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Jack Thompson Sues Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes to mention that Jack Thompson, in his latest bout of zealotry, has set his sights on Microsoft for their recent release of Halo 3. GameAlmighty has posted the letter to Bill Gates. "Here's the deal, Mr. Gates: Either Microsoft undertakes dramatic, real steps, through its marketing, wholesale, and retail operations to assure that Halo 3 is not sold, via the Internet and in stores, directly to anyone under 17, or I shall proceed to make sure that Microsoft is held to that standard by appropriate legal means. I have done that before successfully as to Best Buy, and I shall do so again as to Microsoft and all retailers of Halo 3."
Why does this guy feel the need to force his "morality" on everyone? What makes him right and everyone else wrong? He's likely just the biggest douchebag in the world, but I was wondering if anyone, anywhere can defend him.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
I envy someone who can get so singularly focused on one topic. I think the guy's going batshit -- or should I say overreacting -- but I envy that quality nonetheless. How much meaningful work could get accomplished with such focused energy. You know he might just accomplish an end to his means because of it.
Microsoft is like the publisher for Halo 3 right? So they have nothing to do with direct retail... This makes sense how? Wait never mind. I just realized who sent the letter.
Let's hope there's some sort of explosion of stupidity and they both die.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Personally, I'm just so confused because I want them BOTH to lose. The only thing that makes me NOT want it to be a protracted and expensive lawsuit for both parties is that then, only the lawyers would win.
If only Microsoft, Jack AND the lawyers would just explode, we would all be winners.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
... because really, they're just distributing a video game. This attack on gaming is stupid, just like many other laws trying to prevent social activities. It's a futuristic combat game, there is nothing REAL about any of it. The supposedly realistic world the game takes place in is a complete fictional fabrication. Unless Jack thinks Microsoft has a fucking time machine and knows that this is the true future. :-)
... cause that's like real. Or how about violence in film? That is a depiction of real people, handling pseudo-weapons that are designed to look like real weapons, and through the use of special effects, depict the actual killing of people in as much graphic detail as possible (cause it looks cooler). He really needs to stop acting like a fucking crusader for the war on video games. I am under the impression that there is no "moral majority" backing any of his actions, and the generation of adults who grew up playing video games will just want Mr. Thompson to shut up.
Why doesn't he focus his effort on banning violence from news reports
And if he brings up the recent VT shootings, from what I understand of Cho's background, that he didn't play video games.
Can someone please throw a cream pie at Thompson, like ASAP? Someone already nailed BillyG with a pie, someone needs to get Jack.
greatest troll that ever lived
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And don't stop at the lawyers - use all the leverage possible to keep him off air in any capacity whatsoever, discredit him, make him face his own past in a realm he can't run away from it - the courts. Underscore how frivolous his complaints are, but how much time and effort they detract by their process. Reveal how base his arguments are, how scientific studies and strived for impartiality have never entered his deranged mind as considerations. Exhalt in how loathed he is, how manipulative of genuine tragedy, how anachronistic in the basic tenets of his first arguments, how he's devolved from then.
After all that, tell him it's not really Microsoft's responsiblity to police the fucking vendors, ridicule him for his lack of jurisprudence, move to have the twat disbarred, and let us be done with it.
A truly wonderful occurrence as a mentally lacking persona is taking a hulking giant head on. Only that, he is no david.
and this is a chance for microsoft to clean up some of the bad karma that they have accrued over the last 25-30 years.
Read radical news here
Remember... Jack IS a lawyer so by your statement, he would win.
Can we please return parental control back to parents? I was under the impression that Thompson et al preach traditional values and the "reinstitution" of family. If you really want to feed the lawyers, please ask the courts to force families to be responsible for raising their kids, not to take the responsability away from it. Thank you.
Note to self: get a sig.
Not that I would be against a law to state that it is illegal for someone to sell mature video games to kids, but come on a violent video game is way less dangerous then drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol. 99.9% of kids can play violent video games and not be any way affected by them. And those that are affect usually have other contributing factors that make it so. There is no way Microsoft could assure that there game is never sold to children. Look at all the before mentioned products, they still get sold to kids all the time even though its illegal by law. Jack Thompson is fighting the wrong people. He needs to be helping parents learn how to be parents. Most young kids don't have the money to buy a 50 - 60 dollar game. Let alone a several hundred dollar console.
Microsoft is like the Black Plague: you want to avoid it at all costs, but it's great to see it go to work against your enemies.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
April fools was last month.
There are fools every month.
I agree completely, but look at the moderation. This won't ever stop until the overloards/chairthrowing/enough for anyone/profit/etc jokes stop being a surefire way to get modded up.
:x
But his energy isn't focused. He attacks the wrong targets. He's not starting a PR compaign to make parents aware of ratings. He isn't threatening retailers with boycotts for selling mature games to children. He's suing a company who has no control over the situation, and no legal responsibility. That's not focused energy. It's the kind of random misdirected energy I expect from a crack addict.
