Jack Thompson Tasked With Writing Law

Gamespot's Rumor Control column this week handles the usual spurious talk that swirls around the game news sites. One (sadly) factual rumour they report on details gamer-hunting lawyer Jack Thompson's new role as a lawmaker. From the article: "Repeatedly, Thompson has called for states to pass laws criminalizing the sale of M-for-Mature rated games to minors. Now it appears he may get the chance to pen such a law himself. In an e-mail sent out Thursday, Thompson says he has 'been asked by the Office of the Governor of the State of Florida, Jeb Bush, to draft and submit to him and to Florida legislators a bill that will prohibit the sale of violent and sexually explicit video games to minors.' ... When queried by GameSpot for more details, he would only say that he is the only person thus far who has been asked to submit a bill to the governor's office about M-rated game sales. He did not offer details about what kind of penalties the bill would prescribe for offenders or whether or not said penalties would be imposed solely on the clerks selling the games or also on the establishment selling the game and/or the game's publisher."

Comments

Please, no

[PunkOfLinux]

If there is ANYTHING good and right in the world, please prevent this from happening. This guy is a freaking nut -- please do not let him do ANYTHING to censor video games.

Poor Florida

[Morgalyn]

For some reason, I thought we might manage to make it out of this whole can of worms without ridiculous legislation, but I guess not. So far Jeb has done an OK job at balancing the right wing conservative fundamental religious nutcases in the Panhandle with the left wing liberal nutcases in the Wang, but this smacks of falling prey to letters from the west.

I'm still not sure I understand why government entities feel like they need to step into a system that was sufficient for informing parents about the nature and content of media. The MPAA rates movies, the theaters sort-of enforce the rating requirements, but there are no real laws underlining any of it. The ESRB rates games, the vendors sort-of enforce the rating system, but apparently society as we know it is going to come crashing down if we don't impose some fines or jail sentences.

How is legislation like this and the Michigan law going to affect online sales of games?