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Miami Court Orders Take Two to Hand Over Bully
Jabrwock writes "GamePolitics.com reports that a judge in Miami ruled that Take Two Interactive, makers of the controversial title Bully, must hand over a copy of the soon to be released game to the court within 24 hours. Jack Thompson, the plaintiff, called the ruling a 'huge victory against the violent video game industry', although Take Two can still appeal the order. Thompson filed a lawsuit asking the court to label Bully a 'public nuisance' and restrict its October 17 release in Florida."
Does this ruling actually affect sales of the game, or is it just to let the judge play the game himself and see if it's actually as bad as Thompson claims?
Thompson needs to stop projecting his sick mind on the masses.
http://www.cafepress.com/hikarudesigns/ http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=hikaru
Yes, that's right, a huge victory for Jack. He finally got his hands on a copy of a video game before release!
Obviously since nobody else has played this game yet, it will be a major loss to the gaming industry. Certainly there aren't already copies in the hands of video game reviewers, or any store or... wait? There are? *How* many people have played it?
I'm not quite sure how this is a major victory, other then that he found a(another?) judge to play ball with him.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
Well, filing fees are supposed to cover that to a degree, and it's very much a public good to make our judicial process accessible to anyone with a beef, no matter how unlikely.
So, how much are Take Two paying Jack Thompson at the moment in order to get him to stir up shit to drum up their sales figures? The whole thing seems kind of suspicious to me. It certainly wouldn't be the first time someone's been paid off to act as an 'enemy' of another person in order to help drum up support and interest...
Who is he representing? I'm not a lawyer myself but I thought you can only bring up a case if you have been directly affected by an incident, or had an immeidate family member affected.
No one can really be effected by Bully as it hasn't been released so why are judges even hearing these cases?
Empathetic-- 94% You tend to walk in someone else's shoes a hundred miles before pointing a finger.
One example that comes to mind is the pedophile and star trek correlation. I remember reading some time back that a bizzarre percentage of pedophiles were big trekkies. I don't know if its true, but assuming it is, this doesn't mean watching Star Trek makes you a pedophile, and it doesn't mean everyone that watches Star Trek is already a pedophile, it simply means that for some reason the same people are likely to be pedophiles are likely to enjoy Star Trek.
I know the phrase "correlation != causation" is cliché when it comes to Jack Thompson, but it's also quite true.
From my understanding, Bully is actually not the type of game the title and Take Two's reputation in the game industry would imply. So much so, that the game has actually received surprisingly mild ratings from reviewers regarding any sort of violence in the game what-so-ever.
The game literally has very little to do with going around GTA style, beating up defenseless weaklings at random. In fact, it's quite the opposite and promotes standing up to the adversity that bullies present in humorous ways. Honestly, I'd say parents have more to fear from your typical Mario title than they do from Bully.
This movement is entirely motivated by who is making the game, rather than the content of the game itself.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Thing is - there isn't much more time than that between the handover deadline and the game's release...
And perhaps you nailed it right on the head. Sometimes, when a judge wants to have a little fun with a particularly vexatious or obtuse litigant, he'll take their more absurd motions and put constrainst on them that make their fulfillment render the cause of action moot. So, perhaps this judge thinks it silly and so requested something (like 100 hours of gameplay) that can't be fulfilled before general release to make sure that he won't be placed in the awkward position of having to rule on the legality of its distribution. (And, anyway, wouldn't that be a flagrant case of Prior Restraint?)
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Barratry charges are unbelievably rare, and the main reasons are:
1. Everyone involved is a lawyer, so there is a version of that blue wall of silence that every profession has to some degree
2. Our system needs to be accessible, and so it is better overall to err on the side of an occasional asshat filing a frivolous lawsuit and letting it slide, rather than an important casue of action being barred and a wronged person denied their day in court.
3. Courts generally have better things to do than defenestrate annoying lawyers.
Honestly, I think in many jurisdictions it's more number one than number two, but number two sure does make a dandy fig leaf. And number three is always a factor; many jurisdictions have dockets jammed to the hilt and extremely finite resources.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
IANAL, but it would appear that Thompson is arguing the case on the grounds that the game constitutes a public nuisance. If he's arguing on those grounds then the court has no choice but to decide on those grounds. Many people posting in this article have repeatedly pointed out that it is a violation of first-amendment rights to ban this game. If that is so, then it is not the Florida judge's duty to decide what is or is not a violation of the constitution. That falls to the US Supreme Court. The reason that it hasn't been thrown completely out as prior restraint is because the Florida legislature has penned a law specifically allowing prior restraint if the publishing of the art constitutes a public nuisance. Note that my knowledge of said law is exclusively based on gleanings from other posters.
To sum it up, it is irrelevant whether or not this is a violation of first-amendment rights because the jurisdiction in question cannot decide what is constitutional and what is not. This is also not a clear cut case of prior restraint because of a piece of Florida legislation. If Rockstar wants to set a freedom of speech precedent should this case be lost, they will have to follow an appeal all the way to the US Supreme Court. For a lower court to rule based on the constitution would imply that said court was somehow on-par with the Supreme Court.
SRSLY.
This will actually play right into Take Two's hands.
Judge orders Take Two to go into production on new game.
Judge gives new game a lot of hype, no matter which way he rules.
Rules against the game-->The game will not be available to minors, because that always works. Loads of people buy the game to see what all the fuss was about.
Rules for the game-->The game is hailed as a new messiah for being the game that got a judge to tell Jack Thompson to shut up and go away. Millions of copies purchased in gratitude.
Profit!
I really wonder what the big idea behind this is. What will the judge do when he thinks the game is too violent, or not "nice" for some people, or even give people the idea that to bully is a good thing.
I do not think the judge will be able to stop the release of the game; he will not have the power to do anything about the content of the game. What are the intentions?
Do we not have the freedom to express in an artistic way by for example creating a video game? If people thing that their kids should not play this game because it is bad influence for them they should simply not allow them to play the game. It is the same thing as, if you think your child should be allowed to watch a adult movie you should simply not allow him to.
People do have their own responsibility and the responsibility towards their kids to give them the education they think is good for them. If this includes not playing a certain game they should simply not allow the kid to do so.
Regards, Johan Louwers.