Jack Thompson Sets His Sights On Halo 3

GamePolitics is reporting that anti-game advocate Jack Thompson is seeking to have Halo 3 declared a nuisance to the public in Florida. He tried the same stunt with Bully, and failed then too. "As with Bully, Thompson clearly hopes the court will grant him a hearing. Although after last year's well-publicized Bully performance, which earned Thompson a Bar complaint from presiding Judge Ronald Friedman, that seems unlikely. More troubling by far are the long term implications of this action. Thompson apparently feels emboldened to invoke Florida's public nuisance law against any video game he desires to target. That is the essence of censorship and the video game industry cannot allow it to continue on any number of grounds - legal, moral or creative."

Comments

Who cares!

[guysmilee]

Who cares ... he loses every court battle!

Re:Who cares!

[pruneau]

Yeah, exactly who cares. Can /. stop the stooping lower trend and go tour some more interesting landscape.
Leave this frigtard alone: he just leaves on the attention he is getting.

Re:Who cares!

[drydirt]

Who cares ... he loses every court battle!

I care. He might win one.

(We're talking about Florida after all, not exactly a bastion of sanity)

Nuisance

[Seumas]

Why is he allowed to keep doing this? He should be punished for his endless series of nuisance lawsuits and then he should be held accountable for damaging reputations and businesses with his slanderous, ridiculous, attention-seeking, self-serving accusations. That he is given endless court and television time is highly offensive.

Re:Nuisance

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty sad, but it can require something REALLY bad in order to actually disbar a lawyer

A single bullet ought to do the trick nicely.

(Yes, Mr Thompson, chalk up another on your pathetic list of "death threats"! Because every AC on Slashdot is actually a murderer - no, worse than that, a gamer in disguise!)

Crazy!

[Zebra_X]

What? Halo 3 is just another FPS. What is so deplorable about Halo? Actually - it might be a good thing to get MSFT's legal department rolling on crushing this retard.

I'm getting tired of this...

[Spy der Mann]

He was funny a couple of years ago, but it's like an annoying joke that was funny at first and then starts driving you nuts. I wish he just shut up.

More press?

[Scutter]

Why do we keep giving this guy air time? Enough with the Jack Thompson stories already.

It is important to our cause to give publicity

[netsavior]

Jack Thompson is the greatest asset we have in our fight to keep video games from being villified and banned/censored.

The primary spokesperson of the anti-video game movement is clearly a psychopath. Completly batshit crazy. If he was not crazy, and used logical (sounding) conclusions and appealed to reasonable or religious sensibilities he would be MUCH more dangerous to free speech than he is.

So we MUST give him lipservice, we must work to keep his illegal, crazy shenanagins in the news, because as long is he is their front-man, we will always win.

Re:It is important to our cause to give publicity

[netsavior]

I'll bite and go one step further...
Ratings systems are for lazy parents.

My son, who happens to love video games is not yet 3 years old. I could not give 2 shits about what the rating says, he is disturbed by some "child friendly" content, and not disturbed by some "Teen to adult" content. They don't know my kid, they don't know my morals, they are doing their best to convey some sort of moral average. Content is subjective. What is right for my kid is not right for other kids, the only I can actually regulate what he sees, and how he reacts to it is to *gasp* be involved in his daily life.
Of course it is easy for me because I love games so I am automatically involved there, but I have watched a lot of shows that I hate and read a lot of books that are annoying, because I am a dedicated parent.

I'm not sure I have a solution to the problem, but a ratings system will be about as effective as telling parents they need to try harder. Ratings systems are an attempt to qantify a subjective concept of "morality" which is impossible.

Public Nuisance?

[sunderland56]

With Bully, Jack Thompson had a sliver of a case - that children in a private school might buy the game and start emulating it in real life by beating up their classmates.

Similarly, he might have a case with GTA:Vice City, where people in Las Vegas might buy the game and then start randomly shooting people and stealing cars.

But Halo 3? What, the astronauts on the International Space Station might play the game, and then start shooting each other in real life?? And even if they do, how is that a public nuisance?

Please Don't Feed The Trolls

[zodar]

Can we stop giving Jack Thompson coverage so he can slide back under his rock and disappear?

