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Jack Thompson Calls Cops on Penny-Arcade
Anon1001 sent us the latest developments in the ongoing saga between Miami Attorney Jack Thompson and Penny-Arcade. So far the story goes that Jack has filed a wrongful death suit against Rock Star, claiming that GTA is a cop killing training simulator responsible for the murder of a pair of cops. He also
offered $10k to charity if anyone who would develop some ridiculous murder spree game. When someone did it, and he changed his mind and Penny-Arcade donated the cash instead. All of this is being documented on the Penny Arcade website, in phone calls, rants and comics, as well as an 'I Hate Jack Thompson' T-Shirt. (Note, Slashdot's parent company owns ThinkGeek).
He has now
called the cops claiming harassment. Update: 10/18 17:40 GMT by Z : It seems like this confrontation has been brewing all summer. The most recent altercation is just another link in the chain made by Thompson's reaction to Hot Coffee and his crusade against the Sims 2. Further, PA has put up the scan of the letter to the cops, and a photo of the check.
I sure hope they cite his ass for making a false report. Publications are not harrassment. Jack Thompson himself started this mess. Does he consider himself guilty of "harassing" the makers of GTA? ...the video game industry? ...game loving Slashdotters everywhere?
What does this man think he's going to accomplish? His vitriolic actions are very unlikely to change anyone's mind about the issue of video game violence. I teach argumentative writing and rhetoric to college students; one of the first things we teach is to know one's audience. Very few people of the ultra-conservative persuasion, however, need to be persuaded - they already are fanatically against video games that contain violence, sex, etc.
And his tactics - wilfully distorting the truth, branding video game makers as murderers, setting up straw men to attack in his ravings about violent entertainment - well, I doubt anyone who's played the games he's targeting is going to burn their copy of GTA because of the things Thompson is saying.
Bravo, Penny Arcade, for helping him do what he'd end up doing anyway: alienating anyone who might have listened to a more logical or reasonable argument against game violence, and generating more media attention for Rockstar Games et al. so they will, in turn, sell more games and continue creating popular content. For a lawyer, Thompson seems to have missed that one little maxim: "any press is good press."
I am not a lawyer, but reading the course of communications between Jack Thompson and Penny Arcade, it seems to me that while Penny Arcade is certainly not guilty of criminal harassment, Jack Thompson has violated the Florida Bar's standard of ethics for attorneys. He is using his status as an attorney, as an officer of the court, to threaten/bully private citizens with obviously frivolous suits. (You cannot sue someone for merely e-mailing you, unless it was obscene, a death threat, causing severe emotional distress, etc.!) While not rising to the point of a suspendable offense, I believe a public reprimand from the Bar is appropriate and needed.
This really reminds of of McCarthy. People eventually saw him for what he was, a fucking lunatic.
How, pray, does an attorney get disbarred for being a loonie? Half the western governments would lose representatives, MPs, etc. on that claim. More to the point:
He has now called the cops claiming harassment.
He will now harass PA and the thing is, he knows full well how to do it and could make PA suffer in the short run.
I have no doubts he has nary a leg to stand on, bringing this all upon himself by raising himself to a Public Figure, which surrenders certain protections.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
GREAT in the sense of successful, of course, not in the sense of "good for the people."
You all are taking note of what he's trying to do, right? He's trying to transform the gamer community's reaction to his lunacy into attacks on his cause, which is, at least in his mind, protecting innocent kids and brave police officers.
It's just a matter of time before it becomes a real simple equation:
Disagreeing with Jack Thompson = Helping to kill cops
At that point, it becomes really easy to pass laws banning the types of videogames that Jack disagrees with. (Then movies, then web sites, maybe even books...)
Yep, he may be just a lawyer right now, but he clearly has higher intentions in mind, and he's using skills that have been taught very well over the past few years to get elected. It doesn't take too much gray matter to realize that soccer moms outnumber gaming advocates by a pretty wide margin, so who would you rather have included in your base?
The crying shame of it is that given America's record of picking leaders lately, he'll probably succeed, unless at least a few people not just read Slashdot, but actually act on what they read here.
Send a message, folks, and get out and vote. And not just for the big elections every four years. Vote in your Congressional elections. Vote in your state elections. Vote for your local councilmembers. Spread the word and get your friend to vote. Don't be afraid to use that fancy gaming machine to write a fickin' letter now and then. What do you say, can we please stop the ensuing madness to come before it gets started?
