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Jack Thompson Spams Utah Senate, May Face Legal Action
eldavojohn writes "Yesterday, GamePolitics ran an interesting story about the Utah Senate President threatening Jack Thompson with the CAN-SPAM Act. You might recall Utah being Jack's last hope and hold-out after being disbarred in Florida and more or less made a mockery everywhere else. Well, from Utah's Senate Site, we get the picture of what Jack is up to now: spamming his last friends on the planet. The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting on Senate President Michael Waddoups' statements: 'I asked you before to remove me from your mailing list. I supported your bill but because of the harassment will not again. If I am not removed, I will turn you over to the AG for legal action.' The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Waddoups confirmed on Tuesday that he would attempt to pursue legal action under the federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 against Jack Thompson."
Will a spammer finally be prosecuted? It seems to me like a lot of these spam suites just don't stick
:(
We used to think that Thompson was lower than a spammer, but we're not so sure nowadays...
Did he manage to spam them with anything interesting? I figure that, if this guy can somehow think that putting porn in a court filing is a good idea, anything is possible when he gets on the internet.
Per subject: it's guys like Jack Thompson who give lawyers a bad name.
He has lost his mission, he has lost his friends, and what does he do---piss away the last he had.
Truly this is the time to quote Leia: the more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers.
Soon, all Jack will have left is an empty clenched fist, which he will be free to wave at anyone passing by his soap box.
May it be put on a deserted island.
Now, let's all play a game with tits and guns! :D
This is just more proof that Jack Thompson, much like Steve Balmer, was put on this earth to be an infinite source of entertainment. As long as people like Jack try to attack violent video games and remove them from the shelves, they will never succeed. His tactics of idiocy and harassment don't seem to work.
I wonder if anybody has ever pointed him to /. and everybody who hates him...
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Why couldn't he have given us some warning before doing that?
Now we have to arrange for confetti and parade floats and marching bands all on short notice!
Does he have any idea how hard it is to get a 500ft Master Chief balloon in just a couple days?
Technoli
I don't know the politics behind this -- am I correct in reading it as Waddoup being fine with everybody else being spammed, and only objecting when he discovered that he could get spammed too?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Spam is commercial email. This is email about a pending legislative action, and thus Jack Thompson has the right to send it because he has a right to free speech.
But all that means is that the CAN-SPAM act isn't the appropriate law to attack him with: instead, the Senator should just go for plain-old harassment.
Besides, there's nothing that says the Senator has to listen to him -- that's what filters are for! Let Jack Thompson write to /dev/null to his heart's content.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Not long after being disbarred, Ol' Jack spammed the entire membership of the Florida Bar (all Florida lawyers) asking for personal stories about how other members have been "unfairly" targeted by the Florida Bar. I presume he wanted to start some sort of class action suit, but I haven't heard anything further about it.
If you flood someone with spam, they may turn against you, even if they were on your side originally.
In other words, way to shoot your own foot.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If I understand this correctly, Thompson was petitioning elected representatives for a particular change in law. No matter how annoying his tactics or the fact that he was asked to stop, I have to believe that any prosecution of him for these actions would be thrown out on first amendment grounds. Recall that the first amendment reads as follows (emphasis mine):
Of course, in usual Slashdot fashion, IANAL.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Well, from Utah's Senate Site, we get the picture of what Jack is up to now: spamming his last friends on the planet.
He still has friends?
Ok, well, I really hate to be on the side of Jack Thompson, but. . .
U.S. Constitution - 1st Amendment:
Simply put, if you are a legislator, you have no right to ask people to not petition you. Jack Thompson was exercising his contitutionally protected right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. There is nothing CAN-SPAM can do about that. Such an application would be clearly unconstitutional.
Now, that said. . . there's such a thing as an email filter that automatically deletes email from certain senders. . .
for those of you that don't understand the above post, please consult your dictionary under the heading "Sarcasm"
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
...to complete GTA3, VC, SA, and GTAIV (with DLC) 100%. Story modes, hidden packages, unique jumps, taxi rides, you name it *.
He can't leave the mental institution they place him in until he beats those games.
*Gameshark or other cheats no allowed
I remember a time when Jack Thompson angered me for his ignorance, but now, its better than daytime soap opera drama! He's like the Al Sharpton of video game violence or something, and at this point no one is taking him seriously anyway. I love a good Jack Thompson headline these days, makes me feel better about myself.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
So how long until Jack's career is reduced to fetish porn to support his drug addiction?
This is just funny. I think "If you think that ANYONE has the right to harrass and intimidate people, for any reason, you are a complete fuckwad" is a wonderfully self-referential phrase that should not soon be forgotten.
