Jack Thompson vs. Entertainment Consumers Association

Let's see if I have it right -- Hollywood sends movies around the world that broadcast the message of freedom so loudly that it brought down the Berlin Wall and caused the Soviet Union to collapse. Here at home the power of media is very weak. Even seeing thousands and thousands of murders at an early age will not cause a child to be more disposed to violence. The most brutal misogynistic sexual violence never causes violent crime against women. Do not attempt to maintain both of these concepts in your mind simultaneously. It could damage your brain.

Re: Jack Thompson vs. Entertainment Consumers Association

Postby admin » Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:57 pm

A Modest Video Game Proposal

[posted on 10th October 2005] [source: Advanced Media Network]

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Golden Rule
This writer has been saying for seven years that violent video games can be "murder simulators" that incite as well as train some obsessive teen players to be violent.

I've been on 60 Minutes and in Reader's Digest this year explaining how an Alabama teen, with no criminal record, shot two policemen and a dispatcher in their heads and fled in a police car -- a scenario he rehearsed for hundreds of hours on Take-Two/Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto video games.

I have sat with boys in jail cells, their lives over because of murder convictions, after they, with no history of violence, have killed innocents while in a dreamlike state. Said one cop who investigated such a murder in Grand Rapids, Michigan: "The killing was like an extension of the game."

The video game industry, through its lawyers, its spokesmen, and its head lobbyist, Doug Lowenstein, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, all say it is utter nonsense to suggest that what is dumped into a kid's head hour after hour, day after day, year after year, could possibly have behavioral consequences. Cigarette ads can persuade kids to smoke, but interactive simulators in which these same kids punch, hack, bludgeon, and maim affect not a wit their attitudes and behaviors, notwithstanding the findings of the American Psychological Association, published in August 2005.

The video game industry says Sticks and stones can break my bones, but games can never hurt me. Fine. I have a modest proposal for the video game industry. I'll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's chairman, Paul Eibeler -- a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America -- if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:

Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favored ways of killing is with a bat. The opening scene, before the interactive game play begins, is the Los Angeles courtroom in which the killer is sentenced "only" to life in prison after the judge and the jury have heard experts explain the connection between the game and the murder.

Osaki Kim (O.K.) exits the courtroom swearing revenge upon the video game industry whom he is convinced contributed to his son's murder. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" he says. And boy, is O.K. not kidding.

O.K. is provided in his virtual reality playpen a panoply of weapons: machetes, Uzis, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles, Molotov cocktails, you name it. Even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats.

O.K. first hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son's killer trained. O.K. gets "justice" by taking out this female CEO, whose name is Paula Eibel, along with her husband and kids. "An eye for an eye," says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims, just as you do on the decapitated cops in the real video game Postal2.

O.K. then works his way, methodically back to LA by car, but on his way makes a stop at the Philadelphia law firm of Blank, Stare and goes floor by floor to wipe out the lawyers who protect Take This in its wrongful death law suits. "So sue me" O.K. spits, with singer Jackson Brown's 1980's hit Lawyers in Love blaring.

With the FBI now after him, O.K. keeps moving westward, shooting up high-tech video arcades called GameWerks. "Game over," O.K. laughs.

Of course, O.K. makes the obligatory runs to virtual versions of brick and mortar retailers Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Wal-Mart to steal supplies and bludgeon store managers and cash register clerks. "You should have checked kids' IDs!"

O.K. pushes on to Los Angeles. He must get there by May 10, 2006. That is the beginning of "E3" -- the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- the Super Bowl of the video game industry. O.K. must get to E3 to massacre all the video game industry execs with one final, monstrously delicious rampage.

How about it, video game industry? I've got the check and you've got the tech. It's all a fantasy, right? No harm can come from such a game, right? Go ahead, video game moguls. Target yourselves as you target others. I dare you.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36119
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Jack Thompson vs. Entertainment Consumers Association

Postby admin » Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:57 pm

The Warriors to be Released by Take Two

[posted on 25th August 2005] [source: Gamepolitics]

Patricia Vance
President
Entertainment Software Rating Board
317 Madison Avenue, 22nd Floor
New York, NY 10017 Fax: 212-759-2223

Re: The Warriors to be Released by Take-Two/Rockstar October 12, 2005

Dear Ms. Vance:

As you know, the ESRB’s Ad Review Council (ARC), in accordance with its rules, has just required game developer Atlus U.S.A. to yank the ad trailer for its new game Samurai Western from the public domain because of the gore contained in the trailer. Your own ESRB/ARC guideline is this: "No advertisement should contain any content that is likely to cause serious or widespread offense to the average consumer." You can read all about it at www.gamepolitics.com.

