GamePolitics.com

The steep decline in sales of M-rated games to underage buyers reported this morning by the Federal Trade Commission is a clear victory for the video game industry on both the political and public relations fronts.

Taking a victory lap is the organization responsible for operating the video game industry’s rating system, the ESRB. Via press release, ESRB president Patricia Vance commented on today’s FTC report:

Video game retailers have clearly stepped up their efforts to enforce their store policies, and they deserve recognition for these outstanding results.  We commend and applaud retailers for their strong support of the ESRB ratings, and will continue working with them to help ensure that these levels of compliance are sustained if not further increased.

The ESA, representing US video game publishers, declined to comment, referring us instead to the ESRB.

Bo Andersen, president of the Entertainment Merchants Association, a trade group representing a number of video game retailers, also weighed in. For retailers, the report is a mixed bag. They scored superb numbers on game rating enforcement, but were criticized by the FTC for sales of R-rated and unrated DVDs to underage buyers. Andersen said:

Retailers don’t want children to be able to purchase or rent video games and DVDs that their parents do not want them to have. As a result, they have made real and significant investments in enforcing the voluntary video game and motion picture ratings in their stores. The FTC’s latest ‘undercover shopper’ survey demonstrates that these investments are producing strong results… While we are pleased with the progress that has been made in ratings enforcement, retailers still are not where they want to be as an industry.

On the consumer side, Hal Halpin, president of the Entertainment Consumers Association, remarked:

This is an extraordinary accomplishment from the nation’s leading interactive entertainment retailers, as it clearly shows their increased commitment of keeping mature-rated games out of children’s hands. Perhaps most impressive is the incredible reversal in their failure rate over such a short period of time and with a comparatively new rating system.

This is truly a vindication for video game merchants who have been falsely damned by anti-game advocates and special interest groups, who now don’t have a leg to stand on.

GamePolitics also offered several high-profile game industry critics and watchdog groups an opportunity to comment. So far we’ve not heard back from the Parents Television Council, the National Institute on Media & the Family or California State Sen. Leland Yee. There was one critic we did hear from, though…

Despite the eye-popping retail enforcement numbers, anti-game activist Jack Thompson refused to give credit to the video game industry. Instead, he credited… Jack Thompson:

I’m more than happy to take credit for the improvement. The threat of legislation has improved performance, not some altruism on the part of the Strauss Zelnick’s [or] the industry. To America’s parents: Jack Thompson is delighted to have helped.

Of course, Thompson would have been all over the FTC numbers had they been unfavorable to the video game industry. Classy, Jack…

UPDATE: Dr. David Walsh of the National Institute on Media & the Family has now weighed in. NIMF claims a bit of the credit as well:

The results of the [FTC’s] latest undercover survey are good news for retailers and the [ESRB], but most of all for parents… With its consistent pressure on the video game industry, [NIMF] played a significant role in improving ratings enforcement and education. Similar to our… Video Game Report Cards, the FTC survey shows that specialty retailers, such as GameStop, continue to lead in enforcement and the rental companies need to step up their efforts…

Full Disclosure Dept: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics…

It took a few days, but GamePolitics has tracked down some background on the process which led Miami-Dade Transit (MDT) officials to pull ads for Grand Theft Auto IV.

As we reported late last month, the South Florida transit agency yanked GTA IV ads from bus shelters following pressure by anti-game attorney Jack Thompson.

While following up on this story GP communicated with MDT Deputy Director Hugh Chen and Marketing Director Michael DeCossio. It was media relations official Manuel Palmiero, however, who ultimately supplied the information below. What follows are GP’s question, MDT’s verbatim answers and a few bits of commentary:

GP: The GTA IV ads themselves are inoffensive. Is Miami-Dade Transit making a value judgment as to the underlying product? If so, this judgment is based on…?

MDT: The Miami-Dade County Commission has adopted three resolutions in the last five years dealing with violent video games — R-1447-03, R-248-04 and R-573-06. You may look up all three at www.miamidade.gov/govaction/searchleg.asp?Action=searchleg.

