Well, I think its more like the family of the apparent abuser would like to vindicate the apparent abuser, and so is looking to establish an explanation for the kid snapping that doesn't involve the abuse that various witnesses have recounted.
From the evidence presented in regards to this case, it sounds like (whether while playing video games or not), had the Posey called 911 and yelled "stop touching me mommy", and the police came and dragged the stepmother off (and the father, to boot), things might have ended up better for everyone involved (including the father and stepmother), and justice might have been done, and at least some of the tragedy in the family avoided.
That is what gets me. If everybody thinks that parents should be responsible for policing what games their kids buy and play why is it wrong to require that some games can not be purchased by children?
The precise reason that parents must be involved, IMO, is that what is appropriate depends on the individual and their own course of development, not on rules that can be validly applied universally to all people based on age.
So, yes, that parents should be involved makes sense without the idea that some games should be universally prohibited to children.
I didn't say that all "blame the parents" reactions are over-simplified. I just meant in cases like these. Obviously in cases where the parents were abusive and neglectful you damn well can blame them.
But what I'm saying is that, from the evidence, it seems that "cases like this" and "cases where the parents were abusive" are the same category. That, IOW, this is a case where blaming the parents seems quite appropriate, though what they should be blamed for has nothing to do with the game.
But just allowing a kid to play a violent video game is not the problem in of itself, as you seemed to qualify at the end.
I'd go farther, and say, in this case, its not "not the problem in and of itself", but its "not even related to the problem".
Although it seems logical to those of us with rational minds that: A) The game has a 17+ Rating, you must be 17 to purchase and B) The kid was NOT 17 that C) The kid's guardians are at fault for providing him the game.
Too believe that is to accept the premise that the videogame is the reason for the killing.
I think that the public facts in this case do not provide a strong reason to believe that, and in fact, provide a strong reason to believe that, inasmuch as forces external to the killer are too blame, physical and sexual abuse by the father and stepmother are to blame, and indeed that the motive for bringing the suit with the videogame charges is (as well as to grab Jack Thompson some headlines, and him and his clients fat stacks of cash) to serve the interest of some members of the victims' families in finding something other than the abuse to blame the killers break on.
The only difference I see between typical gun cases and video game cases is the money behind the gun cases coming from the pro-Second Ammendment folks.
Well, I see a fairly big difference in that typically, in the gun cases, it is pretty clear that the gun actually was in some way involved in the wrongdoing, if only as a replaceable instrumentality, whereas in the video game cases the game is almost never unambiguously directly involved, and often there is no clear evidence that it is even indirectly involved.
Not that there's a shred of validity to this particular suit, but the idea behind Big Numbers(TM) in civil suits is primarily to punish the offender with a major financial loss, not necessarily to imply that a dead person is worth $X.
There are two main types of damages. The idea of actual damages is precisely to recompense the person suing for the value they lost as a result of wrongdoing. The idea of punitive damages is to punish the wrongdoer to serve as a deterrent, but even the level of punitive damages is generally limited by reference to the actual damages (though, IIRC, the Supreme Court has found some multiples clearly too high, and some acceptable, but not drawn a bright-line rule that "above this is bad, below is okay".)
Actually, Thompson pretty much claims that this is the case, except he didn't see it on the news, he was called by the prosecutor who handled the juvenile action against Posey, and asked to bring a lawsuit. See, for instance, here.
Insofar as they are supposed to do that, they act in response to complaints. Has anyone filed a complaint?
Cases like this are almost barretry.
"Barratry", and that's often an issue for someone other than the Bar (for instance, in California its a matter of criminal law.) Actually, from the descriptions I've seen, this appears quite likely to be barratry in the "ambulance chasing" sense, as well as possibly in the "repeated harrasment" sense.
Lawyer picks a stupidly high number, files suit, hopes the defendant will settle before a judgement because judges these days seem to lack any real ability to reason (see McDonalds hot coffee case for a great example).
The McDonald's case is actually a very good example of a case people whining about unreasonable results lie about and distort a lot to make their case.
To this, I think that Rockstar should counter sue the parents for parental negligence in allowing their 14 year-old son play a game that is rated M for Mature (17+ years of age).
Since his parents are 2 of the 3 people he killed, suing them is probably unproductive.
Anyhow, doing so would validate that the game was the problem in the first place, rather than the rather intense abuse that the shooter claimed and various witnesses also testified to.
Suits like this can only be compared to people suing Gun Companies, Cigarette and Car Manufacturers for deaths caused by their products.
I don't think that's a fair comparison. In this case, there isn't even a good case that the game was even involved in the deaths.