Well, the ESRB needs to be consistent, Ms. Vance. Currently, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., is running incredibly violent trailers for its October 12-release game The Warriors that are clearly violative of the above-noted ESRB/ARC rule. I have sent you the trailers. The trailers reflect a game that eclipses the violence level even of Take-Two/Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto games.

Why the discrepancy, the double standard, Ms. Vance, when it comes to Take-Two Interactive? Well, well, well. It turns out that Take-Two, of course, is a “Member” of your sister organization, the Entertainment Software Association whose President, Doug Lowenstein, throws money at politicians who get out of line on the video game issue. The money he throws at them comes from ESA “Members.” The “Members,” which include Sony and Microsoft, pay ESA and Doug Lowenstein to throw their weight and their money around. It is a scheme as old as the payment of a bag of silver to Judas Iscariot, only the ones being betrayed here are children. Jesus said, by the way: “If any of you should cause one of these little ones to stumble, then it would be better for you that a millstone be tied around your neck and that you be cast into the sea.”

Atlus U.S.A. is not a “Member” of the ESA and thus does not have “the juice” that Take-Two has, despite Take-Two/Rockstar’s having been, in the last several weeks, nailed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for $8.75 million for “fraudulent accounting practices” and by Senator Clinton, by the US House of Representatives, and by others, including the undersigned, for illegally placing sex scenes in GTA: SA and then lying about it.

Exactly what, Ms. Vance, does Take-Two’s CEO Paul Eibler, who is #43 in Bernie Golberg’s 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, have to do for the ESRB, finally, to do its job? Does he have to personally walk into a fifth-grade classroom and hand out copies of The Warriors to children, or does pushing Bully and The Warriors to children through corporate surrogates and pimps suffice?

Do your job, Ms. Vance. Tell Take-Two to pull down its public domain trailers for The Warriors. They violate your ESRB/ARC rules.

Oh, and the trailers prove the game has to be rated “AO,” not “M.” Be careful, Ms. Vance. I and others are monitoring you at a point in time that the ESRB is hanging onto its existence by a frayed controller wire.

Regards, Jack Thompson

Copy: New York Attorney General Spitzer
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36119
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Jack Thompson vs. Entertainment Consumers Association

Postby admin » Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:57 pm

US Senator Charles Schumer
US Senators Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum
Congressman Upton
Assemblyman Leland Yee
Many Others
Debate, Doug, Debate

[posted on 19th August 2005] [source: Gamepolitics]

John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law
1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366

August 19, 2005

Doug Lowenstein
President
Entertainment Software Association
1211 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 600
Washington, D.C. 20036 Via Fax to 202-223-2401

Re: Debate, Doug, Debate

Dear Mr. Lowenstein:

I watched The People vs. Larry Flynt last night, and it reminded me of this: If Larry Flynt can handle debating Jerry Falwell, you can certainly handle debating me.

The two of them, several years ago did debate one another, and the nation was the richer for it. Don’t be afraid of the First Amendment, Doug. It works.

Regards, Jack Thompson
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36119
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Jack Thompson vs. Entertainment Consumers Association

Postby admin » Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:58 pm

Leisure Suit Larry And God Of War

[posted on 6th August 2005] [source: Gamepolitcs]

John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law
1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366
jackpeace@comcast.net
August 6, 2005

Patricia Vance
President
Entertainment Software Rating Board
317 Madison Avenue, 22nd Floor
New York, NY 10017 Fax: 212-759-2223

Re: Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude and God of War

Dear Ms. Vance:

Thanks to some honorable people in the video game industry and also in the gaming community, it appears to me, and to them, and I am rather certain it will appear to Members of Congress, that the above two video games should be re-rated “AO” rather than their present “M.”

Of course, you know why.