He's a lunatic that feeds off attention.
Why give him ammunition?
Because the news media is SUPPOSED to EXPOSE such abuses of power - to give us warning. Then we can dodge, and mobilize opposition, etc.
Keeping silent about such abuses perpetuates them. Talking about them gives their opposition more intelligence (in the military sense) for organizing against them, and lets them know that action is needed.
The most powerful propaganda technique is to selectively not report. The media already does this with entirely too many things that they want put over on the population. (Ever notice how they don't tell you about a lot of tyrannical laws until they day they go into effect, rather than warning you when they're in the legislature (when you could do something about it), or up for executive signature (when you might have a slight chance to abort it)?)
For once we've got a petty tyrant who's knotting THEIR shorts, too. So let's not play into his hands by trying to get the media to shut up and let him perpetrate his evil unimpeded.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You're right; his writing style is juvenile. I've seen his letters in more than one place. Every time I have read one I wonder how on earth he managed to get a license to practice law in the first place. Then, I feel as if my own personal IQ has dropped a few notches.
Something I found to be insightful when trying to understand Jack Thompson is the whole situation with Penny Arcade. Start with the Wed, October 12 2005 - 10:49 AM entry and keep reading. Not only is it amusing, it is very eye opening.
Love sees no species.
I don't really agree with his position, but at least he's fighting for what he believes, rather than just selling his advocacy to the highest bidder.
It's important to recognise the difference between someone who hold morals with which one disagrees, and someone who has no morals.
My mod points literally expired minutes before I loaded this, but I'm giving you a virtual +1 Interesting.
The thing that always seems really stupid to me about these claims is that with the exception of joysticks for (combat) flight sims, the controls used in (violent) videogames are nothing at all like the ones used in real life. I'm a half-decent shot with a pistol and much better with a rifle, but I absolutely suck at FPS games... and I bet the reverse is usually true as well. FPSs just don't account for things like the weight or length of the weapon, the affect recoil has on aim (I mean, see above comment on FPS games, but even I know how to tip the sight control stick slightly down in Halo 2 so my SMGs don't climb from recoil... whereas real full automatics are far harder to control and vast amounts of R&D has gone into the invention of 'governers' that limit the number of shot fired in a burst, because otherwise people tend to shoot most of their ammo into the sky. The grips are also different, and even the triggers don't feel the same at all.
The real difference, however, is the aiming. Mouse, keyboard, analog stick, joystick, control pad... it doesn't matter, not a single one is anything like actually trying to hit a target with a real weapon. I don't shoot at people, obviously, and usually not at terribly mobile targets, but even lining up on a stationary target is a major difference. This is especially true if shooting 'from the hip' (which is WAY harder than movies make it look) where you don't have any kind of crosshairs, zoom, or direct LoS along the barrel. Until now, no videogame* I've ever seen has even approached what real-life aiming is like.
Now, along comes the Wii. You aim by... aiming. Your hand is on a object not terribly unlike any firearm without a pistol grip. You are shooting in a way that's pretty much 'from the hip' with perhaps the equivalent of a laser sight added (crosshairs on screen). I haven't played Red Steel or any other Wii game involving shooting with a Wiimote, and I'm sure the best of them still isn't terribly realistic, but it's a hell of a lot closer than any other mainstream control scheme I know of* and if JT actually gives a damn about the supposed reason behind his crusade (keeping people safe) and has an IQ of better than 40 (not sure about this either, but he did supposedly make it through law school) he should be terrified/outraged by this!
*Ok, duckhunt. But seriously, the aim in that game was a joke; it was more about learning how to game the system than about how to target accurately. There may have been others - I wasn't much into console games at all until recently - but by and large what I've said above holds true.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
It's yet to be seen, though, if the 800 pound gorilla even noticed the kick. I'm thinking pleather bean bag chairs vs a lightly tossed baby sneaker.
Well only one party is coming out of this intact, and I don't really care which one.
Huh?
Are you saying you'd prefer Mercenaries, as opposed to, say, the Khmer Rouge?
The Khmer Rouge held morals "with which one (I) disagree", while most mercenaries have few, if any, morals.
The traditional spectrum is (Good) ---- (Neutral) ---- (Evil), and as much as that is trite D&D stuff, I find it very difficult to generalize amoral as "worse" than having morals with which I disagree with.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Actually, MS's games division are really nice guys. At some point, MS basically decided to open a console division, and did so by throwing money at the most passionate game dorks they could find, then giving them space to do what they wanted to do. Because the division is reasonably young, and the older executives largely keep their hands off of it, it's not plagued by the infighting that the rest of MS is.
I originally wanted the Xbox to fail miserably in the market, lest the beast from redmond do to consoles what they did to operating systems. But, by and large, the games division has been run by a bunch of stand-up guys doing good stuff. And I'm not just saying that because I've met them, but also from what they've done. You have to admit, the Xbox 360 is no MSN.