I believe he was sending automated mailing-list type emails although he was asked to stop. This would be different than constructing multiple emails for a single recipient; furthermore, you are more likely to run into allegations of harassment rather than prosecution by AG using CAN-SPAM. Just like with excessive calling, if such actions become harassing, a restraining order can be awarded.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Email has become a victim of its (or is it it's) own success. Now we are moving to invite only systems like IM. What we really need is a replacement electronic messaging platform with some form of "postage". I for one suggest teaming up with Stanford and get folding@home a form of postage. Sender must complete 1 work unit for every message sent to a non-registered recipient (a.k.a 1 WU = 1 unsolicited message.)
In addition the government should provide each citizen an official goverment mailbox for non-critical information [INFO] level messages that are from goverment to citizens. Attached to that mailbox is your current legal residence location for automatic filtering and routing Senator and House member email, never forgetting who your represenatives are!
Anyone wanna help put a demo together?
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Uh, dude, political and religious speech is specifically exempted in the law.
We're not talking about your feelings about the matter, we're talking about facts.
That's because you followed the Gourd instead of the Shoe!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
As with anything in terms of the Constitution and your rights, it isn't a black and white, set in stone thing. You have the right to petition the government, of that there is no question. However that doesn't mean you have the right to be a pain in the ass. You cannot, for example, follow your representative around all day long and scream at them. You aren't allowed to harass them any more than you are allowed to harass me.
So this is the kind of thing where you enter a gray area. Clearly you are allowed to send the government e-mails, letters, etc telling them your point of view. However there are lines you can cross where it again just becomes harassment. If you were to go and send your representative the same letter hundreds of times a day just to flood their office with mail, that might just be harassment. Same sort of thing if you got a group to call in all the tiem and try to tie up their phone lines so nobody else could reach them.
I'm not saying they are necessarily right in this case, I'd have to know more about it and then my opinion doesn't really matter, the court's does, but just because he's contacting his representatives doesn't mean any and everything is ok. You have a right to contact them and tell them what you believe, how you want them to vote and so on. You don't have a right to try and flood them with your point of view to try and drown everyone else out.
"I supported your bill but because of the harassment will not again". Why is this senator publicly letting personal affairs affect legislation? I hope he is never re-elected.
Truly, there is never a time to quote Leia. Not even on Slashdot. Truly.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Next to him, I appear to be sane. I can always point to the fact that Jack Thompson hasn't been committed yet when they come to take me away!
But the "widely accepted definition" isn't the one that's relevant to this discussion. The Senator threatened to invoke the CAN-SPAM Act, which means that definition is the relevant one.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It's not surprising when a pig gets dirty. He's just found a new way to do it is all. I wouldn't be surprised if he started cold calling people on their cell phones next, or sending unsolicited faxes.
The guy has absolutely no clue when it comes to tech issues. None. This whole spam thing is yet another demonstration of that.
Nothing he does is really surprising.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Jack Thomson is actually a hardcore gamer.
::shudder::
Think about it. He's arguably done more to marginalize the anti-videogame movement than anyone else in history. His over-the-top, histrionic antics absolutely destroy any credibility his arguments might have.
I never understood why gamers cheered for his downfall. Imagine if there was someone competent in his place?
Of course! All of those completely unwanted emails can just be replied to with something along the lines of "remove" in the subject line.
It completely works, and won't fulfill the sole purpose of confirming that your email address is valid and active.
I've been doing this with every spam message I receive. On a completely unrelated note, I think spam is getting worse nowadays. But no worries, I set up an auto-reply to send a kind response to each one of them, requesting my removal. But I'd swear, I think spam volume is going up exponentially since I started doing that. Strange...
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
This episode serves the Utah Senate right. It was their bright idea to take up his bill, despite the fact that it's chief proponent is a 100% Pure, Unadulterated, Nutcase.
SirWired
As much as I dislike Thompson, it's already well accepted that we have the same right to e-mail legislature as we do to write them letters. I remember there was a lawsuit over a similar issue (in California I think) where someone in government was getting a ton of emails about a pending bill, and they set up a filter to delete them as they came in.
'I asked you before to remove me from your mailing list. I supported your bill but because of the harassment will not again..'
That's not a good reason to NOT support a bill. That's kinda childish.
I've known a few people that were complete and utter TOOLS, but had some damn good ideas. Poor presentation shouldn't affect his judgment, the CONTENTS of the bill should.
For those who don't get it: the set of integers isn't larger than the set of natural numbers. You can define a mapping function which creates a 1:1 mapping between the set of all natural numbers and the set of all integers. (f(x) = x/2 for all even (x), f(x) = -((x-1)/2) for all odd x). Since there's a 1:1 relationship between the elements of the two sets which covers all the elements of both sets, the sets are the same size.
By way of contrast, the set of all real numbers is larger than the set of natural numbers. You can't map the set of natural numbers onto the set of real numbers because the set has both infinitely large range and infinitely small granularity. Both sets are infinite, but one's bigger than the other.
Bow-ties are cool.