Take-Two’s Bully under fire
p2pnet.net News:- Does Take-Two Interactive’s as yet unreleased ‘Bully’ video game violate Florida’s public nuisance laws?
Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Ronald Friedman wants to know following what The Washington Post calls a, “major coup for conservative Miami attorney Jack Thompson, known for his crusades against pornography and obscene rap music, and now the video game industry”.
To be released Tuesday for Sony’s PlayStation 2, Bully, set in a reform school, has so far been labelled T for Teen by the game industry’s ratings board.
Friedman is being asked to grant a partial injunction against sales, says CNET News, and both Thompson and Friedman, “plan to watch the game played in its entirety, no matter how long that takes,” says the story.
You don’t watch it, you play it. So who’s going to be developing the action – Thompson or Friedman?
Be that as it may, shades, almost, of Hot Coffee, the sex-scene simulator stashed in Take-Two’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Thompson claims Take-Two have designed a “Columbine simulator” in Bully.
“Thompson filed the lawsuit a month ago, claiming that the game would violate Florida’s public-nuisance laws, which are more typically used to prosecute environmental polluters,” says the Post’s story. “Besides Take-Two, the suit also names retailers Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and GameStop Corp.”
But ever since a landmark US Supreme Court decision in 1931, “the law has said that injunctions placed on material before publication run afoul of constitutional protections of freedom of speech. In a subsequent 1971 ruling, for instance, the justices warned that such an injunction “constitutes an impermissible restraint on First Amendment rights,” says CNET, adding:
“But in the Florida lawsuit … Jack Thompson is asking for precisely that.”
Also See:
The Washington Post – Florida Judge Wants To See ‘Bully’ in Court, October 12, 2006
reform school – Rockstar Bully, ’schoolyard fisticuffs’, August 10, 2006
CNET News – Florida judge gets tough on ‘Bully’, October 12, 2006
sex-scene simulator – Take-Two Grand Jury summons, June 27, 2006
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October 13th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
A SLAPP–strategic lawsuit against public participation–is designed to take a controversy of public interest and turn it into a private civil lawsuit. This benefits a SLAPP plaintiff by allowing them to silence the opposition by having more money to hire lawyers, rather than competing with the opposition in the public forum.
Many states have laws giving defendants extra protections against SLAPPs. Florida is one of them. I’m hoping Florida law recognizes _Bully_ to be the creative work that addresses social issues of wide public interest it is, and Jack Thompson’s nuisance claim to be the SLAPP that it is.
The essence of anti-SLAPP laws: If you have a problem with speech, you organize boycotts, you write letters, you make phone calls. You can’t just drag the speaker into court and try to outlawyer the speech into silence.
October 14th, 2006 at 1:45 am
Watch the trailers on Gamespot. It’s about a kid who stands up to bullies in a reform school. He protects his friends when they get picked on and fights back when the “bad guys” give him a hard time.
Jack Tompson is just pissed because a) it’s got violence in it and b) it’s Rockstar.
This is the kind of game I’d actually be playing WITH my kid and talking about the issues involved.