The first resolution specifically condemned the “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” video game for its “hate-filled messages” and for appearing “to encourage or condone violence against ethnic minorities” and called on retailers to remove the game from their shelves. The other two condemned violent video games in general and urged retailers not to make such games available to minors. 

Miami-Dade Transit is a department of Miami-Dade County and as such follows the policies set by the Miami-Dade County Commission and Mayor.

(GP comment: This seems a rather bureaucratic justification. None of the three resolutions address public transit. Nor do they direct county agencies to take a hands-off posture with regard to video games. Nor does MDT answer the question as to whether they made a value judgment concerning GTA IV, although it seems obvious that they did.)

GP: Which official made the final decision to remove the ads?
 
MDT: After receiving and evaluating the request for removal of the ads, MDT staff made the recommendation to remove them.  [Ad company] Cemusa was instructed to remove the ads last Friday, April 25.

(GP: we received this info from MDT on Friday, May 2nd)
 
GP: Is MDT familiar with Change the Climate vs MBTA, in which the US First Circuit Court ruled that a quasi-governmental transit agency could not restrict ads based on viewpoint?
 
MDT: Miami-Dade Transit is a department of Miami-Dade County and as such is a unit of County government, not a quasi-governmental transit agency.

(GP comment: This answer is puzzling. The First Circuit Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for a quasi-governmental agency to restrict free speech. Since MDT is organized as a full-fledged unit of government, it has at least as much - and probably more - of an obligation not to restrict free speech. Nor does the answer acknowledge the Change the Climate case.)

GP: Is MDT aware of [complainant] Mr. [Jack] Thompson’s longstanding contentious history with the publisher of this game [Take Two Interactive], including his involvement on the plaintiff side in a pair of wrongful death lawsuits seeking $1.2 billion?
 
MDT: We were not aware of this information but it is not relevant to the matter at hand and would not have affected our decision to remove the ads.
 
GP: Other than Thompson’s, were any other complaints received about the ads?
 
MDT: We are not aware of any others to date.

GP:  Would you characterize MDT as a unit of government, as opposed to quasi-governmental? (I note the .gov website address)
 
MDT: As stated above, MDT is a department of Miami-Dade County government and therefore is a unit of government, not a quasi-governmental agency.

GP: What other types of ads are restricted? Alcohol? R-rated movies? How about a cable show along the lines of The Sopranos or Sex in the City? 

MDT: MDT’s contract with CEMUSA lists several types of ads that are restricted, including:

-Advertising that contains traffic-related symbols or words like “Stop,” Drive In” or “Danger” that are designed to distract vehicular traffic

-Ads containing immoral, lascivious or obscene material as well as ads promoting businesses engaged in any activity that requires that exclusion of minors

-Ads for alcoholic beverages
 
In addition, the contract states that MDT may “at its sole, absolute discretion” disallow any questionable ads, such as those that may violate community standards as we understand them based on our knowledge of the community and the feedback generated by certain types of ads in the past.

(GP comment: Now that Take Two has sued the Chicago Transit Authority over that agency’s removal of GTA IV ads, a similar suit against MDT seems highly likely…)

Video game legislation proposed by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino - and authored by Jack Thompson - has stalled in the Massachusetts legislature.

In March legislators heard testimony on HB1423, a bill which would equate violent video games with pornography.

However the Boston Business Journal now reports that the measure has been “sent into study,” which essentially means it is on life support. From the Business Journal story:

Menino’s proposal, which would make it illegal for minors to buy video games with graphic content, was sent into study in March — a big win for the state’s burgeoning video game industry…

But the mayor, seeing a link between violent content and violent behavior, still is in favor of the proposal, and plans to continue to push for it on a grass-roots level, said Larry Mayes, chief of human services for the city of Boston. “To get this through, we’re really going to have to do a statewide push. We want to go to the communities, particularly to the parents and sit with them and show them the material.”
 
Mayes said members of the mayor’s office plan to hold community meetings starting this summer to educate parents about such violent video games.  
The hope is those parents will then advocate for the ban.