Please put on the fast track a reassessment of these two games, along with Killer 7, as I believe a failure to do so will make things even more difficult for the ESRB and the video game industry with the coming governmental inquiries into whether the ratings system is broken, as Senator Clinton has indicated.

Sincerely, Jack Thompson

Copies: Senator Clinton, Senator Lieberman, Senator Brownback, Senator Santorum
Assemblyman Yee
Federal Trade Commission
Congressman Upton
Class action counsel
Media
Others
Killer 7
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36119
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Jack Thompson vs. Entertainment Consumers Association

Postby admin » Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:59 pm

[posted on 5th August 2005] [source: Gamepolitics]

August 5, 2005
Patricia Vance
ESRB
317 Madison Avenue, 22nd Floor
New York, NY 10017 Fax: 212-759-2223

Re: Killer 7

Dear Ms. Vance:

I have just learned facts that indicate the above violent game most likely deserves an “AO” rating rather than the “M” rating which your ESRB has given it.

As you may or may not know, more than forty states have “sexual material harmful to minors” statutes which prohibit the sale of sexually explicit material to anyone under 18 years of age. This hiatus between the “M” (age 17) rating and the statutory criminal standard (age 18) has always posed significant peril to the industry through games that contain sexual material, and it appears that those pigeons may come home to roost in Killer 7. “Hot Coffee” is a fairly recent example of the peril. As to Killer 7, please note:

The following is found in a review of Killer 7 by Matt Casamassina at http://cube.ign.com/articles/630/630908p1.html which contains the following observations at this pro-violent game Internet site:

“…profanity, sex and bloodshed are commonplace… We can't stress it enough: kids should not play Killer 7. Not just because there's an M on the box, but because for once that M really means something. There's much more than blood and guts in the game. Everything from the design of puzzles to the subject matter is designed for older players and it's really that simple…. And there are cinematics that feature full-blown sex sequences…. Killer 7's adult themes, which encapsulate extremely violent, profane and sexual situations, as well as a wide range of issues from terrorism to the sale of children, make the M on the box really mean something.”

Ms. Vance, this game was released on July 7, 2005. It may be that the stir caused by the “Hot Coffee” in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas distracted all of our attention from Killer 7.

There is no question in my mind that a video game containing “full-blown sex sequences” cannot be rated anything other than “AO” rather than “M.” The reviewer above in fact says that this game’s “M” actually means something, and he says it twice for emphasis.

There are those who would say that people such as I are “prudes” who have no problem with violence but get uptight about sexual content in games. That is a disingenuous charge, and you know why. I have been on national television programs, as early as the week before Columbine, complaining about 13-year-olds being enabled by the ESRB to violent “M” games. But it is your sister organization, the Entertainment Software Association, that is in court right this second in Illinois trying to prevent the extension of the “sex” argument to the “violence” argument. It is your industry, then, that thinks violence is okay for kids but that sex, given state laws already on the books, is not okay. Well, the Killer 7 game underscores the fact that your organization and the industry it fronts for appear to try to get away with anything that is harmful to kids, whether already illegal or not.

What it also means is that if jurors in a criminal prosecution were asked whether Killer 7 contains “sexual material harmful to minors” in violation of statutory standards, then, based upon the above enthusiastic review at IGN.com, the answer to that question would probably be “yes.”

That answer would put the Entertainment Software Rating Board, in my opinion, in the middle of a criminal conspiracy to distribute sexual material harmful to minors in violation of criminal statutes. This is not a situation in which the ESRB has been blind-sided by hidden or embedded content, Ms. Vance. You all have known that the “full-blown sex sequences” are patently present in the game, yet you chose to put an “M” rather than an “AO” rating on it. Big mistake.

If I were you, Ms. Vance, I would immediately ask the makers of this game, and all retailers, to pull it from store shelves. If you don’t, expect for others to use this latest scandal, which I am hereby officially kicking off, to call for a dismantling of the ESRB.

The fox has guarded the chickens long enough. Killer 7 seems to prove it.

