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Unfortunately, the "games aren't speech" comments attributed to me at the Delaware House Judiciary Committee hearing were not fully reported. I went on to note that the controller's use as a data input device as well as the means by which the Dual Shock controller gives biofeedback renders the entire mechanism a device, which of course it is.
It is this argument that carried the day at our November 3 hearing in Alabama on the First Amendment, which I alone argued, against the mighty and unethical Blank Rome, and we won the hearing on my argument. So, kids, you can fuss and fume all you want, and the guy who showed up in a T-shirt at the hearing can be as upset as he wants, but nobody but an extremist ideologue thinks that mature-rated games whose "M" label is an admission of the harm to minors of the games thinks that a video game is "political speech" under any sane reading of the First Amendment.
If you all don't know what "political speech" is, then you need to review some court cases on the subject. As to whether games are speech of any kind, please note that "speech" doesn't cause hand injuries which are warned of on the Dual Shock Controller.
A video game isn't any more "speech" than a gun is. Both are devices.
And for all of you who think that the First Amendment protects everything, tell Dennis McCauley to stop acting like a child and preventing me from posting here through Live Journal. You all have missed a ton of bad news for the video game industry simply because Dennis McCauley can't, as a journalist wannabe, handle the truth.
Jack Thompson
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[not in citation given]

 

Jack Thompson

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"ESRB ABOUT TO BE JUNKED
As you delightful pixelante thugs know, I prepped Senatory Hillary Clinton for her July 2005 news conference on "Hot Coffee." Prepped Best Buy's lapdog, Dr. David Walsh, who stood at her side, for it, too.
At that news conference, which I made possible, Senator Clinton stated "the video game ratings system is broken."
She was correct, and here is the latest proof how thoroughly it is broken, coming out of liberal beehive Harvard, no less.
The ESA's and the ESRB's self-policing house of cards has rested upon the demonstrably false assumption that the game ratings are a) accurate, and b) that mature-rated games will not be sold to kids with no parents in sight.
Now we know that both a) and b) are totally false, as the Federal Trade Commission study last week found that roughly 40% of the time retailers of video games will sell mature-rated games to kids under the age of 17. You can't warn a parent as to content when the parent is not there, and now we know, thanks to Harvard, that even if they were there the descriptors on the back are phony. What a freaking surprise! People have been saying this for years, including Leeland Yee.
In fact, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas ought to be AO-rated, not M. Yee has been saying that, and I have been saying that, and now Harvard proves we are right. Vice City was one of the games Harvard studied in coming to this obvious conclusion.
What Dennis McCauley here will not report is an even more damning study that came out of Harvard yesterday! It finds that the Grand Theft Auto games do in fact cause harm to adult males, between the ages of 18 and 21, who play them.
All of you know-nothing obscurantists here whose frontal lobes have been immobilized by obsessive game play (you don't know who you are, obviously, because your powers of self-reflection are gone as well) need to deal with the FACT that yet another peer-reviewed medical journal states, as of yesterday, that these violent games cause HARM.
 :You will continue to bleat like little sheep that the proof is not out there. It is out there, at Harvard no less.
You all can't handle the truth. You can't handle the fact that God is in control of this debate, not bought clowns like Doug Lowenstein who is paid to say whatever the industry wants him to say.
The evidence is in. The Grand Theft Auto games cause harm. This is the core of our case in Alabama. We could not have paid $500,000 and gotten a better medical study showing the harmful effects of GTA on teens. But now Harvard, wholly independent of our case in Alabama, has found as a scientific fact that GTA harms those who play it.
This finding is a gift from God that has fallen into our laps in the Alabama case, one week after the Alabama Supreme Court agrees with me that these games are not First Amendment protected speech for minors.
Hooah indeed! Jack Thompson, Your Video Game Industry's Worst Nightmare

 

Jack Thompson

 

I have proven here that Hal Halpin doesn't want you to know the truth about his failed game ratings system. See below.
I have also proven here that Dennis McCauley was forced by the St. Paul Pioneer Press to stop lying about being a "columnist" for them. He had to remove that lie from this site.
Now, you can claim you are defenders of "freedom of expression" all you want, but when an Internet "news" site continues to post story after story about me, lying about me, promoting games that depict killing me, etc., then I am going to respond.
You all are total hypocrites here. You think it is off the wall simply to say that adult, mature-rated games should not be sold to minors, because you are big First Amendment defenders, yet when someone like me comes along and shows your hypocrisy and the dangers of that hypocrisy, and of the willingness of prevaricating lobbyists like Hal Halpin to hide what the industry does and how it does it, then you all want to "ban" me from my rejoinders.
Make up your freaking minds! Are you for freedom of expression or not? Your real problem is that you can't handle the truth, you can't handle the fact that God orders the world, not Sony, and you can't handle the fact that in a free country you have to put up with people like me. Deal with it, kids. Jack Thompson

 

Jack Thompson

 

There Is Absolutely NOTHING Perplexing About This Story
Real defenders of the First Amendment, such as Leland Yee and myself, understand that what constitutionalists call "political speech" is fully protected by the Constitution. What is not protected is the marketing of adult-rated porn and violence to kids. To the extent that the latter is tolerated, the real First Amendment is cheapened.
What is hypocritical here is not the stance of Yee and me, but rather the knuckleheads who exult in their "pixelante" status--which is defined as someone who tries to shut up video game critics--and then, in the name of freedom of expression, threaten me, my wife, and my right to speak out on the issues of the day.
The only censors, the only opponents of the First Amendment, are gamers who will not tolerate any dissent on their masturbatory game of choice.
Jack Thompson

 

Jack Thompson

 

As a public service, here are some news items you won't read at GP, because they are actually true:
1. The "rave party" killer of ten in Seattle, Kyle Huff, appears to have been a hardcore violent game consumer. More on that as it develops further.
2. The reason "Office Massacre" was yanked was because I and others like me are out here, not because of any sense within the industry.
3. We're about to file a huge lawsuit in another state arising out of murders by a hardcore GTA: Vice City player. Our success last week in Alabama before the Supreme Court gives us tremendous momentum going into this new case.
4. This GP site serves as a constant reminder of the damage to young brains caused by video games. Here, the posters make it clear that reality, found in hard cold facts about the harm done by video games are of no interest whatsoever. Dennis McCauley's bizarre story here asking "How long will it be until the "influence of violent games" argument is finally put to rest?" is a perfect proof of this mental flight from reality.
How long, Dennis? As long as the brain scan studies at Harvard and the massive findings by the American Psychological Association are sitting there as an irrefutable proof, scientifically, of what the video game industry can't rebut: That what you dump into your brain has behavioral consequences. This has been known for only, oh, 3000 years.
5. Finally, Jack Thompson is slowly and surely destroying all of the SLAPP Bar complaint efforts against him. Dennis McCauley has been provided the information, but he doesn't want you to know, as he is still seething, like a little child, from my success in having the St. Paul Pioneer Press warn him to stop misleading everyone about his "columnist" status with that paper. He was not and is not, and they made him knock it off. Jack Thompson
PS: The good guys always win, which is why I'm winning this fight. Hooah!

 

Jack Thompson

 

Actually, I am correct, of course, as video games are actually devices, simulators. A lawn mower is not speech because it makes noise.You really need to get to a law library and see what is actually protected by the First Amendment. I won the hearing on this issue in Alabama, and you did not. Hooah! Jack Thompson

 

Jack Thompson