Reuters is reporting that Grand Theft Auto IV publisher Take Two Interactive is suing the Chicago Transit Authority over the CTA’s recent decision to remove ads for the game from its vehicles and facilities.

As reported by GamePolitics, the CTA pulled the ads about a week before GTA IV launched. The move followed a sensationalistic Fox News report which seemed to draw a linkage between GTA and a rash of local shootings. From Reuters:

Take Two accused the authority and its sales agent, Titan Outdoor LLC, of violating a $300,000… ad campaign agreement that included running “Grand Theft Auto 4″ poster ads on the sides of buses and transit display spaces throughout the Chicago transit system scheduled for six weeks between April and June.

The suit seeks an order for the transit authority to run the ads as well as monetary damages of at least $300,000.

GP: Congrats to Take Two for standing up for its rights. Let’s hope they bring the same kind of legal pressure to bear on Miami-Dade Transit as well. There, GP readers will recall, Jack Thompson pushed the agency into removing ads from Miami bus shelters.

It is the nature of the U.S. video game market that parents make the final decision about what constitutes appropriate content for their child.

Not so in New Zealand, where the government’s chief censor has ruled that parents may not purchase Grand Theft Auto IV for their children.

As reported by the New Zealand Herald, Bill Hastings (left) of New Zealand’s Office of Film and Literature Classification issued an opinion that store clerks may not sell the game to parents who are buying it for their teen. Said Hastings:

If it’s perfectly obvious the parent is buying the game for the child, don’t sell it to the parent. If a game is R18 it’s R18 for a reason and it’s illegal to make it available to anyone under that age.

In New Zealand, adults buying the game for a minor - even for their own child - could be jailed for 90 days or made to pay a $10,000 fine. The Herald notes, however, that the law has never been enforced.

And while Hastings seems to take his censorship duties seriously, he had some quite reasonable comments about GTA IV’s more redeeming qualities:

With the games we ban you have to kill everyone you meet and you’re generally rewarded for making the killing more gruesome. In Grand Theft Auto, you don’t have to kill everybody you meet - you could drive around and just look at the architecture…

All games in the Grand Theft Auto series have a kind of black satire - an overstatement of machismo. It takes the piss out of Soprano-type things.

By the way, we’ve heard America’s self-appointed censor, Jack Thompson, claiming that the sex scenes were taken out of the Australia/New Zealand version of GTA IV. Not entirely so, according to the Herald:

In the version submitted for classification [in New Zealand], the sex scenes include going to a strip club and getting lap dances. There’s also another point where the player can have sex with a prostitute - but in the version sold here, there is no visual depiction, just audio.

Thompson is trying to claim that the game is pornography, making its sale to 17-year-olds (as permitted by its M rating) a crime. If so, it would likely be the world’s first-ever sans genitalia porn.

Anti-game attorney Jack Thompson and Gavin McKiernan of the Parents Television Council appeared on the Glenn Beck program last night on CNN Headline News.

The first clip is Beck’s opening. Thompson and McKiernan appear in the second clip.

GP: Big thanks to several GamePolitics readers who uploaded and/or pointed us to videos of the show…

Neil Conan, host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation gave Jack Thompson the bum’s rush during a three-minute appearance that also featured G4TV’s Adam Sessler and a guy named Jim from BushLeague.TV.

Highlights of Thompson’s brief appearance include:

Conan: I understand that you think one of the characters in Grand Theft Auto IV is based on you

Thompson: Well, they go into a lawyer’s office and they kill him. I had my house vandalized, by the way, today by gamers. I get calls, death threats all the time by gamers… The real issue here is, though, that there is so much sex and so much graphic sex… I’m working with various law enforcement agencies,hopefully with the result that Take Two corporately and the chairman Strauss Zelnick will be indicted for that because this is way, way over the line…

Sessler: I hope you don’t mind if I step in there, Neil. Having played the game I have yet to discover the graphic sex Mr. Thompson is identifying…

Conan: John Thompson… Have you played the game?

Thompson: It just came out and I have a life… 

Conan: And which law enforcement agencies are you working with?

