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Take-Two Loses Another Round in Court
IntelliAdmin writes "A federal judge refused a request from Take-Two Interactive Software to immediately dismiss some claims in a lawsuit accusing it of selling Grand Theft Auto videogames containing sexually explicit images under the wrong content label." From the article: "Take-Two and its subsidiary, Rockstar Games, had argued in the motion to dismiss parts of the lawsuit that the plaintiffs could only file claims in the states where they resided, not in all 50 states. But U.S. District Judge Shirley Wohl Kram denied Take-Two's motion and said she would reconsider if class-action status were granted in the case."
If seeing polyboobies is REALLY a significant problem for our children I think we screwed up long before then.
Sincerely,
Crying For Society....
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Since when is what amounts to frottage in any way sexually explicit? There's nary a dong or a hamburger shot to be seen!
Take Two should just plead guilty and stop paying lawers to defend them. They are wasting a ton of money when they know damn well that they did put the content in there. Of course the ESRB is to blaim as well because they could have done a better job in the first place.
Stop confusing the issue!!
The problem is NOT that Rockstar included sexually explicit content in their game. The problem is that they released it under a rating that did not include knowledge of the sexually explicit material. Saying something like: "if children seeing polyboobies is a problem then blah blah blah" is a completely misleading statement.
This has absolutely NOTHING to do with children seeing boobies. It's the fact that Rockstar didn't DECLARE there were boobies to the ESRB. If a parent doesn't care about their child seeing digital boobs, then let the parent make an informed decision about the product up front. But stop saying that there's a problem with society because children seeing digital boobs is causing such a commotion. It's not.
So, they're still being sued...over questionable content...that you can't access...unless you violate the DMCA...?
Why hasn't Rockstar/Take Two launched counter-suits against people who have used the Hot Coffee hack and are outraged by it?
"If seeing polyboobies is REALLY a significant problem for our children I think we screwed up long before then."
Obviously Tomb Raider didn't get you all hot and bothered?
Except they removed access to the content. Granted, they should've removed it completely, but there was no way to access it without modifying the game.
I don't know what the ESRB was supposed to do. They could've played the entire game, found all the hidden packages, completed every mission, achieved 100% completion of the game, and they'd still not have found the inaccessible digital boobs.
It wasn't an easter egg, it was disabled content. An easter egg is intended to be accessible from within the game, but just not in an obvious way. Disabled content is not intended to be accessible through any in-game means, but of course it is possible to change the game code to allow access. It's the difference between finding an egg hidden behind the couch, and finding an egg in a dumpster. The one behind the couche was put there on purpose. Nobody expected you to go rifling through the dumpster looking for eggs.
How could the ESRB have done a better job? There was no way to get at this content by playing the game. The only way to get at it is to get a mod for the game that unlocks it. Does the ESRB rate games based on every mod that exists, or may possibly exist in the future? Did they rate UT2004 only after it had been out for two years, and they had downloaded every mod for the game?
Maybe the ESRB has problems and needs to do a better job. Hot Coffee is a terrible example to try to prove it. The only thing Hot Coffee shows is that 1) a lot of people don't understand the difference between having something built into the game, and downloading a mod for a game and 2) maybe moddable games should carry an ESRB warning similar to the ones for online games, something like "Game experience may change if you deliberately go out on the internet, download a mod, and install it."
Or maybe something like: "ESRB warning: To the best of our knowledge, this game contains no boobies. If you don't want to see any boobies, then don't install any modifications that purport to show you boobies."
The enemies of Democracy are
Free Press.
Gotta love the free advertising and scandals..It's like jack Thompson. It's not a big deal, but they fight it out to get the name out there without paying ungodly advertising costs.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
Big difference. The ESRB rating on the games is accurate for the game as shipped. There is nothing more explicit than gaining health for having hookers crawl into your car. Hot Coffee is a MOD - ie, you have to modify the game to see it. This whole suit is about people being up in arms about the game being changed after the sale. I never saw the issue.
Uhm, the Mod did not add the content like the mod you refer to in UT2004. Besides San Andreas could have been rated AO just on the basis that it has extended periods of violence which I might add are illegal kind of violence like shooting all the hookers in town or killing cops. This is different from a combat game where you choose a side to fight on.
This has absolutely NOTHING to do with children seeing boobies. It's the fact that Rockstar didn't DECLARE there were boobies to the ESRB.
There were no boobies to declare.
There were no boobies until you applied a modification to the game downloaded off the internet.
At the point at which you are applying a modification to the game, does it matter if the mod is just unlocking previously innaccessible content on the disk, or if the mod contained the boobies itself? You're modifying the game from its original, boobless, presentation.
If there was an "Iced Tea" mod that put beastiality into the game, would it be Rockstar's fault for not notifying the ESRB that their game might, at some point in the future, depending on what internet modders do, contain beastiality?
