newer target, and there isn't the case law backing it up. Also they are a trendy target. It's like rock music of the days past. Some of the older generation doesn't get it and thinks they are evil, responsible for socieiy's problems, etc.
I personally think the lawsuit has about as much chance as the gun lawsuits, but still, that's the reason video games are the target.
"If console and computer games can so easily influence kids, then how come we don't see hoards of them acting out Everquest or"
Kid1: "Everybody ready? Who's pulling?"
Kid2: "Me."
Kid1: "Get that old lady accross the street. Make sure you don't agro anyone in the store."
Kid2: "Incoming!"
Kid3: "oom, your fucking problem!"
Kid2: "Shit! Adds... I've got the whole store on me!"
Kid1: "Don't train them on us. I'm zoning!"
Kid2: "No sow! Ahh... my hair.. let go of my hair!!"
My Blog
Companies really need to start fighting these cases. They should get together and have lawsuit insurance to cover legal costs and maybe then these lawsuits would stop happening. Or i'm gonna play gta for a few hours and then kill all these fucking lawyers and parents.
Allow me to shed some light on this incident and perhaps also answer a few questions that have poped up.
/. article was the first I had heard about it.
1st, this didn't happen in Knoxville, Tennessee. It happened on a nearly deserted section of interstate near Newport, Tennessee. We are talking over 60 miles away from Knoxville. Also, until the interstate went through that area to connect east Tennessee to North Carolina in the 1970's, Newport was a barely even a dot on the map. There is a world of difference between an urban area such as Knoxville (population is close to 200k) and the backwater 'town' of Newport. Its what we call 'the sticks'. The section of interstate in that area has nothing but hills and farmland on either side, with the occasional billboard.
2nd, growing up in this area, (30 miles from Newport) you always heard the word 'Newport' associated with moonshiners, marijuana growers, car theft rings, and other assorted criminal activity. This is a very rual area, and a very rough one at that. And yes, I'm sure there are a few cliche inbread couples that produced some idiot kids, but I doubt that was the case here. I saw the kids on the local news, and they didn't have hunchbacks or anything. They looked like normal kids.
3rd, as for 'how did those kids get GUNS??'. Those kids probably grew up with guns hanging on the wall above thier beds, and were probably hunting rabbit, squirl, opossum, and whatever else that moved, by age 7 or 8. Its just a fact of life in the rual southeast, you hunt or you go hungry. If your making a good living farming or raising tobacco, then you hunt for fun. If you live in Newport and you don't hunt, its probably because your blind. You learn early in life how to handle guns, and guns are everywhere. I used to go into my friends houses when I was in my teens, and there was always a rifle or two, and some shotguns in ALL my friends houses, all fully loaded, within easy reach. And you know what? None of those kids ever shot anyone, or accidently shot themselves. In fact, I have had friends die in car wrecks, from cancer, from aids, from drowning, from motorcycle crashes, etc, but no one I know has ever been shot, even with all these guns around.
IMHO, they were just bored, did something really, really stupid (and this probably wasn't the first time they did it, just the first time someone died), and then needed to blame something or someone, and the GTA game was an obvious target for thier blame. And by the way, not once in all the local news reports did the game come, this
D
We should really thank our lucky stars that these impressionable kids haven't seen the movie the day after, else they'd be trying to nuke the world right now I suspect.
Jack Thompson (the lawyer in question) is a die-hard Republican, idiot.
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Wow, I can see the potential for this. Maybe I'll go play some super mario bros. Then I'll go jump on someones head and then nintendo will get sued. Or maybe I'll play some Pokemon and then throw a little white and red ball at someone while shouting, "GO SQURITLE!!!". Needless to say, once the person wakes up with a concussion I'm sure someone will want to sue the makers of the Pokemon. Of course it wouldn't be my fault, I thought a pokemon was gonna come out, I mean thats what happens in the game, and we all know that games and reality are the same. I wonder if the kids wondered why their "lower warant level" cheat wasn't working. ;P By the way, no one's played any Thermo Nuclear War games recently have they?