Thompson: I’m not gonna tell you.

(GP: this answer seemed to convince Conan to terminate the interview… it’s also a question that I have asked Thompson without receiving a satisfactory answer…)

Conan: Alright, well, thanks very much for speaking with us.

Thompson: (chuckle) I’m done?

Conan: You’re done.

Thompson: Oh, great. I’ll go play the game now.

Conan: Good luck… (click)

UPDATE: To listen to an mp3 of Thompson’s 3-minute segment, click here… Or, get the full 16 minutes from NPR’s website.

UPDATE 2: Thompson found a more sympathetic ear on Glenn Beck’s CNNHL program, which I just caught. Can someone YouTube that? Of course, that nonsense about the military desentizing recruits with video games has been debunked before, but now Beck is parroting it.

Thompson also (again) linked the Red Lake school shooting to GTA and Virginia Tech to Counter-strike.

We’ve just had an e-mail from Miami attorney Jack Thompson (left) to say that he would be on the Glenn Beck program on CNN Headline News this evening at 7PM & 9PM Eastern (second one is a repeat)…

GTA IV will be the topic, along with, apparently, Thompson’s issues with the Florida Bar.

Thompson will also be on NPR’s Talk of the Nation at 2:40 PM Eastern.

UPDATE: It’s on as I type this. Adam Sessler from G4TV is leading off… Now a guy who played GTA IV for 28 hours straight… Now Thompson, who says that he is portrayed in the game and claims that gamers vandalized his house last night.

While public transit agencies in Chicago and Miami have pulled ads for Grand Theft Auto IV, it looks as if GP’s local bus company will permit the ads to stay.

According to a report by all-news radio station KYW-1060, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) won’t bow to (unspecified) pressure to remove the ads. From the KYW story:

SEPTA… is standing firm in its decision run the ads on hundreds of its buses…

SEPTA officials would not be interviewed, but they issued a statement saying while some might consider the game offensive, “the advertisement is not.”

The ad campaign is slated to run for six weeks, with 350 posters on buses and other locations, generating $83,000 in revenue for SEPTA.

SEPTA last year was criticized for accepting ads for the movie “Hitman,” ads featuring images of guns.

GP: It’s not yet clear how SEPTA came to deal with the GTA IV ad issue. However, after I posted a picture of a SEPTA bus carrying a GTA IV ad last Friday, Jack Thompson, who was then in the process of persuading Miami-Dade Transit to drop its GTA IV ads, indicated he would pressure SEPTA to take a similar course of action.

In any case, if Thompson did try with SEPTA, he failed. GP has a call into SEPTA management for more details. In the meantime, it’s good to see SEPTA standing firm on this issue. There are obvious First Amendment implications and, hey, SEPTA is strapped for cash. As a regional taxpayer, I’m happy to see that $83,000 in revenue coming in.

Sent to us without explanation by the man himself…

The only clue is the subject line of the e-mail, which says, cryptically:

Evidence

UPDATE: Some GP readers have suggested that Miami Jack has a GTA IV ”sting” announcement coming up. That’s certainly a possibility.

It’s either that or he has entered a Niko Bellic look-alike contest…

With today’s GTA IV launch, criticism of the series has risen to a whole new level.

GTA bashers invariably point to two instances of GTA violence as particularly worrisome.

The first deals with violence against the game’s virtual hookers. This concern has been voiced by, among others, real-world hooker afficianado Eliot Spitzer. These criticisms generally run along the lines of “you can have sex with a prostitute and then kill her to get your money back.”

While technically true, in GTA’s sandbox world such activity is strictly optional. The player can choose not to have the virtual liaison in the first place. Or, if the player does opt to indulge, there’s nothing in GTA which precludes allowing the hooker to stroll off peacefully in search of her next trick.

The game’s virtual police officers, on the other hand, are more problematic. Because GTA is a crime adventure, the player will invariably run afoul of the law. For all practical purposes, it is impossible to log significant time on any Grand Theft Auto title without getting into a virtual confrontation with the game’s animated depictions of law enforcement officers. (more…)

Ars Technica has a report on Jack Thompson’s claim that the sexual content in Grand Theft Auto IV is essentially pornographic.