The ESRB rating of the game GTA was 100% accurate, and was sufficient for any parent to make a fully informed decision. If that parent or their child then goes and modifies the game such that it shows boobs, that is their fault, not Rockstar's or the ESRB.
The enemies of Democracy are
That may be so, but one of the reasons that obscenity law has been considered constitutional is that despite being a federal law, it would use local standards of obscenity.
By allowing the plaintiff to proceed in states where they are not local, the judge is unwittingly(?) breaking this tenet of obscenity law and possibly setting it on a path straight towards its destruction.
Uhm, the Mod did not add the content like the mod you refer to in UT2004.
So what? In both cases you cannot see the content without a mod, and after applying a mod you can. The only difference is the size of the mod you have to apply, but the concept -- modifying the game -- is the same. The ESRB should not -- in fact cannot -- be responsible for modifications made to a game by users after it has been purchased.
Besides San Andreas could have been rated AO just on the basis that it has extended periods of violence which I might add are illegal kind of violence like shooting all the hookers in town or killing cops. This is different from a combat game where you choose a side to fight on.
A combat game like... CS? I'm pretty sure the Terrorist side's actions wouldn't be considered legal. Street Fighter? Street fighting is illegal, don't you know. I don't see why choosing a side makes a difference.
Well it doesn't make a difference, anyway, because your views on violence in GTA are not the issue. The discussion is about nudity that did not exist in the game Rockstar released and the ESRB rated. Then some idiot modifies the game to show nudity, and suddenly everyone thinks the rating should have been different because Rockstar should have realized that somebody might make a modification that shows nudity. Which is ridiculous.
The enemies of Democracy are
I think a certain Beach Volleyball game was modded to show nudity but nobody asked for that to be re-rated because it required re-skining the models which is adding content to the game. In the end, it does matter if the content was in the game even if it was not immediately accesable.
Not as tame as the Sims/Sim2 w/o the pixel blur, but it is a bit more graphic than Janet's nipple. Though I recall seeing about as much skin as a kid when my mom's soaps were on the tube.
Funny how our standards (as a society) change over time. Anyone remember the full-frontal nudity of a baby Clark Kent in the theater release of Superman in the 70's (PG)? Or how about those obviously gratitous bare breasts briefly flashed in the foreground on the panic scene in Airplane (also PG).
Damned puritan nation...
Method of processing duck feet
your car comes out of the box ready to go 115+ mph (more if you've got a sportier car or less if you've got a Geo), but the governor limits this (in america at least) to ~115mph. Does this mean that automotive manufacturers are selling illegal racing machines because someone can flip a bit somewhere (or cut a wire, whatever)? I think that Take Two is not necessarily responsible for someone unlocking content they decided to hide at the last minute.
In the end, it does matter if the content was in the game even if it was not immediately accesable.
It only matters to people who don't understand the simple concept that applying a third-party mod to a game may change the content of that game.
The content was not in the game. There was no possible way for you to encounter that content in the game. You could only do so by changing the game.
If you didn't want to see bare breasts, and you never installed the Hot Coffee mod, you would never see any breasts, and the ESRB rating would be completely correct and you would be happy.
But apparently there are people out there who don't want to see bare breasts, then go download a mod that says it will show them breasts, apply it to the game, see breasts, and are offended.
Those people are insane.
The enemies of Democracy are
If people actually did that then I would agree with you that they were insane.
Well if nobody who doesn't want to see boobies applied the Hot Coffee mod to the game, and thus none of them saw boobies in the game, what exactly is everyone complaining about? Since they didn't modify the game, the ESRB rating (which applies only to the unmodified game for what I pray to God are obvious reasons) was 100% accurate.
The enemies of Democracy are
Modifying a program for your personal use probably would not constitute a violation of DMCA. If one modified the game with the intention of making unauthorized copies, that may be a violation. But the modification that displays the undisclosed content didn't do that. Modifying the game may violate the EULA but not the DMCA.
Hey, this is great news! I was trolling on the net the other day, and I found a mod that turns my original "Doom" into a nudefest... hundreds of young, naked women, some of whom may be underage! So this whole case is going to be a great precendent.
So, who wants to get in on the "ID" lawsuit with me? I mean, I got the game, then downloaded something that made the game do a naughty, within the game mechanics. That's close enough.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
This whole issue is simply ridiculous. The game was rated Mature (17+) with a list of reasons included on the box, and parents/politicians/blood-sucking lawyers are complaining that their (less-than-17 year-old) children who play it are seeing polyboobies? Wouldn't 'mature' seem to indicate, well, a certain level of maturity, such that children who are allowed to play the game by their parents are probably capable of handling polyboobies without spontaneously combusting? And if the parents aren't aware of what kind of games their kids are playing because of negligence on their part, how is it Rockstar's fault?
