Anti-gaming Attorney Jack Thompson facing ten-year disbarment

By Tiberius Jonez

This week’s proof that our society may not be on the brink of destruction after all is the news that the Florida Bar Association has requested embattled anti-gaming attorney Jack Thompson be disbarred for ten years based on the 27 misconduct charges he was found guilty of last month.

According to gamepolitics, Thompson reportedly stormed out of the hearing after Judge Dava Tunis refused to let him read a lengthy objection aloud. Tunis, acting as referee on behalf of the Florida Supreme Court, did permit Thompson to submit a copy of his objection for the record, but by leaving the courtroom, Thompson missed the opportunity to argue any mitigating factors to the Bar's recommendation for harsh punishment. A request for disbarment is not an official punishment – that decision is left squarely in the hands of Judge Tunis.

In other Thompson-related news, a federal lawsuit filed by Thompson against the Florida Supreme Court has been dismissed with prejudice, meaning that he cannot file it again. Thompson still has two other lawsuits pending related to his ongoing Bar trial.

If you’ve followed the saga of Jack Thompson at all, you know the guy is clearly off his rocker – using his license to practice law (if that’s what you can call it) to slander an entire industry. He is most famous for his zealous attacks on Grand Theft Auto developer Take Two/Rockstar.

Thankfully, it is beginning to appear cooler heads are going to prevail and Mr. Thompson will soon be harassing noone (at least not in the legal sense) for at least a decade.

>golf clapping all around<

Jack Thompson blames Bill Gates for VT Massacre

Jack Thompson wrote an open letter to Bill Gates yesterday, blaming him for the Virginia Tech Massacre. I don't find it necessary to debunk Mr. Thompson's "reasoning", I think his letter says plenty about his state of mind and motivation.

Below is a copy of Thompson’s letter to Mr. Gates.

April 18, 2007

Bill Gates

Microsoft

1 Microsoft Way

Redmond, WA 98052

Via Fax and e-mail

Dear Mr. Gates:

On Monday, April 16, at 3:10 pm, I was a guest, as I often have been in the past, on the Fox News Channel. News anchor Bill Hemmer asked me to profile the Virginia Tech rampage killer. I did so, noting that until that day the worst school massacre in world history was at the hands of Robert Steinhaeuser, who literally trained on the Microsoft on-line, hyper-violent shooter game, Counterstrike. I mentioned your company’s game by name. I explained that the rehearsal for such a massacre is key to being able to pull it off, as efficiently as Cho, whose name we didn’t even know at the time. Cho and Steinhaeuser were able to do what they did the first time because it was not the first time. This is why the military uses this same virtual reality simulation to train soldiers to want to kill and how to kill calmly, as the witnesses of Cho said he did.

Sure enough, last night I was doing a west coast radio interview when the host said to me, "Mr. Thompson, you are right. The Washington Post is reporting right now the following:
‘Several Korean youths who knew Cho Seung Hui from his high school days said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly Counterstrike, a hugely popular online game published by Microsoft, in which players join terrorism or counterterrorism groups and try to shoot each other using all types of guns.’"

I thus went back on the Fox News Channel, and Bill Hemmer and I explained not only that I was right about your game figuring in the Virginia Tech massacre but also that the Washington Post excised the above excerpt from the story this morning. That is yet another story. The bad news for the Post however is that you can still get the excised excerpt at [hyperlink removed, Washington Post has since removed the article]. Thus, the cat is out of the bag, and his paw prints are still on the bag. Is this a great Internet, or what?

As you know, I similalry [sic] went on NBC’s Today Show with the DC Beltway Sniper still unidentified and at-large a few years ago and told Matt Lauer and the nation that the triggerman would most likely be a teen video gamer trained on a sniper video game. The tarot card was a clue, but there were other clues. I was right, as Malvo trained on your Microsoft game, Halo. NBC reported that three months later, and it was part of the criminal trial of Malvo.
Mr. Gates, your company is potentially legally liable the harm done at Virginia Tech. Your game, a killing simulator, according to the news that used to be in the Post, trained him to enjoy killing and how to kill. You knew five years ago that your on-line game, Counterstrike, so clearly figured in the massacre by a student in Erfurt that the event and the game impacted the race for Chancellor in Germany at the time!

Yet, here you are, five years after "Erfurt," still marketing Counterstrike. having done nothing to disable the server(s) for this mass murder simulator, and it looks like "Virginia Tech" is a consequence. There’s more going on in the world than Vista. Just ask the bereaved Virginia Tech families.

Mr. Gates, pull the plug on Counterstrike today, or do we need more dead to convince you? "Virginia Tech" was the 9-11 of school shootings, and it appears Microsoft is in the middle of it, in more ways than one.

Regards, Jack Thompson

Howard Stern smarter than Jack Thompson and Dr. Phil?

With his family counseling show, Dr. Phil is the latest media darling to come from no where and invade our group conciousness. Jack Thompson is the attorney loved by Fox news and anti-gaming politicians everywhere for his ludicrous and boisterous attacks on our favorite past-time. Howard Stern is an over the top shock jock widely seen as a pariah by the mainstream media but loved by tens of millions of listeners that tune into his sirius radio show every day.

Now, if you had a serious subject to discuss such as the possible causes of the tragic Virginia Tech massacre, would you trust the judgment of the Attorney, the Family Therapist or the Shock Jock?

I'll take the Shock Jock, thank you very much!

Jack Thompson wrote an open letter to Microsoft founder Bill Gates this week calling for Microsoft to put an end to one of the most popular online video games on the planet, Counterstrike. He blamed the Virginia Tech massacre on Mr. Gates and Microsoft for not shutting down the servers for what Thompson calls a "killing simulator".

Unfortunately for Mr. Thompson, he doesn't understand the industry he would so dearly love to legislate well enough to even know that he wrote his sarcastically toned and poorly reasoned letter to the wrong person. Microsoft only published the Xbox version of Counter-strike back in 2003. Valve Software originally developed Counter-strike and Vivendi Universal handles the publication of the game on the PC, which is the only version that’s played on a large scale these days. So, even if he were right, which I STRONGLY disagree with, Thompson was wasting his ink on a letter to someone who had zero influence on the future of Counter-strike.

Monday night Dr. Phil made the following statement on Larry King Live on CNN about the connection between video games and the VT tragedy:

“The problem is we are programming these people as a society. You cannot tell me - common sense tells you - that if these people are playing video games where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath, or someone suffering from mental illness, add in a dose of rage, the suggestability is just too high. And we’re going to have to start dealing with that. We’re going to have to start addressing those issues and recognizing that the mass murderers of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose.”

Enter the voice of reason, Howard Stern. Wait, Howard Stern as the voice of reason? I know I know, sounds ludicrous, but it's true.

On his sirius radio show this morning, Stern lambasted Dr. Phil for his comments and said, "he's a f***ing ***hole!"

Stern ridiculed the idea that video games could have caused the VT shootings, pointing out that plenty of the world’s greatest tragedies happened in environments devoid of video games, sarcastically suggesting that “Hitler played Donkey Kong” and “Osama Bin Laden played Grand Theft Auto.”

Stern went on to explain why he thinks so lowly of Dr. Phil saying, “You know the reason why Dr. Phil is an ***hole? Because whenever something like this happens he wants to play the blame game.”

Stern commented that he has either played or knows people who play video games “all day and all night” and do not act out violently. He pointed out that blame is always put on “the movies or something” and finished the conversation expressing the sentiment that most gamers have known all along:

“This is so stupid.”

Amen brother, amen!

*Complete transcript of Dr. Phil's appearance on CNN.