As is his custom, Thompson once again invokes law enforcement by writing to his local US Attorney about the game’s hooker and strip club scenes:

Indictments should be returned against Take Two corporately and its Chairman, Strauss Zelnick, along with other Take Two officers. Indictment should also be against Sony and Microsoft which are making this pornographic game available to minors, and openly so, on their PS3 and Xbox systems.

Further, indictments should be handed down against Wal-Mart, Best Buy, GameStop, and all other retailers distributing this game to minors at their retail stores, openly, to kids who are only seventeen.

So, lock everyone up, then? Are the feds even talking to Thompson yet? The controversial attorney’s rant continues:

Grand Theft Auto IV is the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio.

Since polio…

While Ars Technica concludes that an IGN video (NSFW) which rolls a number of the game’s sex scenes into one segment gives Thompson ammunition, we’re not so sure.

For one thing, these are animations, not real people. But even so, protagonist Niko Bellic’s encounters with hookers in cars (notably unsexy pic at left) and strippers in clubs are all simulated; no genitalia are visible. The participants do not even appear to be unclothed. We’ve seen more graphic content in any number of R-rated films.

What’s more, the ESRB content descriptors for GTA IV list “strong sexual content” and “partial nudity.” We’re quite sure that, given the industry-rocking 2005 Hot Coffee scandal, both Take Two and the ESRB had their legal experts closely review GTA IV’s sex scenes.

Will Thompson get some publicity mileage from GTA IV’s sex scenes? Sure. Will anything come of it?

No.

A complaint by Jack Thompson has prompted Miami’s transit authority to remove ads for Grand Theft Auto IV from local bus shelters.

Miami thus joins Chicago as the second major US city to pull GTA IV ads from its public transit system in recent days.

GamePolitics reported on Thursday that Thompson had complained about the GTA IV ads to Miami Mayor Carlos Alvarez. The GTA IV ads were apparently removed sometime on Friday afternoon. Hugh Chen, Miami-Dade Transit’s deputy director of operations, told GamePolitics on Friday evening, via e-mail:

The posters were removed after a review of our approval process and contract… Be assured that the circumstances around placing and removing  these specific posters were reviewed before action was taken. We are governed by our contract with our shelter contractor and County ordinances.

A spokesman for GTA IV publisher Take-Two Interactive said the company was still reviewing the situation. A spokesman for the ESA referred inquiries back to Take-Two.

For his part, Thompson wasted no time in crowing about the removal of the ads in a news release:

…Jack Thompson has today persuaded the Miami-Dade Transit System to pull all advertisements for the Grand Theft Auto IV cop-killing simulation game from its bus stops.

In the wake of this success, Thompson is proceeding to get all GTA IV ads pulled from all US transit systems since such ads clearly violate promises made by the [ESRB], found right at its web site, not to place “Mature-rated” game ads in venues that will be seen by teens. 

However, Thompson’s contention about the ESRB appears to be incorrect. An ESRB spokesman told GP on Friday, “Considering the overwhelmingly adult demographic profile of mass transit riders… the placement of GTA IV ads in these types of outlets would typically not be in violation of [Ad Review Council] guidelines.” Nor do the advertising guidelines listed on the ESRB website appear to support Thompson’s contention.

Thompson may be confusing the ESRB ad guidelines with a 2002 report on the marketing of media violence by the Federal Trade Commission which addressed limiting the advertising of M-rated games in media where children constitute a specific percentage of the potential audience. The FTC report notes that the video game industry has a self-regulatory standard prohibiting print ads when children comprise more than 45% of the likely audience.

In his news release, the embattled Thompson also alleged a conspiracy between the video game industry and the judge who presided over his nine-day trial on Florida Bar ethics charges last November. That judge’s recommendation on Thompson’s future status as an attorney is expected in August.

GP: Readers, don’t forget to Send Us Your GTA IV Bus Pix (Before they’re all gone)…

Jack Thompson, Fox News and the Chicago Transit Authority want to ban bus ads for Grand Theft Auto IV.