Sincerely, Jack Thompson

Copies: All sorts of folks
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36119
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Jack Thompson vs. Entertainment Consumers Association

Postby admin » Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:59 pm

Distribution Of Sexual Material Harmful To Minors

[posted on 24th July 2005] [source: Gamepolitics]

John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law
1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366
jackpeace@comcast.net

July 24, 2005

The Honorable Leland Y. Yee
Speaker Pro Tempore
California State Assembly
State Capitol Sacramento, California Fax: (916) 319-2112

Re: Distribution of Sexual Material Harmful to Minors by the Video Game Industry

Dear Speaker Yee:

I was privileged to be involved in the successful effort, as were you, to compel the ESRB to finally do its job regarding Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I have information for you, however, about a matter that may be an even worse abuse by the video game industry.

The Sims video game franchise is the most popular in history. These games are rated “T” for teen, which means they are supposedly appropriate for kids 13 and over. However, this game is a prime example of the “ratings creep” about which Dr. Kimberly Thompson of Harvard University has written. There is some rather remarkable sexual content in the Sims games which I and others believe would warrant an “M” rating as to the content that is patently in them.

Proof that parents should be concerned as to what is the sexual content in this supposedly “T” game is that one site on the Internet is offering parents a means to shield their kids from the known sexual content of the Sims games. But this gets worse.

It turns out that Electronic Arts, the publisher of all the Sims games, has allowed the player, with a simple cheat code that even the New York Times is distributing, to remove a “censor flag” in the game in order to make the players nude, including the Sims children. A similar cheat code allowed players to access the “Hot Coffee” content of GTA: SA. The nudity is not put into the game. It is already there, put there by EA to be accessed by all. But this gets worse.

Electronic Arts has encouraged the “mod community,” by comments of the game’s creator and by a failure to protect its copyrighted code in the game, to create “skins” for the nude figures that are explicit in nature as they depict genitalia, with some specific mods appealing to “fetishists” as well. The unlocked nudity dovetails nicely into this modding.

These mods are offered at all sorts of “porn” sites on the Internet, and they use the Sims name. EA is fully aware of this and is doing nothing about it. If Electronic Arts wanted this activity stopped, I believe they could shut it down in a New York minute. However, as you and I both know, this industry, including EA, has benefited financially from such collaborations with the “mod” industry. That is what is occurring here, and the damning admissions of the game’s creator, Will Wright, and his enthusiasms for “mods” prove it.

I should like to encourage you to conduct hearings on the full breadth of the scandal within the video game industry, which now includes collaborating with those who are putting sexually explicit material into the hands of children by making an “M” game that is labeled a “T,” then facilitating the unlocking of nudes in the game, and then looking the other way when others are apparently using their copyrighted code to modify the nudes into images that appeal to the prurient interest.

This is not artistic license, in my opinion. It is conspiracy to violate the law at the expense of vulnerable children, behind their parents’ backs.

The ESRB has always been a joke. Now ESRB is a cruel joke.

Regards, Jack Thompson
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36119
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Jack Thompson vs. Entertainment Consumers Association

Postby admin » Thu Jun 18, 2015 10:00 pm

FTC Investigation Of Take Two Interactive

[posted 24th July 2005] [source: Gamepolitics]

John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law
1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366
jackpeace@comcast.net

July 24, 2005

The Honorable Fred Upton
U.S. House of Representatives
Kalamazoo District Office
157 South Kalamazoo Mall
Suite 180
Kalamazoo, MI 49007 Fax: (269) 385-2888

and

Washington D.C. Office
2183 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515 Fax: (202) 225-4986

Re: FTC Investigation of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.

Dear Congressman Upton:

I wish to thank you for your call that the FTC investigate Take-Two Interactive in the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas “Hot Coffee” scandal, specifically as to whether Take-Two lied.

I happen to have been in the middle of that scandal. Further, the current issue of Reader’s Digest (August) features an original article about our wrongful death lawsuit in Alabama arising out of the Grand Theft Auto games. Take Two’s alleged responsibility for the deaths of two officers and a police dispatcher was also recently aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

There is a lot I could tell your staff about Take-Two, including the recent $8.75 million fine Take-Two had to pay for fraudulent accounting practices and other matters. The “Hot Coffee” mod matter is just the tip of the iceberg. This is an industry totally out of control.

Please feel free to have your staff contact me at their earliest convenience.