I think the "blame the parents" reaction is also a bit over-simplified.
I dunno. The number of people who testify to fairly extreme physical and sexual abuse by the parents seems to suggest that, in this case, blame the parents isn't a stretch at all.
OTOH, blaming the parents for letting him play an M-rated game too much does seem to be missing the point entirely.
What is a 14 year old doing playing a game that is clearly rated for adults? Maybe the parents should have been regulating their child rather than relying on the industry to do it for them.
What are Slashdot users doing buying into the idea that the video game is involved at all? I mean, the facts are these:
1) Several friends and family members testify to personal knowledge of severe physical abuse by the parents, 2) A headline seeking prosecutor (not the victims family members who ended up filing the lawsuit) asked well-known headline seeking anti-game crusader to pursue the lawsuit, and he followed up by soliciting family members to sign on to the suit, and 3) suddently, the debate is "is it the game makers fault" or "is it the fault of the parents for letting him play the game", but in any case, its taken for granted that its his obsession with the game that's to blame for him killing his parents, not the abuse by his parents that's to blame both for his obsession with playing the game and the fact that he ultimately snapped and killed them.
As far as I can tell, its just as likely that the game was a coping mechanism that delayed his snapping as it was anything that encouraged it.
The current batch of video games are nothing but an unspoken "plan" to desensitize youth to violence and killing with the hopes of creating better soldiers for the coming clash of the civilizations.
How about THE PARENTS? If you are going to have a child; you have to take responsibility for there actions. If you mistreat or neglect your them and he/she decides to shoot several of there classmates; you need to take responsibility for some or all of there actions. The courts need to start throwing some of these people in jail and see through the obvious smoke screens that these people are using to divert blame from themselves.
Somehow, I think that throwing the parents in jail would be unproductive in this case.
Agreed, but the general pattern of attempting to blame external influences for aberrant behavior represents a disturbing and increasing trend:
1. Establish that the perpetrator is, in fact, a victim.
If they were trying to do that, they wouldn't be suing the perpetrator along with the videogame companies.
Why not sue whoever was letting a 14 year old play a rated M game for hours on end?
Probably because the ones most likely responsible for that (his father and stepmother) are among the people he killed; that's what they are suing him and the game companies for. I wish there was a link somewhere to the actual complaint, because the description in the article sounds ludicrous (that the companies "should have foreseen" the bad result doesn't even head in the direction of supporting a claim of "civil conspiracy", which requires the remote defendants [here, the game companies] to have a common plan or design with the immediate tortfeasor [here, the shooter].)
"Ahead of its time" might be one take on this as well. It'll be interesting to see when the time is right.
When cell phones have nuclear power cells that last for years without recharging, and built in projectors so that you can see video at a decent size (or wire up to your optic nerve for the same result.)
Alternatively, when prolonged cold weather causes Satan's pipes to burst.
Its as much zero gravity as any zero gravity in space, which is really just the same kind of free fall. Its not like you aren't, wherever you are, subject to the gravity of every object in the universe. So its no more an illusion of zero gravity inside the aircraft than zero gravity in space is an illusion.
Technically, all of your clones would have to die for you to remove yourself from the gene pool..
I don't see how that's any more true than saying all of your relatives with whom you have any shared genetic material have to die for you to remove yourself from the gene pool.
Yes, they'd start fighting wars over access to water instead of oil.
Water (both freshwater for agriculture, drinking, etc. and access to navigable water for trade) has been a vital resource over which wars are fought longer than oil (and, like oil, its been a big factor motivating or complicating Middle East conflicts, including providing a significant part of the motivation for Iraq's wars with Iran and Kuwait, and a complicating factor in resolving the Israel/Palestine problem.)
IIRC, the stock sold in the IPO has voting rights, just at 1/10th the voting power per share of the series of stock held by the founders and, again IIRC, used for internal incentives.
So? That Congress has non-approval oversight authority has never been in dispute.
Link:
That's not a usable link, and I can't find the language you quote in any version of EMSA online, or in FISA; the language you quote seems to be a version of the provision in FISA discussing issuing the kind of order often referred to in discussion of FISA as a "FISA warrant" (its not referred to in FISA as a warrant, the usage is by analogy to search warrants in the usual criminal context), not a requirement for approval of what is referred to as "warrantless surveillance" when discussing FISA or EMSA, that is, the kind of surveillance authorized by 50 USC 1802, or the various new provisions of EMSA pertaining to armed attacks on US territory, terrorist attacks on the United States, or imminent threats of attacks without any court order whatsoever.
