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!

[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.

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: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.

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.