Jack wants to protect children and cops. Hey, I do too, I just happen to think he's going about it all wrong. The question in my mind now is: Who will protect the rest of us from Jack?
....then he (or one of his minions) is aware (or will be aware) of this thread here on Slashdot. Seeing what a over-reacting media whore he seems to be, I suspect that this discussion will be referenced on whatever media outlet he ends up on (likely Fox News, if you want to call what they do journalism) to prove that we "nerds" are a bunch of psychos who are addicted to violent video games and our threats to "run down Jack Thompson with an 18-wheeler" as the AC who posted that comment said will be used as proof of that.
Why not tone down the rhetoric and give him the type of attention he deserves, which is NONE whatsoever?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I always like to ask right-wingers ranting about games and sex causing social decline, "Yeah! I mean, do you know what's happened to rates of violent youth crime and teen pregancny in the last ten years?" They always answer that they're at unprecedented levels, and then are thrown off when I tell them that they've actually been falling quite steadily. Teen pregancy is even at its lowest rate since we began taking statistics in the '40s, down from the all-time high in 1991.
What would be really amusing to me is if they discovered, in 20 years, that untold psychological damage to children was done by The Sims. People spending all day running households like gods, torturing and killing families and developing these horribly twisted personalities. I mean, take a horribly violent, depraved movie -- for example, Saw, and ask what game the creators would probably enjoy playing?
In all seriousness, I think people are both more fragile and more resiliant than they're usually credited with. We handled torturing animals with sticks in the backyard 50 years ago, and we'll handle GTA. And I was going to say something about child-rearing, but then I realized that the last thing anyone wants is more advice on raising kids from a childless twentysomething, so I'll leave it at "the world is probably not coming to an end".
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
1. Paranoid delusions, or delusions of persecution, for example believing that people are "out to get" you, or the thought that people are doing things when there is no external evidence that such things are taking place. 2. Delusions of reference - when things in the environment seem to be directly related to you even though they are not. For example it may seem as if people are talking about you or special personal messages are being communicated to you through the TV, radio, or other media. 3. Somatic Delusions are false beliefs about your body - for example that a terrible physical illness exists or that something foreign is inside or passing through your body. 4. Delusions of grandeur - for example when you believe that you are very special or have special powers or abilities. An example of a grandiouse delusion is thinking you are a famous rock star.
Well he certianly seems to think people are out to get him, he seems to have delusions of reference as well, and he sure as hell has delusions of grandeur as he seems to think he's a great crusader against evil. He meets various other criteria as well:
# disorganized thinking # difficulty understanding # difficulty expressing thoughts # difficulty integrating thoughts, feelings and behavior
Now of course I am not a psychologist (though that is what my degree is in) and even if I were, you cannot diagnose a condition like schizophrenia from things over the Internet, but there's enough irrational behaviour that it certianly gives me cause to wonder. The man may honestly be clinicly crazy, and if that's the case, his rationale for his actions isn't likely to make sense to anyone.
This guy (Thompson) is railing against freedom of expression, and the mainstream press is ignoring him in droves.
.
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Are you kidding me? The mainstream press loves this guy. The hot coffee mod "scandal" is but his latest whipping boy. This guy has scored a lot of prime time interviews and news stories on major outlets since the early '90s with, among other things, demands that 2 Live Crew's "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" and Ice T's "Cop Killer" be banned (those were big news items at the time), been a major factor behind several indecency fines Howard Stern received from the FCC, and been a part of damn near every news story on the dangers of violent video games.
This is the guy who insisted that Columbine was caused by DOOM being a "murder simulator". He has sued, among others Time Warner Inc., Polygram Film Entertainment Distribution Inc., Palm Pictures, Island Pictures and New Line Cinema, Atari Corp., Nintendo of America, Sega of America Inc. and Sony Computer Entertainment under Federal Product Liability laws after a different school shooting
His allegations led Dateline NBC to report that Lee Boyd Malvo, the beltway sniper, had "trained extensively using Halo".
He has been interviewed numerous times on CBS, including one famous instance in which he compared Doug Lowesnstein of the ESA to Joseph Goebbels.
