Referee Recommends Disbarment For Jack Thompson 280
spielermacher writes "GamePolitics is reporting that Jack Thompson — the lawyer every gamer loves to hate — has apparently lost his court case and is facing disbarment. The Referee in the case has gone beyond the Florida Bar's request for a 10-year disbarment and is recommending a lifetime ban. From the Final Report issued by the court: '... the Respondent has demonstrated a pattern of conduct to strike out harshly, extensively, repeatedly and willfully to simply try to bring as much difficulty, distraction and anguish to those he considers in opposition to his causes. He does not proceed within the guidelines of appropriate professional behavior ...' All I can say is that it's about time."
Re:Thank Goodness (Score:3, Interesting)
Soon, Jack Thompson for Senetor/representative (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:so what (Score:4, Interesting)
People stopped listening to him a long time ago.
Ah no, there you're wrong. Never underestimate the entertainment value of a nutbar in vocal mode.
What they've done is stop taking him seriously. I'm a long way from being tired hearing about him.
In my opinion, one of the best treatments of his obviously deranged state is that done by de-rez http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/de-rez/55-Jack-Thompson-The-Movie [escapistmagazine.com]
Serious coffee on keyboard time.
Re:Good riddance to bad advocate (Score:4, Interesting)
It may be a reasonable position, but is it a correct one? So far nobody's been able to come up with any hard numbers agreeing with it. All the results are either "no correlation" or "kids who play violent video games are slightly less likely to be violent than average".
The position that if you're standing in the airlock of the ISS and give a good shove off, sending yourself flying away from the station and towards Earth, you'll burn up in the atmosphere is also a reasonable one. It just happens not to be correct. One orbit later you'll find yourself bumping off the ISS again. Common sense might say one thing, but orbital mechanics says another. I suspect the same thing's at work: common sense might say that violent games should beget violent acts, but reality and psychology don't work the way common sense says they should. Nothing new there, lots of things that're true violate common sense.
Who will replace him? (Score:5, Interesting)
Penny Arcade made a very good point [penny-arcade.com] a few years ago, when Thompson was threatening them:
Now that it is even more obvious that Thompson is a nutcase, who is going to take his place? Someone competent in that role? That is a scary thought.
IANAL (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems to be in Florida only.
If he is disbarred there, can he pass the bar in another state?
Re:Good riddance to bad advocate (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed. Video games seem to have taken the place of tabletop roleplaying games as THE NEXT BIG EVIL THAT WILL TURN OUR KIDS INTO PSYCHOPATHS AND AWAY FROM JESUS!!!! It's the same sort of cranks with the same kinds of junk science, badly interpreted or even completely fraudulent statistics and with the same underlying support from the enemies of freedom; the Religious Right.
I remember being a kid and having my parents all concerned that because I was playing D&D and Battletech that I was well on the way to the lunatic asylum. There were no lack of Jack Thompsons back then who were simply liars and lunatics.
Re:so what (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:so what (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good riddance to bad advocate (Score:2, Interesting)
Have to agree with you on the not burn up part. But I'm kind of iffy on bumping into the ISS part. Assuming the shove was retrograde you would find your perigee to be slight slower then the ISS and your orbit slightly more eccentric so what would happen is that you would continue to distance yourself from the ISS at a rate nearly equal to the rate at which you were shoved. Many many orbits later you would find yourself bumping back into the ISS but the amount of time it would take for that means that something else would have likely disturbed your orbit (likely atmospheric drag) and you would burn up.
Of course you would run out of Oxygen before any of this happens though. Other then that a good analogy.
AC because of mod points.
Re:so what (Score:2, Interesting)
I think they still have Karl Rove appear as a "guest commentator", so their opinion of their viewers is frighteningly low.
On the other hand, Rove is the Joseph Goebbels of the neoconservative Republicans...
Re:Thank Goodness (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I believe it was a federal court that decided that JT would not be allowed to file court papers with them, unless they were also signed by another attorney. That didn't really have anything to do with this bar trial, other than JT trying to cut off the bar trial by going to the federal court, which slapped him down. I'm just a layman, so check out these links for better info: link 1 [gamepolitics.com] link 2 [gamepolitics.com]
What has happened, is that the bar trial judge has found JT guilty, and her recommendation is PERMANENT disbarment, which wasn't mentioned in the summary. It's old news that he was found guilty, but we originally thought he'd only get disbarred for 10 years. Now it's being made permanent AND he has to pay costs.
Re:Good riddance to bad advocate (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I had a chance to test this. Before Army Basic Training, I spent hours on the videogame "America's Army", which has a level that is an accurate representation of the Fort Benning range. I remember it was pretty difficult to score 'expert' in order to be allowed to go to sniper training, which helped a lot in multiplayer.
Well, in real life, I found my training carried over. It took a few practice sessions to get used to the weapon, but pretty soon shooting the real m16 felt like "clicking" on targets with the mouse. I found that I could shoot very rapidly and accurately, and easily scored 38/40 hits on qualification day.
It was easier and I scored higher than in the video game, ironically. Kind of like how I found a real car is easier to drive than a Grand Theft Auto car if you are using a PC keyboard for control.