Inciting someone (or a crowd) to commit a crime is not illegal unless it creates a clear and present danger. Clear meaning the expression will almost certainly motivate the audiance to commit a crime. For example:
Present meaning it would incite the crime before anyone has an opportunity to counter the expression.
It is not at all clear that GTA incites crime. Millions of kids play it, yet over 99.9% of them have never killed anyone. Even if GTA were a clear danger, the parents certainly had an opportunity to explain that the game does not reflect reality.
Legal reforms would limit (or completely eliminate) this type of lawsuit. Legal reforms that limit lawsuits are consistently blocked by Democrats. That's true.
Democrats get rewarded by trial lawyers with large campaign contributions. That's also true.
Support for Democrats tends to also help support these types of lawsuits. Slashdotters should consider that before they blindly support their local Democrats. That's advice - to think about what you're getting with your candidate.
You said some stuff that doesn't have anything to do with any of those things.
I don't support Jack Thompson for anything. If he's who you say he is, he should grow up and try to get an honest job and make something decent of his life.
I've followed my own advice. I don't support the bad guy - the guy who's part of the problem. Slashdotters should do likewise, even if it makes them a "tool of big business".
a commonly repeated line among retards .. you got it wrong, and it's only funny because a nintendo PR spokesperson said that very thing, unbeknownst to the fact that such things do indeed occur -)
I looked at the posts but havent seen this silly, yet hilariously (IMO) interesting idea, so here it goes:
Video Game makers should form the NVA (nat'l vid game assn.) and adopt this simple slogan AKA the NRA style:
"Video Games don't kill People, People kill People."
Then all the NVA would need is the millions of teen members and bucks to back it up....
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
The reason your last dupe post got modded down as flambait is because that's what it is. Just look at all the nasty ass posts you got as a reply.
This is obviously a troll but I'll bite it anyway:
Cases like these obviously demonstrate that Tort reform is needed, but....
If tort reform does succeed, and you have the sore misfortune of, for example, losing your job because of age discrimination, or your legs from a very rich drunk driver who hits you on the way home from a late night at the office, I personally hope you'll be the first one to taste the new cap on "pain-and-suffering" or "punitive damadges" awards.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
What kind of idiot kids have you been dealing with that don't know what murder and death are by the age of 12? The fact that many kids destined for a life of gangs and guns are cruel and callous does not mean they don't know what happens when you shoot someone.
Kids might not be too good at moral judgements of right and wrong, but to claim a 12 year old doesn't know what they're doing when they aim and fire a weapon at someone requires a degree of naivete that I find astonishing.
I sympathize with the victims of this inane stupidity, but not with their greed. It is long past the time when the lawyers involved in such frivolous lawsuits were permanent disbarred and jailed themselves.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I don't think that parents realized that so called 'crime sprees' happened LONG before GTA3.
So when we get this reform, everything I buy will be cheaper so my life will be better.
And companies like Sony will decide what products to make based on what their customers want, rather than whether they'll get sued or not. So I'll get better products -- closer to what I want anyway.
And there'll be no more stupid lawsuits (two on Slashdot today alone).
And all I have to do is take the risk I might not get a huge, unjust payout?
Ok, it's a deal.
Honestly, it sounds like this guy needs to get his wife's strap-on out of his ass, but he probably likes it.
This anal-rententive piece of shit feels that because he let a firearm fall into the hands of a minor who is NOT licensed or registered for the weapon, that he should sue a company who produces an artificial environment where certain capabilities are granted to a player.
Obviously, since this game went before the ESRB committee, the game must have been approved by the rating bureau. Since this is a government bureau, shouldn't he be suing the government for allowing the product to be shipped to the general public? Afterall, what the fuck are the ratings there for on the game boxes anyway? I thought it was just decoration (sarcasm).