So what you're saying, in effect, is that it's acceptable according to the Constitution and the intent of the founders for the Federal statutes to allow the government, or individuals acting on behalf of the government, to be allowed to break the previous Federal statutes after they have been broken? And that this is the case even if it is clearly to the detriment of the people?
No, I'm saying that according to the Constitution and the intent of the founding fathers, the avenue of recourse to prevent that is the democratic accountability of legislators (and, outside of the Constitution but within the conception of the founding fathers, the ultima ratio of replacing a failed government through force), not the ex post facto clause being read to prevent retroactive loosening of criminal statutes.
Any kind of misconduct and illegal acts can be undertaken by the Federal government without restrictions and without any redress on behalf of the people if this is the case.
Look, even if the ex post facto clause did what you wanted, it wouldn't stop that from being just as true with regard to redress through criminal prosecution since (1) criminal prosecution is never mandatory even if a criminal law exists, it is in the discretion of the executive, and (2) the executive also has an unrestricted power to pardon offenses against the United States, and protect them forever from prosecution, even if they are contrary to the criminal law.
After all, the only way a law matters to a criminal is that it's enforced and there is a penalty for its breakage.
Criminal process isn't the only sanction available against the top decisionmakers of the executive branch; at any rate, criminal process isn't going to be an effective constraint on the President or those acting with his knowledge and support in most cases, for the reasons discussed above, however the ex post facto clause is interpreted.
So, effectively, the Constitution of the United States, as written and as the writers of it intended, does not limit the power of the government against the people so long as that government can change the laws or the Constitution itself to protect the government employees _after_ the fact?
Well, clearly so in terms of changes to the Constitution, since the Constitution at the time any action is contemplated places a firm line determining the authority, or lack thereof, of the government to take action. The degree of retrospective effect of other laws will vary from case to case, both by the framing of the law and other factors. But, yes, a law that, on its face, loosens a criminal prohibition retrospectively will pretty certainly be given that effect in any criminal case where someone was charged with breaking the old law, though the fact that a criminal law had existed prohibiting the conduct at the time it was committed might be recognized as having some impact in other circumstances.
That's some seriously shaky ground there. I'm not a lawyer. From the authority with which you're responding, it seems you might be.
A law student with an undergraduate degree in Political Science.
Please tell me that's not the case. If it starts becoming the view of lawyers that the Federal government is not at all accountable to the people, it's time for a revolution.
The Federal government is certainly accountable to the people. The mechanism by which it is held accountable is not, principally, the application of the criminal process against top decision-makers (and, where such process is applicable, the ex post facto clause applies to process against those decisionmakers exactly the same as against everyone else: it prevents changes to the definition and punishment of crimes that are to the detriment of the defendant from being applied retrospectively, not those which benefit the defendant.)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I think its more like the family of the apparent abuser would like to vindicate the apparent abuser, and so is looking to establish an explanation for the kid snapping that doesn't involve the abuse that various witnesses have recounted.
From the evidence presented in regards to this case, it sounds like (whether while playing video games or not), had the Posey called 911 and yelled "stop touching me mommy", and the police came and dragged the stepmother off (and the father, to boot), things might have ended up better for everyone involved (including the father and stepmother), and justice might have been done, and at least some of the tragedy in the family avoided.
The precise reason that parents must be involved, IMO, is that what is appropriate depends on the individual and their own course of development, not on rules that can be validly applied universally to all people based on age.
So, yes, that parents should be involved makes sense without the idea that some games should be universally prohibited to children.
But what I'm saying is that, from the evidence, it seems that "cases like this" and "cases where the parents were abusive" are the same category. That, IOW, this is a case where blaming the parents seems quite appropriate, though what they should be blamed for has nothing to do with the game.
I'd go farther, and say, in this case, its not "not the problem in and of itself", but its "not even related to the problem".
Too believe that is to accept the premise that the videogame is the reason for the killing.
I think that the public facts in this case do not provide a strong reason to believe that, and in fact, provide a strong reason to believe that, inasmuch as forces external to the killer are too blame, physical and sexual abuse by the father and stepmother are to blame, and indeed that the motive for bringing the suit with the videogame charges is (as well as to grab Jack Thompson some headlines, and him and his clients fat stacks of cash) to serve the interest of some members of the victims' families in finding something other than the abuse to blame the killers break on.
Well, I see a fairly big difference in that typically, in the gun cases, it is pretty clear that the gun actually was in some way involved in the wrongdoing, if only as a replaceable instrumentality, whereas in the video game cases the game is almost never unambiguously directly involved, and often there is no clear evidence that it is even indirectly involved.