Regards, Jack Thompson
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36119
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Jack Thompson vs. Entertainment Consumers Association

Postby admin » Thu Jun 18, 2015 10:00 pm

To Senator Clinton And Senator Lieberman II

[posted on 23th July, 2005] [source: forwarded to us]

John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law
1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366
jackpeace@comcast.net

July 23, 2005

The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. Via e-mail

The Honorable Joseph Lieberman
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. Via e-mail

Dear Senator Clinton and Senator Lieberman:

I have had a number of video gamers threaten to kill me in the last few days in the aftermath of the success against Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. This is noteworthy in a number of regards:

1. The people threatening to kill me so are doing so in the name of the First Amendment and “freedom of expression”—not mine, of course, just theirs. Don’t you love it?

2. The use of death threats in retaliation for my participation in the public square serves to prove, rather convincingly, that the violent video games are having the attitudinal effect that psychologists such as Dr. David Walsh and others who have testified before Congress say they have.

3. None of the “video game media” will report that the gamers are threatening to kill me, although I have asked them to report this phenomenon, as it reveals the validity of the above two points.


I would appreciate any help your respective offices could give me in persuading the FBI to act in response to these threats. I don’t think anyone should have to put up with such dangerous nonsense.

Regards, Jack Thompson
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36119
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Jack Thompson vs. Entertainment Consumers Association

Postby admin » Thu Jun 18, 2015 10:01 pm

Sims 2 And Porn

[posted on 23th July, 2005] [source: forwarded to us]

John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law
1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366
jackpeace@comcast.net

July 23, 2005

Steve Bené, Attorney
VP, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary
Electronic Arts Inc.
209 Redwood Shores Parkway
Redwood City, CA 94065 fax: 650-628-1422 email: copyright@ea.com

Re: The Sims 2 and Porn

Dear Mr. Bene:

Mods are readily available via the Internet to turn the characters in your company’s The Sims 2 into nudes with exposed genitalia. This includes the children in the game. EA has made this modding easy by making it readily possible to remove “the blur” from the genital areas. Even the New York Times’ web site is providing this cheat code to remove the blur.

Adult “porn sites” are featuring, via free downloads, the mods that allow the consumer to customize the appearance of the labia, nipples, pubic hair, and penises. As you know, The Sims 2 already features reproductive activities in this “T” rated game.

Such modding is made more likely by public statements by the game’s creator, Will Wright, that he supports the modding of the game.

To the extent that your company does absolutely nothing to crack down on this apparent infringement upon EA’s copyrighted material, which is in possible violation of its various software agreements and warnings, then EA collaborates, in every sense of the word, with the modders to put this material into the hands of consumers, many of whom are children, given the inviting “T” rating on the game.

I urgently ask Electronic Arts to stop this modding activity by appropriate means, otherwise the “T” rating given the game by ESRB means, for all practical purposes, nothing and breaches trust with parents.

Regards, Jack Thompson

Copies: Media

U.S. Senators Clinton, Lieberman, Brownback, Santorum
California Assemblyman Leland Yee
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36119
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Jack Thompson vs. Entertainment Consumers Association

Postby admin » Thu Jun 18, 2015 10:01 pm

To Senator Clinton And Senator Lieberman I

[posted on 23th July 2005] [source: Gamepolitics]

John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law
1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366
jackpeace@comcast.net
July 23, 2005

The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. Via e-mail

The Honorable Joseph Lieberman
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. Via e-mail

Dear Senator Clinton and Senator Lieberman:

I have had a number of video gamers threaten to kill me in the last few days in the aftermath of the success against Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. This is noteworthy in a number of regards:

1. The people threatening to kill me so are doing so in the name of the First Amendment and “freedom of expression”—not mine, of course, just theirs. Don’t you love it?

2. The use of death threats in retaliation for my participation in the public square serves to prove, rather convincingly, that the violent video games are having the attitudinal effect that psychologists such as Dr. David Walsh and others who have testified before Congress say they have.

3. None of the “video game media” will report that the gamers are threatening to kill me, although I have asked them to report this phenomenon, as it reveals the validity of the above two points.

I would appreciate any help your respective offices could give me in persuading the FBI to act in response to these threats. I don’t think anyone should have to put up with such dangerous nonsense.

Regards, Jack Thompson
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36119
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

PreviousNext

Return to Media Violence

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest