April 25, 2007 -
Controversial Miami attorney Jack Thompson has named Gawker Media, parent company of the popular game blog Kotaku, in a lawsuit before a federal court in Florida.Thompson's ire was apparently raised by Kotaku reader comments which the attorney maintains are threatening. He also alleges in the complaint that Kotaku and Gawker declined to remove the posts in question. Those messages were posted in response to Kotaku's coverage of Thompson's claims that video games prompted last week's Virginia Tech massacre.
The Gawker suit is actually an amendment to an action Thompson filed on March 13th against the Florida bar. On April 11th he amended it to include the members of the Florida Supreme Court. And now Gawker joins the list of defendants.
This morning a Gawker attorney e-mailed Thompson, citing the case of Zeran vs. AOL and writing:
It is clear from the context of these comments that they are hyperbole, and not an incitement to violence, imminent or otherwise.
Earlier in the week Thompson reported Kotaku to the Denver Field Office of the FBI as well as the Denver Police Department. This morning he contacted the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, where Gawker is headquartered. It is unknown what type of response, if any, he received from those agencies. He also complained about the matter to Levi Strauss, Inc., a Kotaku advertiser.
Kotaku editor Brian Crecente declined to comment on the lawsuit. The judge in the case, Paul C. Huck, threw out an earlier Thompson suit against the Florida Bar in December, citing at the time what he referred to as Thompson's "wild accusations of a vast conspiracy."
Read the complaint here. Related Kotaku coverage of the FBI report here. Kotaku discusses the lawsuit in a brief posting here.
UPDATE: The Law of the Game legal blog has an analysis of Thompson's complaint. Attorney Mark Methenitis concludes:
While many of [Thompson's] claims are relatively novel, they also seem to be relatively poorly constructed as a way to include a blog he particularly dislikes.
Comments
Also Cho's roommate has said that he did not play video games (The Daily Show's take was excellent on the blame game).
And really, that post was just an expression, nothing more. Saying that you wish someone would get shot, isn't the same thing as wanting someone to die. It is nothing more but an expression when you dislike someone or someone's opinion. But Jack Thompson doesn't care and thinks that he is more important that any individual on this planet.
I am awaiting the news when this gets laughed out of court.
Jack Thompson sues Kotaku for countering everything he says.
Holy crap man, I hope this doesn't actually become a real court case. At least we have the numbers on our side. Chances are it won't.
I'm not for it but we can sue for anything.
I asked my sponsor to our radio Vince Desi what he thought of JT being all over the TV.
http://guradio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=382
You needn't worry about every single blog and forum because there is absolutely no way he can win. In fact, I predict it will almost certainly be dismissed before it gets to court.
"This is ridiculous. This guy really needs to be stopped trying to sue everyone who is against him. Kotaku hasn’t done anything wrong. And this most likely is about that one post on there. They can’t possibly be held accountable for what a poster says."
No, they can't. The power of Section 230 of the Communications decency act is immense.
In before the comment-splosion. I predict this thread will reach Epic proportions. I'm talking Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise epic.
Anyway, I also predict hilarity will ensue.
What a fucking tool.
Saying it'd be nice if harm came to someone isn't very nice and perhaps not too clever on the part of the poster, but it's legal. The illustration I always heard to demonstrate this: It is legal in the US (not nice, but legal) to stand up in a bar and yell, "I think all Muslims should die!" It is not legal to stand up in a bar and yell, "Hey, fellas, I hear there's a lot of Muslims in the place down the street, let's go rough them up!"
Course, he could just be trying to choke the pro-game side with lawsuits and hope that either the legal costs and constant legal exertion turn into wins somehow. But that's a dangerous game, as he could get stuck with legal fees if he loses. There's also Rule 11, which penalizes someone for "harassment, frivolous arguments, or a lack of factual investigation" (wikipedia). At the rate JT's been going, he might be dangerously close to stepping over the Rule 11 line.
@AbzumZer0 I am not really worried myself, to be honest. I have posted in the on livejournal when the massacre chaser was threatening all of us to give away our private information. I wasn't worried then and I am not worried now. It was just an "if" in my post, I know he can never possibly win this. So I do wonder that if he pulls through with the case, why he is doing it? I doubt this will even help him in any way against the "evil games and gamers".
of course he hasn't been know to grasp freedom of speech very well.
i, for one, am sick of being labeled as some sort of about-to-snap pre-murderer just because of my hobby.
I just spent the last 15 minutes reading your complaint. And I find it to be utter nonsense.
Since lawyers generally charge around 200 bucks an hour, you know owe me payment for reading this tripe.
You total is 50 dollars.
I guess I'm going to have to sue you for it.