But these multi-story ads adorn the graceful Hotel Figueroa in downtown Los Angeles and, somehow, the republic still stands…

Via: Xbox 360 Fanboy

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.

Last week GamePolitics broke the news that the long-awaited ruling in Jack Thompson’s Florida Bar trial, originally expected today, would likely be delayed.

We’ve now learned that Judge Dava Tunis (left), who presided over Thompson’s 9-day trial late last year, has petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to grant her until August 31st to issue her report.

Judge Tunis cited several reasons for the delay, including:

-the need to wade through a 2,500 page transcript of the trial

-reviewing 76 exhibits encompassing another 1,700 pages

-dealing with 400 “pleadings, e-mails, letters and missives (including pictorials)” filed by Thompson since the trial ended in December, 2007.

-handling a full-time job on the criminal bench

Interestingly, the wording of her motion makes it appear that Judge Tunis has already reached her decision. It’s the writing of the report that seems to be causing the delay.

Read Judge Tunis’ motion here.

Judge Dava Tunis (left), who presided over the November, 2007 Florida Bar trial of anti-game activist Jack Thompson, has petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for more time in which to issue her decision.

While GamePolitics had been anticipating Tunis’ final ruling on Thompson’s fate by April 21st, an April 11th Florida Supreme Court docket entry notes the request for a time extension by Judge Tunis.

No additional details appear in the docket entry and it is unclear what is behind Judge Tunis’ request. However, in addition to nearly two weeks of testimony, there is a large volume of printed material to be reviewed, especially given Thompson’s well-known penchant for sending e-mails, faxes and the like.

Judge Tunis herself has been under attack from Thompson in recent times (then again, who hasn’t?). In a claim reminiscent of Catch-22’s Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, Thompson alleges that a written loyalty oath required under Florida law was not properly executed by Tunis.

GamePolitics has offered the most extensive coverage of the Thompson trial anywhere. Be sure to check out our exclusive transcripts.

With a hostile takeover bid by EA on the agenda, Take Two Interactive has announced that it will offer a live, listen-only webcast of its annual shareholders meeting next week.

The meeting is scheduled for Thursday, April 17th at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time and will be held at the W Hotel Union Square in New York City.

The most interesting part of the meeting, of course, will be the EA matter. Will the game publishing giant gain its desired majority position in Take Two? If it does, will it install its own board of directors at next week’s meeting?

By way of a sideshow, Jack Thompson, who apparently owns some small amount of T2 stock, has been demanding time to speak at the meeting.

Those who would care to listen to the meeting can do so via the investor relations section of T2’s website.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation apparently has had enough of Jack Thompson.

This bit of news comes from Thompson himself, by way of an e-mail that the embattled anti-game crusader shipped out yesterday. The message was cc’d to GamePolitics and dozens of others. Addressees include U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, the chief federal prosecutor in south Florida.

The e-mail alleges - yet again - a conspiracy by the Florida Bar and Florida Supreme Court to persecute Thompson. It also claims that Thompson’s personal e-mail account was hacked recently. He sees the Bar’s hand in that, as well. Regarding the FBI, Thompson writes (emphasis GP’s):

Despite your forwarding this matter, Mr. Acosta, to the FBI, the FBI has done nothing and refuses to talk to me.

With all respect, either the FBI takes this seriously—the computer hacking, the criminal use of lunacy proceedings, the whole nine yards… or I and others will do what we need to do.

As GamePolitics has previously reported, the Florida Supreme Court recently sanctioned Thompson by refusing to accept any filings from him. Now, it appears that the FBI has shut him out as well.

GP: Although I’ve never revealed it publicly, since 2005 Thompson has reported me to the Miami and Philadelphia offices of the FBI on at least five occasions, alleging all sorts of things, including violations of the Patriot Act.

Nothing ever came of these ridiculous allegations. I was never even contacted about them by the FBI. But I can tell you that being reported to the FBI is a frightening thing. It caused me a great deal of concern.

