April 23, 2008
On the side of a bus kiosk in South Florida, there is a poster.On the poster is a drawing of a man. The man is sneering, but he's not doing anything remotely pornographic or violent. He's not doing anything, really. There are some words on the poster, too. They're not obscene. Nor do they incite violence.
The poster is an ad for Grand Theft Auto IV.
And anti-game Miami attorney Jack Thompson wants it torn down.
Thompson, a long time critic of the Grand Theft Auto series, apparently took note of Monday's GamePolitics report detailing the Chicago Transit Authority's removal of GTA IV ads from its buses and facilities. In an e-mail sent today to Miami Mayor Carlos Alvarez, Thompson, who took the picture that accompanies this article, writes:
I was shocked today to see a six-foot-high advertisement for Grand Theft Auto IV, a hyperviolent video game... on the side of a Metro Miami-Dade bus stop located... near Children’s Hospital. In fact, the advertisement was adjacent to a kids’ park...
The Grand Theft Auto games have been obsessively played by a number of teens who have then copycatted the outrageous, sociopathic violence in the games and killed innocent people...
The ESRB descriptor on GTA IV indicates this game contains “Strong Sexual Content.” The sale of this game to any minor will constitute a criminal act violative of... Florida’s “Sexual Material Harmful to Minors Law”...
There are also several paragraphs of Thompson's standard I've been on 60 Minutes with Ed Bradley... GTA is cop killer game... etc, etc, etc...
GP: It will be interesting to see how the mayor reacts. And how the game industry will respond to any potential order to remove the ads. From here, any such action by the mayor's office or the quasi-governmental transit company would seem to be a First Amendment violation.
While the game biz has passively rolled over and accepted past removals of GTA ads from transit vehicles in Boston, Portland and now Chicago, it's about time they made a stand on this issue.
Allowing attention-hungry critics or mayors or transit agencies to force the removal of an ad with no offensive content is not only a free speech violation, but it demonizes GTA IV and, by extension, demonizes the millions of gamers who will be playing the game when it launches next week.
As we have pointed out, the 1st US Circuit Court ruled in Change the Climate vs. Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority that bus company censorship of ads based on viewpoint is unconstitutional.
Comments
I'm certain the mayor already knows this. And I'm not sure how taking down a sign a week before the release, long after the game has had time to get known, is going to do anything. In fact, all of Thompson's attention to it has probably increased its publicity.
I for one want to buy it more and more each time I hear about Thompson crying to the media or officials for help against it.
Does anyone know what albums Jacko is talking about? I can't finad any real info on it. Zelnick doesn't even appear to have a wikipedia page. One site I found said he was at BMG.
With Jacko's history with 2 Live Crew and the Cop Killer song if Zelnick was involved with one of those it might be the missing link in why Jacko is so out to get GTA but 2Live Crew was not on a major label and Body Count was Sire/Warner Brothers.
contact me in a month and i will have a support group started for you 2 (and others) =p
That's one hell of a paper cut your brother got. :D
Because we all know sexual content always means pornography/sarcasm
Anyway, should have seen this coming. GTA+JT=lawsuit.
You know, he says a lot of things in that letter, and none of them are put across as his opinion, bu facts instead. Doesnt that make him legally liable for fraud/libel or some such thing. Especially if TT lose revenue for losing advertising.
Eat it, Jack. You’ve lost. Those ads are staying up and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
How silly
He is the leading critic of video games
so far he has failed to do anything.
dennis.
so are buying gtaIV?
GP: Yep. Although I expect to receive a review copy, I've also pre-ordered the Xbox 360 version.
Now how are we gonna keep them from walking into stores and buying it with overly large allowances and no parents around?
Would someone disbar JT already? Seriously, he's going to get on his high horse again and trot it around here like he's some knight instead of being more like Don Quixote.
Guess he's gotta make payments on his '92 Geo Metro somehow!
Ah yes, the old game = porn/public buisance tactic. Remember how that succeeded for him in the past? Oh wait... it didn't. It led to his personal and unprofessional insulting of a judge when it was decided that a game isn't a public nuisance that in turn led to the sanctions against him.
Games are not harmful to people. Until there is concrete evidence to that fact (and i doubt that there ever will be), you cannot have games censored or banned for being harmful.
Jack's being predictably toolish, in fact, if he were any more of a tool you could use him to cut wood, change a tyre or trim the hedges.
That may be one of the greatest analogies for Thompson there is. A crazy old guy who things he's going out to save people from terrible monsters only to be taken out by some windmills.
There's an interesting distinction to be drawn between ads on a bus stop shelter and ads on a bus. The two may not be afforded quiet the same protection because the latter involves the so-called "captive audience."
Even if by some long shot miracle Jack Manages to get the mayor to listen to him, it’s an extremely small victory in the grand scheme of things. Oh wow, Jack. You managed to pull down a GTA ad from a bus stop. Go you! That doesn’t change the fact that it’ll still be advertised in magazines, comic books and on TV and sell a gazillion copies no matter what you do.
So yes, he would obviously be crowing about and want to rub our faces in it as only he can, as we all no he savors whatever victory he can get, however small and insignificant it is, but in the grand scheme of things.
Perhaps, if he weren't as dull as a plastic butterknife. :P
He'll probably go so far as to appear on FOX if he wins.
"Well as you know, I helped to save the Free World recently. Grand Theft Auto IV, a hyper-violent, murder-simulator that was recently found in a Harvard study to have been created by none other than Satan himself, was being advertised near a children's park. Despite the fact that it's being advertised on billboards, television and the internet, I realized I had to stop this.
It was a complete victory. I had a single poster torn down saving thousands of children from a life of debauchery and murder."
He is completely impotent now. What a fucking disgrace.
Oh I'm pretty sure he's been using it for awhile. Like when he threatened Bill Gates:
"The hyperviolent Microsoft Xbox 360 game Halo 3 is scheduled by your company for commercial release in September of this year. The Beta version that was released last week shows us all just how violent the game is and how inappropriate it is for play by anyone under 17, as the “Mature” rating it will surely receive indicates."
He may have just bought a dictionary and worked out that 'hyper' makes more sense in that context than 'ultra'. Or he is just insane ...
I thought he did? Or does 'pulled out of his ass' not count?
Yeah, b-but two is a number... right? Right?
And so is none-that-have-ever-been-proven-to-be-linked-to-any-video-game.