Re:Payroll

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, it just struck me after reading a few of the posts on the gamepolitics site. There's a saying about "following the money." One of the things he has consistently complained about is the lack of age-verification when purchasing online; citing that a credit card is not enough. He says:

"Age ID software is available to Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart, and they refuse to use it"

It really makes me wonder how he benefits financially from these publicity stunts. I get the feeling that he has an investment in an age-verification company, or that they at least are paying him to keep bringing up these frivolous suits. Has anyone looked into this? Along those lines, did he build up a huge nest-egg from being a legitimate lawyer in the past? How can he afford to waste everyone's time and money?

FYI

[BytePusher]

I read through Mr. Thomson's COMPLAINT FOR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF AND FOR BREACH OF AGREEMENT to see what he was complaining about. Otherwise he is seeking legal action for Best Buy not obeying a settlement they agreed upon:

13. When plaintiff first filed an action similar to this in Miami-Dade Circuit Court it was against defendant Best Buy to stop the sale of "Mature-rated" video games at its stores to customers under the age of 17. Best Buy settled that suit by agreeing to henceforth age ID any customer who appeared to be 21 years of age or younger in order to intercept and prevent any sales to anyone under 17. Best Buy announced this new policy nationwide.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think this is the "Breach of Agreement" part of his complaint. I suspect he has a case for this portion of his complaint.

Below is the stuff about the game itself:

9. Halo 3 is a video game that allows the virtual reality player to rehearse violent acts resulting in the death of one's virtual victims. Lee Boyd Malvo, the younger of the two "DC Beltway Snipers" was trained on Halo to kill residents within Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. His "mentor," John Muhammad, knew the efficacy of the first Halo video game in this regard, because the Army in which he served used this same murder simulator to train snipers to kill. Malvo learned well on Halo.

10. The role of Microsoft's Halo in the "DC Beltway Snipings" was reported on NBC News and was introduced into evidence in the trial of Lee Boyd Malvo.

11. The proof as to the causal nexus between violence simulation video games and real-world violence is legion, but one of the more notable proofs is found in the August 2005 Report of the American Psychological Association that establishes the direct causal link between violent teenaged video game play and teenagers' aggression. The recent U. S. Supreme Court case of Roper v. Simmons, which struck down the juvenile death penalty, cites the brain scan studies similar to those coming out of Harvard, Indiana, and Michigan State Universities that prove that these violent games are processed in a different part of the brain in adolescents and teens than in adults, and it is the sector of the brain that leads of teen violence copycatting these violent games like Halo 3.

Re:FYI

[Kesch]

OMG! You mean I can train to be a sniper with Halo! I never knew it was so easy. Screw the long hard training to be a sniper in the army; I'm going to go get me a copy of Halo and be a pro in no time. This immediately brings a few questions to mind though. For instances, which Halo should I train on? In the PC version, you have to lead with the sniper rifle, in the Xbox version you do not. I can see this making a difference. Secondly, where are the analog sticks on my gun? I'm having a hard time finding them.

Re:Payroll

[jez9999]

How about weaning yourself off that addiction? Seriously, it's bizarre how Americans can be so zealously anti-drug, and yet treat a caffeine addiction as 'just something that most people have'.

Re:For a second there..

[EricTheMad]

I thought Slashdot was smarter than to give this idiot any attention at all. You must be new here. Slashdot is made up entirely of idiots seeking the attention of other idiots by posting clever responses to stories or other peoples comments. If you don't believe me, just read this post again.

Agreed, don't become complacent!

[Anonymous Coward]

While I don't necessarily agree with the swipe at Florida (I don't disagree either, it's just irrelevant), I agree in spirit. While he has become as tiresome as a spoiled child that has yet to be disciplined (though the Bar is finally waking up to his antics), until he is unable to practice law, he is still a threat to freedom. We must not allow complacency to settle in, every time he rears his fool head, the public needs to be reminded as to what a self-serving, shallow, narcissistic, delusional danger he is, until no-one pays him heed again.

That being said: GO AWAY JACK! You're only making a greater fool of yourself!

Ah yes...

[l0b0]

Good thing this guy keeps reminding me which games to buy. He's not paid by the game developers? Shucks.

Re:READ HIS LAWSUIT

[festers]

As a parent, I'll decide what my kids can and cannot play/read/listen to. Not a corporation and certainly not a lunatic lawyer.