The ______ Agenda
I suspect the point is coming when Thompson is going to start feeling some very real consequences of constantly wasting the time of the court. Either he is indeed a complete lunatic, or he's an addicted publicity hound. In either case, the least that should start happening is that he needs to have all the legal costs bounced back on him.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
hmm. I guess when you go all reducto ad absurdism (or however it's spelt) it sounds wrong. However I don't think the world's really as black and white as you're trying to imply. Most mercenaries wouldn't just side with the enemy if they offered them more $$$ - this implies a moralistic component. Conversely, I think it would be possible to argue that some totalitarian states encourage amoralism (new word), under the guise of "just following orders" or whatever.
An amoral person can do anything, as they look out for themself (also known as psychopathic) - at least a moral person behaves consistently.
I don't really agree with your "traditional spectrum" of good -> evil. Many so-called "good" people have committed terrible (evil?) acts against "evil" people who were really just different. Look at things like the trail of tears...
on a side note, I don't think he'd have a chance in hell against Microsoft's lawyers. Halo is the wrong game to attack anyway. Sure it's violent, but it's fantasy violence a la Aliens or Starship Troopers against not to scary monsters. It's not even the horror genre like Doom with people turned to zombies and demonic undertones... it's strictly man versus alien. And occasionally alien versus people. It's not violence depicted against PEOPLE for sport like GTA. otherwise he ought to be out there protesting Forest Gump or Pearl Harbor for depictions of people really getting shot at and loosing limbs. Personally what I've seen of Halo 2 makes it barely PG-13.. mostly for the language and occasional gratituious monster kills or foul language to bump up the ESRP so tweens will want it for being "grown up".
I am tired of Mr. Thompson's flawed argument that anyone effectively "trained" on any violent video game anywhere. Firing a rifle/pistol/whatever in a video game is nothing like firing its real-life equivalent. For starters, breathing comes into play, as well as the weight of the weapon and the motion of the trigger finger. A video game controller allows you to separate all these things from the motion of the crosshairs. Your thumb and pinky move separately rather nicely, the controller itself is fairly light weight, and when you breathe, the joystick doesn't move. Nobody can train for firing a real, live gun by shooting at elites and grunts with illuminated pixels!
I agree with your general idea, but Microsoft has more control over Halo 3 than any company on the planet. Microsoft *could* decide not to release Halo 3. Likely? Of course not. Could Microsoft ensure Halo 3 never hit the stores? They're the ones to go after if you honestly believe the courts would side in his favour.
But lets be frank. Hes not trying to stop the sale of Halo 3. Hes generating 'awareness'. Hes not trying to prevent violent games from reaching children. Hes trying to rid the world of violent games. Period. When he suggests that GTA is a 'murder simulator', I dont think hes saying that the ratings system doesn't work, I think hes saying that nobody would suffer from alcohol abuse if the world stopped creating alcohol. Hes a modern day prohibitionist; considering that prohibition really did exist at some point in time, its not all that nuts to suggest that he probably has more than a few financial backers. Hes just pretty shameless with his opportunism. You really ought to give more credance to your enemy; he may be really misguided, but you have to have at least some reluctant admiration for his tenacity.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Respect him for his tenacity? If I watched a man ram his head a thousand times into a skyscraper in order to knock it down and kill everyone inside, I'm not going to admire his tenacity, I'm going to call him a fruitcake with a death wish.
The only difference is the fruitcake ramming his head into a brick wall has a slightly higher chance of surviving than the fruitcake trying to sue Microsoft.
The point the GP makes though is still valid. He is trying to rid the world of violent games. He is just doing it in the least effective way possible. This would be the rough equivalent of me suing someone for driving through a green light while kids were crossing with the walk sign in their direction...because I think that cars should wait for all pedestrians to cross all directions before proceeding.
He is suing MS for doing something legal. There is no law preventing the sale of violent games to kids. The suit will be thrown out.
This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
He's a member of the old guard of lawyers, the fast-talking, slam-dunking moralizers. He doesn't care about the facts, facts have a godless liberal bias. It was proven that Cho Seung-Hui did NOT play any video games, much less trained on them- but that didn't stop Ol'Jack from jumping in the minute the first VT student's body hit the floor to claim that he was a GTA maniac.
The worst part is that he actually got airtime to say this complete fabricatio`on national television
So sad...
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
This guy is a lawyer, how can he get away with threatening legal action if they allow a sale to "anyone" that is under 17. I am pretty sure there are a few places that Microsoft sells software that does not have a law restricting the sale of a game in that age group. I could understand if it was just a nutcase without legal training, but this is a nutcase that has passed the bar. You think he would understand that as a lawyer he is not allowed to threaten the wrath of law for retribution against legal acts that he personally disagrees with.