He has appeared on 60 minutes to discuss how Grand Theft Auto (he alleges) trained a young man to murder two police officers.
No, the problem is most definitely not that the media is ignoring him. Quite the opposite, really.
Isn't "Hate" a bit uncharitable?
I'd be much more inclined to wear a t-shirt that said "I pity Jack Thompson", or "I blame Jack Thompson's Parents".
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
On the one hand, I almost feel compelled to call the Seattle PD (local for me) and plead with them not to take any action based on Mr. Thompson's ludicrous and exaggerated claims; on the other hand,
I wouldn't worry about it. Quoth Tycho:
It is critical to establish that this letter isn't anything to worry about. We've been sent worse by better.
A response that should, with any luck, inspire Thompson to further heights of lunacy to the amusement of all.
It's called "class", and it's something that is very much lacking in today's society in favor of "shock".
First off, nothing good is EVER accomplished through hatred. Rather, hatred is the cause of so many problems we face today. Glorifying hatered on a t-shirt is counterproductive, and reflects VERY poorly on the reasonable cause the shirt represents. Which leads to my second point...
It's hard to take people seriously when they make a public spectacle of themselves. Face it: the only point of such a t-shirt is to attract attention and elicit a response. Around here we call that "trolling" and such behavior is appropriately dismissed as irrelevant. It should come to no surprise that such behavior offline is similarly disregarded.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Ann Coulter, McArthy, Jack Thompson...
I wonder what makes people go into these modes. It's like they don't feel there is any reprecussion to their actions. They are real-life trolls.
I am a science fantasy fan
I hate the fool.
I hate the fact that his vitriol and assinine attacks getting him national attention on 60 Minutes.
I hate the fact that he is even allowed to get away with the very behaviors that he accuses others of simply be the fact that he's a lawyer. As such he should be help to HIGHER standards than those without professional legal training.
I hate that he uses his "position of power", his lawyership, to be a bully.
I hate his total inability to grasp reality and basic concepts like cause and effect.
I hate is blameshifting.
I hate his haircut.
And I LOATHE anyone making any preconceived conclusions about me without any personal knowledge of who I am or anything else, a practice entirely too common from corporations, politicians, and grandstanders these days.
Yeah. If he is a rightist, he's a really poor representation of what one should be. As both rightist and a video game player, I can say that -- at least for myself -- games have had no real affect on my life. It's entertainment, like going to watch a movie; unless there's something severely wrong with a person, entertainment isn't going to revolutionize the one acts in the real world. Also, if the right is concerned about morality and ethics as it claims to be, the authority of a child's morality and ethics should be placed in the hands of the parents, not some lawsuit-bent lawyer.
I notice some people are calling him a Christian as well, and likewise, if he is a Christian, he's done an utterly poor job representing Jesus. I mean, he called (apparently, in satire) for a game where people piss on the busted brains of dead game shop employees? Oh yeah, that's real Christ-like there Jack. Nevermind the fact that Jesus said to refrain from taking people to court. Ugh.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
"This guy has really made himself a credible source for irrationality"
The problem is that he *IS* rational, and makes a rational argument. Just many people are so hell-bent on attacking the guy that they forget this fact. He bases clear sound and logical arguments.
The problem is that his whole argument is built upon certain premisses that just don't coincide with any reality that I'm aware of. He claims that people "train on GTA to kill cops"? What part about GTA lets me pick up a gun and use it to kill a cop? It may train my behavior, but it doesn't train those skills that I need to shoot a weapon with the accuracy that people like, the Columbine shooters exhibited.
When I loaded up this radio program I was ready to hear some crackpot wizzing away again like all the other crackpots out there. But this guy isn't like that. He's intelligent, and sane. He's just using some fantasy pixie-dust premisses that support his preconceived opinion that artistic violence envokes violence in the audience.
I wonder what he'd have to say about the real Grimm Fairytales... "Of course we started the Crusades, just look at what they were teaching their kids! After a decade of training on stories of knights kill things and wolves eating small children, they had the whole skillset needed to launch a massive compaign to regain the Holy Land!"
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
AC sibling is right. Trolls are in control. It's a game to them. Jack Thompson is many things, but he is *not* in control. He's compelled to do what he's doing. He *honestly* believes the future of the country depends on his success in this endeavor...
Telltale Games: Bone, Sam and Max