Anyways, is there a way to block JT from actually suing more people? I was thinking that if one us helps kill more of his major crutches, meaning his targets for lawsuits, then his ability to get his face out there could take a hit. Would there be such a way?
Well, there's already legal precedent against Jacky Boy, so he's already lost.
Jacky Boy still doesn't know how to practice what he preaches.
This has been said many times before but I'll say it again. Suing someone for libel or slander is very hard to do. You have to prove that the person intently lies to harm, deceive, etc. Problem with Jack Thompson is, he truly believes what he is saying.
On another note, I just found out that the laws work differently here than in the rest of the United States and Canada and that a belief in the truth is not enough to be absolved or found innocent of defamation charges. Now if we can just find a way to lure Thompson here.
"Problem with Jack Thompson is, he truly believes what he is saying."
John Hinkley believed shooting the president would make a movie star love him.
"Jack Thompson Vs. World"
Anyone else thinking of Boyd Cooper from Psychonauts?
~Otaku-Man
Sue everyone, everywhere, all the time. The software will automatically spam the universe with a canned "press release" about your brand new lawsuit, and it will copy the FBI, CIA, KGB, Whitehouse, Jimmy Hoffa, and Anna Nicole Smith on all the correspondence.
Contact suetomatic@jackthompson.org for pricing!
"Since then, the New York Times has reported this past Sunday that upon driving their son to Virginia Tech, the parents of Cho hoped that in going to college he would leave behind his immersion in video games. The chances of that, with no parental supervision, were slim and none, and Slim just left town."
Not unless he mentions someone by name.
Individuals can sue. Non-affiliated groups of people with a shared cultural trend cannot.
First, it's his usual rambling style. I'm no lawyer, but it seems like you'd want to make your points and make them somewhat punchy, instead of reading ten pages of your past legal endeavors before mentioning the point of the lawsuit. Plus the usual inflammatory rhetoric - lots of opinions where facts would suffice.
The basis for some of his claims is that he does what he does out of a religious conviction and that the parties named are depriving him of his freedom of religion. A bit of a stretch, if you ask me. Course, I might be misinterpreting it - but legal documents shouldn't be leaving so much to interpretation if that's the case. If other people don't get what your problem is after reading your claim, then the fault does not necessarily lie with them.
The complaint against Kotaku's parent company says that in allowing posts that mention violence against him they're part of a campaign of extortion and threats against Thompson. He almost has a point in that Kotaku says somewhere on the site it'll remove threatening or harassing posts - but I don't think that's a contractual agreement, as he asserts, but a warning to not make such posts. Plus, there's a difference between promoting an act of violence and simply saying you'd be okay with one. Unless you're the President, possibly - the President might be an exception, but JT is not the Prez, so it's moot anyway. Plus, he's a public figure, and public figures generally aren't as protected from color commentary as non-public ones. So, yeah, the whole thing seems like a bit of a stretch, the occasional good points are lost in a sea of unnecessary fluff, and the part against Kotaku seems especially weak.
What I find funny is he uses words like "liberals" like its an insult. yet aren't liberals the ones who are usually backing up his terrible legislation? way to go nimrod.
If (and I do say if, Jack has a notorious reputation of weasleing his way out of these situations) everything stacked against Thompson were to fall on him at one (The Bar complaints, the lawsuits, etc.) The absolute magnitude of all of it would crush him out of the public square entirely.
Go Florida Bar! Crush the Massacre chaser. :D
(( I've got a TON of sugar in me. Sorry if I'm being too.... enthusiastic.))
Instead of... a bunch of hyperbole, invective, and paranoid rantings?
Is calling people Stalinists a proper legal term?
I've read some of Jack Thompson other filings before but this one is certainly the most insane so far. He truly believes there's some left-wing, anti-religion conspiracy against him.
Did you people see the part where he compares himself to Jesus Christ? That's at least one thing Cho and Jack Thompson have in common.
"No, they can’t. The power of Section 230 of the Communications decency act is immense."
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service(kotaku) shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.(Commentors, but not Kotaku's writers)"
So looking it up, bascially it says that in this case, Kotaku can not be held responcible for what is said by the commentors; correct?
I skimmed over the whole document, some parts made me laugh, some parts made me want to off myself-- this man makes me embarrased to be a human being. Claiming that he's the only "sane" lawyer in Florida is one of the points that made me laugh. Just about all of the rest of it made me physically ill.
Also, I notice how despite this being a legal document, he still finds room for namecalling, baseless insults, and outright lies.
Jack - give it up. You're going down this time. At least take it like a man.
I literally have a headache from (attempting) to read Mr. JB Thompson's complaint.