America needs to grow the fuck up.
Legalize it.
If you bought a swim suit with a crotch-shaped hole on the back side of the material, but the front of the suit is completely solid, and then you went and cut out the front material to the shape of the existing hole, well then you'd have a proper analogy to what Rockstar did.
The hole was there all along, but it was patched so no one would see it under normal conditions. By modifying the suit/game, you exposed a "hidden detail" of the original item but it can hardly be said that the manufacturer intended to expose the hole. For all we know, it was a band-aid fix to remove "inappropriate" material in a fast and effective way that required less re-testing than removing the code completely. With deadlines and time crunches of the corporate world and to a greater extent the video gaming industry, I would not be surprised at all if that was the rationale behind leaving the content in, but making it otherwise inaccessible.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Someone create a collection of mods for common software that replaces icons with boobs. Put some Windows themes in where all the icons are explicit. Do it with AIM, IE, Word, Excel. Do it with whatever the modern day Math Blaster/Number Cruncher/Carmen Sandiego/Oregon Trail edutainment games are. Make sure you get NetNanny type applications, Anti-Virus stuff. The AOL client. Get default bloatware that comes on pre-built PCs from the major manufacturers. It shouldn't be too hard...lots of problems allow for skinning, and others just require editing of the right archive file (AIM used to, and I would assume it still does).
Show that the procedure to implement any of these would be the same as to activate the Hot Coffee Mod: download a file, execute the file, possibly specify the target to be modified, and then run the target application. At what point will people learn?
Yes, leaving the content in the game was a bad move. Did Take-Two and the ESRB not act appropriately, or even over-the-top? The original game was re-rated higher. It was recalled, apologized for, and a new version without that data was released. What are they supposed to do, exactly? Apparently, this requires that they send a check everyone who bought the game for their _children_. I'm sorry, but the game is largely based around murder, prostitution, and other crimes. If it's ok for your child to interactively engage in these crimes in a video game, it's ok for them to see boobs. Any other response shows that the initial purchase decision was not correct, and that the parents are failing to take responsibility for that initial purchase decision error.
Additionally, if your child knows about the Hot Coffee Mod and knows enough to implement the mod, then they already have ready access to porn. Even if your child's _friend_ brought the save file to your child, that friend could just as easily have brought porn.
I could possibly see issues if Take-Two hadn't shown considerable effort to remedy the situation.
It reminds me of, a few years back, when a cable provider accidentally switched feeds and replaced something like 10-20 minutes of Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel with the Playboy/Spice channel. Was the provider sued?
Guess what: your cable line is sending your house pornography 24/7, and all your child needs to see it is a descrambler. And that adult material is sent to you _intentionally_. Sue them first, and if you can get that to fly, try Take-Two.
I am ticked off at the court system for allowing this case to move like this, the fact is that the hot coffee mod was in the game true, however there was already a strong sexual content label placed on the game which meant that it had strong SEXUAL content, so basically the people want a game rating that will specify exactly which sexual positions people will be in so that they can judge whether its ok. Regardless of the fact that the code was already in there, I understand that video games require more indepth attention than TV or movies, but when an adult buys a game for their son and did not check the REVIEWS, SCREENSHOTS, READING THE LABELS, SPEAKING ABOUT IT WITH OTHER ADULTS, then I feel that the adult has no right nor say to bitch or complain about the content because THEY WERE INFORMED BUT THE ADULT DID NOT LOOK FOR THE INFORMATION BUT IT WAS THERE. Judges need to start looking at these cases as whether or not the parent did their jobs, also, A MOVIE HAS STRONG SEXUAL CONTENT WHICH MEANS IT HAS SEX, BUT THATS ENOUGH TO KEEP PEOPLE AWAY.
If a parent is ok with the gun play, shootings, crime and other content, why would a pair of boobs make any difference?
Your Doom mod means nothing because you added the nudity.
This case is a real head-scratcher because Rockstar included the nudity - BUT they did not include any way to view it with the game that shipped! It's basically almost as if you had sold a movie on a DVD with a hidden pornographic JPG that only a computer could access by browsing files. In that case, should the movie have an X rating even though a DVD player would never show it?
It seems like Rockstar should win this one but it is more complex than a simple case of someone slapping nudity in to a game after the fact.
One could even wonder based on this if the inclusion of skin textures in the game could not be construed in the same way this has been, since that skin pattern can be extended all over or in place of clothes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Might I add that the "locked" content used the regular, clothed models from the rest of the game. There was no locked out nudity. You could, however, add a nude patch created by a 3rd party modder - but only in the PC version. Even with the Hot Coffee mod, the content original to the game was no different from something you might see in an R rated movie. The equivalent of the R rating for video games is M, the original rating the game was given.
The problem here is that most people hear there was sexual content in the game and assume it was sexually explicit and pornographic, when it wasn't.