So, please forgive me if I LOL over Thompson’s whining that the FBI is ignoring him.

Boston news radio station WBZ-1030 has a disturbing interview with Mayor Thomas Menino (left) conducted by on-air personality Laurie Kirby (GP: I can’t refer to her as a “reporter” based on the softballs she’s tossing to Menino here).

The interview took place on March 17th on the eve of the Massachusetts Legislature’s consideration of HB1423. The measure, a video game bill based on the Jack Thompson-authored Louisiana legislation which failed so miserably in federal court in 2006 (see: Judge Trashes Louisiana Government Over Failed Jack Thompson Law, Orders State to Pay Legal Fees), would seek to classify violent video games as “harmful to minors” in the same legal sense as pornography.

Here’s the text of the interview (as transcribed by GP). Note that Menino speaks of the proposed law as a “ban” throughout the interview and, amazingly, expresses a desire to enforce a lifestyle change on game players.

He also seems to be bothered by the image of kids playing handheld systems, as he references it at several different points in the interview:

Mayor Menino: …these video games and violence. And uh, ya know, kids - they play with them, they see them on TV all the times. You know, we gotta take some measures to restrict access to this violence. And everybody’s well, the First Amendment, uh, you can’t do it because this.

We always can’t do something. My measure, let’s do something to restrict young people from glorify- from being glorified with this violence. As I look at this, I watch little kids out there with these little video games. There’s shootings, there’s killings and all that. We’ve got to do something. Everybody says we can’t. I’m saying we can and let’s start now. Because there’s too much violence on the streets of America, presently, to uh, that is happening.

And so, as Mayor, I just want to put something out there, and let’s have a discussion about this. Everybody has a responsibility. I’m taking some of that responsibility, I know it’s controversial. But you gotta do something about banning the violence that young people are accustomed to today. And it’s a tough battle because they say, it’s a First Amendment. But we also have… rights in America to have a safe neighborhoods, safe streets, and safe world. And that’s what my discussion will be about - is about safety in our homes, safety in our streets, safety in our worlds.

Announcer: Well it’s interesting, because they are bringing up the First Amendment issue here, but what about pornography? I mean there are some - obviously, minors can’t buy pornography, so it’s not as if there aren’t some restrictions  already in place.

Menino: That’s right. They put pornography in the back of a room or someplace. Kids can’t buy it readily. But you can buy those video games right off the counter without showing any identification at all. And that’s part of our efforts is to try to restrict the access to these video games.

Announcer: So… what are you going to do, exactly here, and what woud the language be? You would ask for all Boston stores…?

Menino: Well I have a piece of legislation that will be heard up in the legislature tomorrow. My staff will be testifying on the ban and asking the legislature to put restrictions on the availability of these games and other activities that may enhance a young person’s ability to see these, uh, this violence and put it in their hands with the little video games they have there’s violence always happening. And it has to be restricted. I mean it’s just another way of saying, hey, we all have a responsibility and the video game industry also has a responsibility.

Announcer: Okay, so you would ban the outright sale of any kind of violent video game to what - anybody under the age of 17, or what?

Menino:  18. I’d restrict the sale of video games to anyone under the age of 18.

Announcer: So the store could still sell them, you’re just trying to protect the kids.

Menino: That’s right. I mean, you start early on. Kids start at 5, 6, 7 years old watching those video games. They think it’s a way of life and I’m trying to make them understand there’s a different way of life (emphasis GP’s) and, uh, as you go about your daily chores, you’ll see these kids with the video games in their hands. They’ll see it on the TV, see it everyplace you go, there’s violence that’s out there. If you watched one of our major sporting events last year, every video that was on there, every advertisement had violence in it. Our life is full of violence.

Announcer: You’re absolutely right. Now what would the penalty be for a store that didn’t card a kid and sold a kid a game?

Menino: We haven’t determined what the violence would be, I mean the penalty would be, but we’re looking at some serious, serious restriction on the sale of these video games.

Original WBZ audio here: (you’ll need to scroll down a bit for the March 17th interview).