Get over it dipshit. Your kids killed someone because you screwed up. If you had half a brain, I'd be afraid to see what you might be capable of. Your kids are looking at doing time in a "Federal, Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison".
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
This is the problem right here - people are asking how they managed to get a VIDEO GAME!!! Who the hell cares?
My question is how the hell did they manage to get the GUNS used to ACTUALLY kill real people in the real world?! And who taught them to shoot those guns, load them etc etc?
Until America realises that gun ownership implies the most stringent responsibility to ensure that no children get hold of them unless properly taught and supervised, this sort of incident will continue to happen.
As usual though, the US citizen defaults to sueing the easiest target because that's where you'll get the most chance of a nice $$$ settlement.
Visceral Psyche Films
Dude, it came out for Windoze also, I'm playing it right now. I'm not shooting anyone by the way.
Nice way to over-generalize, "Kohath". Guess you've got a big stick up your rear if you can't read a thread that has nothing to do with party-line politics without pausing to bash "those gawrsh-durned Commiecrats!"
;)
Pardon my sarcasm and over-generalizing of you... must be contagious.
Mmmmm.... Pigeons. Sometimes, they come with notes attached...it's like...a fortune cookie with wings.
my gun just hopped up, threw off it's lock, and is now shooting at me! AHHHH!!!
Seriously, I totally agree with you. We can't ban sharp pointy things, and banning guns wouldn't really make these kids less crazy. And guns do good things. We couldn't have won WW2 without them. Cops wouldn't mean much against criminals without them. Hey, the US wouldn't be independent if those crazy minutemen didn't have a musket or two. Now you could argue that it would cause less damage if crazy kids didn't have access to guns... in the meantime, i'm going to try and get my gun tied down so it doesn't hop up for some revenge on me.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Planned Parenthood for not stepping in, there were undoubtedly warning signs (like the parents wanting a label on the bottom of soda bottles stating -OPEN OTHER END-)
Charles Darwin (his estate) for not living long enough to personally talk to these parents and convince them to put a deer slug through their skulls
The parents themselves for not noting that their kids had been playing a Mature rated game while they were under 17.
If I had my way, there would be no lawsuit. At the first motion to bring such action, the parents should be investigated and the kids be placed in state custody, preferably in a JDC.
Why so hard?
I was raised in a single parent home and I have played every form of violent, bloody, rip-your-opponent's-whatever-off game relesed since I was, oh, say, 7 years old.
I'm 19 and now studying Journalism at UCF.
Never got around to killing anyone "just like in GTA!!" since it's easy to point out that plasma blasters and one-man-portable railguns (that fire every 2 seconds) do not exist IN REAL LIFE.
I was thinking we should make a videogame where the mission objective is to kill ambulance-chasing lawyers.
What a recursion that would set off...
Wanna make a video game out of the above "Shoot the Lawyers" theme ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Absolutely. Neary every problem with big corporations is that they are too afraid of being sued - if we could just make it less scary, they could finally become the moral and ethical saints they strive to be. Remove suits like this, which do MASSIVE DAMAGE to poor companies like Sony, and utopia will be ours!
With the exception of certain specific professions (doctors, for example), unnecessary suits aren't a huge deal for corporations. The corporations exist due to legal fictions that us, the citizens, allow, so they can put up with little unnecessary legal problems. Two stupid lawsuits a day on Slashdot isn't that bad - how many stupid lawsuits have corporations launched recently? Who gets to essentially write new laws whenever they want? Who can easily smash nearly any citizen with a stupid lawsuit of their own? It is isn't you or me, buddy. They can put up with a little inconvenience, to allow us the ability to at least try and punish them when they do fuck everything up. How many valid lawsuits against big corporations manage to go NOWHERE, and why do we want to make it even harder??
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Ah, well, good to have the record set straight that all the legal problems in this country due to frivolous lawsuits are due to the Democrats. Thanks. I'll keep that in mind during the next election.
Mmmmm.... Pigeons. Sometimes, they come with notes attached...it's like...a fortune cookie with wings.