Having failed to convince a Florida judge that Bully is a public nuisance, controversial attorney Jack Thompson has a new tactic in what seems to be a never-ending crusade against the game.
Thompson's latest approach is that the game's boy-kissing scenes are essentially porn, thus making Bully illegal to sell to minors. Although Thompson does not use the P-word, the statute he cites would generally relate to such material.
In a letter sent yesterday to several major retailers, Thompson writes:
"It turns out that the school violence simulation game Bully also contains homosexual activity between the game’s hero, Jimmy Hopkins, and other male students."
"It is my legal opinion that the sale of this game to minors, which is presently occurring at your stores in Florida, violates Florida’s 'Sexual Material Harmful to Minors Statute,' Florida Statute 847.102. Each such sale to a minor constitutes a separate felony."
"Such sales are occurring to children of all ages because of the game’s wholly inappropriate “Teen” rating, as opposed to the 'Mature' rating it deserves..."
GP offers a couple of points here:
First, the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said that pornography is hard to define, "but I know it when I see it." We agree, and we're definitely not seeing it with Bully's silly boy-kissing scenes.
Next, the statute Thompson is referring to is 847.012, and this is what it says (GP has taken the liberty if adding "no" where Bully does not meet the statutory requirement):
"It is unlawful for any person knowingly to sell, rent, or loan for monetary consideration to a minor:
In case you are wondering, kissing doesn't qualify as "sexual conduct" under Florida law. For that definition, click here.
Comments
i kinda used defamation and its meaning (terms) in teh same sentance by accident, so far jacks been useing indirect way to do it without showing a much malice such as what jack has been doing over the past few years.
Bullying(ironic aint it?) folks around with opinions that hes entitled to have while keeping away from comments that would show his criminal intent basicly a hitler tactic to where you throw enough mud some of it will stick and slowly warp others opinions over time.
Sadly this kind of defamation is legal in the sense that thier is no way to prove malice in most cases.
however brer you are incorrect in saying this is not a winnable defamation case as jack let 1 to many comments get absorbed by the media and im sure both GP and destructiod wopul;d love to give the judge a huge helping of all jacks threats,bullshit and general asshattery all ona 6 dvd set in .txt form(the equvilent of 50+ 500 page stacks on his desk)to prove what kind of person he is.
show his tendacies and bullshit ona massive scale and winning a defasmation suit is not far off.
"show his tendacies and bullshit ona massive scale and winning a defasmation suit is not far off."
Defamation suits are not about tendencies, they're about specific statements. And in the case of public figures (which Rockstar and Take-Two certainly are) you can't just prove that the statement was false, or even that it harmed them. You have to prove "actual malice", and the term doesn't have anything to do with how nasty the person defaming the plaintiff was or is. For the specific precedent:
"Factual error, content defamatory of official reputation, or both, are insufficient to warrant an award of damages for false statements unless "actual malice" - knowledge that statements are false or in reckless disregard of the truth -is alleged and proved"
Do you have any idea how hard it is to prove or disprove what someone does or does not know to be true or false at any given time? Hell, it's one of the great questions in Epistemology, let alone in law. 99% of the time in cases of public figures or officials, an affidavit from the defendant saying "Well Gosh y'Honor I really did think this was true" is enough to get the case summarily dismissed by the judge.
If you're confident that there's a strong enough case to be made for a defamation lawsuit, lay out the particulars so as to demonstrate "actual malice" on Thompson's part. Note that I'm not necessarily saying that I don't think Thompson made assertions he knew were false. It's entirely possible (likely even, given his character) that he did. It's important to remember that Law is concerned -primarily- with what can or cannot be proved to a given standard ("beyond a reasonable doubt" or "a preponderance of the evidence", for example), not necessarily with "The Truth".
I'd say everything but the subject line is defensible either as opinion or JBT acting in what he feels is the public good. He's walking a fine line but according to what Brer said earlier he's still within his rights. And will likely stay that way - he's enough of a legal weasel to probably have a solid grasp of what he can get away with saying.
For that matter, I wonder if he's aware of what Brer found, that the subject line alone wouldn't cut it. In which case he knew that he could make reckless acccusations of gay sex that would make great fearmongering material in the title, but then pull enough punches in the body that it sounds nice and wouldn't substantiate a libel claim. I definitely wouldn't put it beyond him to pull that - in which case he wins ten points cleverness, and loses a million for perverting the law and playing on the fears of the uninformed simply to fuel his personal crusades.
Well as I said, in a -few- court cases (specifically in Tort-Happy California) the judge considered a title alone as sufficient cause for a defamation case, but they're very much the exception to the rule. In general even if you have the entire body of a document it's almost impossible to win a defamation suit if you're a public figure. There's a reason Justice Scalia felt the need to comment to a body of reporters that he felt the standard established in NYT v Sullivan was a bad mistake (I have the link to that if anyone really wants to read the transcript. Scalia apparently got into a fight with Al Franken during this event).
@Shaun
The assertion that male-male kissing is immoral or pornographic can be defended as opinion and therefore exempt from defamation. It's a normative/value judgement, not an assertion of fact (normative judgements are -supposed- to be rooted in facts, but they generally aren't). Even "harmful" is vague.
A quick textbook example of the subtle distinction between opinion and a fact-based assertion that may be defamatory:
"I think Jack Thompson's a shitty lawyer." -Opinion
"Jack Thompson is not competent to practice law." -Possibly Defamatory
And yes, there are linguistic and legal differences in the meaning and significance of those two sentences.
im actually a contributor to wikipedias articles,but its mostly video game articles,lol. but what i meant to really say was that JT doesnt care about anybody, he attacked Postal 2 for the ablility to kill gays,BUT he also attacked Janet Reno for the whole closet lesbian thing awhile back,and his current agenda is to ban Bully,and is using the boy-on-boy kissing as a weapon against it,basically he contradicts himself to the point of making himself look insane, just to get what he wants,and he fails everytime
Jack is so DESPERATE for a win (when was his last one?) he's actually making a bad name for himself in the hopes that he can feel good about himself later. It's unbelievably pathetic.
(right?)
*sigh* hey thompson youve probably lawsuited about sign language because of this *sticks out mid finger*
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