Actually, Thompson pretty much claims that this is the case, except he didn't see it on the news, he was called by the prosecutor who handled the juvenile action against Posey, and asked to bring a lawsuit. See, for instance, here.
Since his parents are 2 of the 3 people he killed, suing them is probably unproductive.
Anyhow, doing so would validate that the game was the problem in the first place, rather than the rather intense abuse that the shooter claimed and various witnesses also testified to.
I don't think that's a fair comparison. In this case, there isn't even a good case that the game was even involved in the deaths.
I dunno. The number of people who testify to fairly extreme physical and sexual abuse by the parents seems to suggest that, in this case, blame the parents isn't a stretch at all.
OTOH, blaming the parents for letting him play an M-rated game too much does seem to be missing the point entirely.
What are Slashdot users doing buying into the idea that the video game is involved at all? I mean, the facts are these:
1) Several friends and family members testify to personal knowledge of severe physical abuse by the parents,
2) A headline seeking prosecutor (not the victims family members who ended up filing the lawsuit) asked well-known headline seeking anti-game crusader to pursue the lawsuit, and he followed up by soliciting family members to sign on to the suit, and
3) suddently, the debate is "is it the game makers fault" or "is it the fault of the parents for letting him play the game", but in any case, its taken for granted that its his obsession with the game that's to blame for him killing his parents, not the abuse by his parents that's to blame both for his obsession with playing the game and the fact that he ultimately snapped and killed them.
As far as I can tell, its just as likely that the game was a coping mechanism that delayed his snapping as it was anything that encouraged it.
When cell phones have nuclear power cells that last for years without recharging, and built in projectors so that you can see video at a decent size (or wire up to your optic nerve for the same result.)
Alternatively, when prolonged cold weather causes Satan's pipes to burst.
The benefits mostly have to do with manned spaceflight, as it allows you to do surgery without returning to gravity if it becomes necessary in space.
IIRC, the stock sold in the IPO has voting rights, just at 1/10th the voting power per share of the series of stock held by the founders and, again IIRC, used for internal incentives.
So? That Congress has non-approval oversight authority has never been in dispute.
That's not a usable link, and I can't find the language you quote in any version of EMSA online, or in FISA; the language you quote seems to be a version of the provision in FISA discussing issuing the kind of order often referred to in discussion of FISA as a "FISA warrant" (its not referred to in FISA as a warrant, the usage is by analogy to search warrants in the usual criminal context), not a requirement for approval of what is referred to as "warrantless surveillance" when discussing FISA or EMSA, that is, the kind of surveillance authorized by 50 USC 1802, or the various new provisions of EMSA pertaining to armed attacks on US territory, terrorist attacks on the United States, or imminent threats of attacks without any court order whatsoever.
No, I'm saying that according to the Constitution and the intent of the founding fathers, the avenue of recourse to prevent that is the democratic accountability of legislators (and, outside of the Constitution but within the conception of the founding fathers, the ultima ratio of replacing a failed government through force), not the ex post facto clause being read to prevent retroactive loosening of criminal statutes.
Look, even if the ex post facto clause did what you wanted, it wouldn't stop that from being just as true with regard to redress through criminal prosecution since (1) criminal prosecution is never mandatory even if a criminal law exists, it is in the discretion of the executive, and (2) the executive also has an unrestricted power to pardon offenses against the United States, and protect them forever from prosecution, even if they are contrary to the criminal law.
Criminal process isn't the only sanction available against the top decisionmakers of the executive branch; at any rate, criminal process isn't going to be an effective constraint on the President or those acting with his knowledge and support in most cases, for the reasons discussed above, however the ex post facto clause is interpreted.
Well, clearly so in terms of changes to the Constitution, since the Constitution at the time any action is contemplated places a firm line determining the authority, or lack thereof, of the government to take action. The degree of retrospective effect of other laws will vary from case to case, both by the framing of the law and other factors. But, yes, a law that, on its face, loosens a criminal prohibition retrospectively will pretty certainly be given that effect in any criminal case where someone was charged with breaking the old law, though the fact that a criminal law had existed prohibiting the conduct at the time it was committed might be recognized as having some impact in other circumstances.
A law student with an undergraduate degree in Political Science.
The Federal government is certainly accountable to the people. The mechanism by which it is held accountable is not, principally, the application of the criminal process against top decision-makers (and, where such process is applicable, the ex post facto clause applies to process against those decisionmakers exactly the same as against everyone else: it prevents changes to the definition and punishment of crimes that are to the detriment of the defendant from being applied retrospectively, not those which benefit the defendant.)