ESA President and CEO Mike Gallagher stated that the “ruling is a win for Chicago’s citizens, the video game industry and, above all, the First Amendment.”

Bus advertising is a persistent hot spot for first amendment litigation.  After viewing many of the banned game ads (one is pictured above), I think the court came to the proper conclusion.  The ads themselves are in no way obscene or inappropriate, so I find it difficult to believe that the CTA had any compelling interested in limiting this commercial speech in a public forum.

Read the full press release here.

Answer: E.S.S. Entertainment 2000, Inc. v. Rock Star Videos, Inc.

In this recently decided case, The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit considered “whether a producer of a video game in the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ series has a defense under the First Amendment against a claim of trademark infringement.”

In this case, E.S.S. Entertainment 2000 alleged that the virtual “Pig Pen” strip club in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas infringed its trademark and trade dress associated with it’s Los Angeles-based “Play Pen” Gentlemen’s Club. However, the court sided with Take Two Interactive/Rockstar and found that the game’s content is protected by the First Amendment. The full opinion is certainly worth a read, as it is full of humorous quips:

Both San Andreas and the Play Pen offer a form of low-brow entertainment; besides this general similarity, they have nothing in common. The San Andreas Game is not complementary to the Play Pen; video games and strip clubs do not go together like a horse and carriage or, perish the thought, love and marriage.

Or perhaps the following:

Undeterred, ESS also argues that, because players are free to ignore the storyline and spend as much time as they want at the Pig Pen, the Pig Pen can be considered a significant part of the Game, leading to confusion. But fans can spend all nine innings of a baseball game at the hot dog stand; that hardly makes Dodger Stadium a butcher’s shop. In other words, the chance to attend a virtual strip club is unambiguously not the main selling point of the Game.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the court’s logic and hope to see more First Amendment protection for trademarks used in artistic expression.

Twenty-five year old Tim Reid of New Zealand was recently on trial for his December 29, 2007 assault on a police officer followed by the theft of the officer’s car. What makes Reid’s case interesting is that his attorney, Chris Nicholls, claimed that Reid’s actions were the result of his upbringing, which included compulsively playing Grand Theft Auto.

Reid pleaded guilty to “aggravated wounding, escaping custody, reckless driving, dangerous driving, unlawfully taking a motor vehicle and two charges of failing to stop, breach of supervision orders and being an unlicensed driver.” A New Zealand District Court judge sentenced Reid to five years in jail and disqualified him from driving for two years. The judge reportedly said that “Reid was hardwired for violence and anti-social behaviour and programmed by his recreational pursuits.”

New Zealand’s Family First national director Bob McCoskrie, spoke out concerning the case, stating his belief that violent video games pose a far greater threat than violent television shows and films:

Rather than observing the law breaker you take on the role of the lawbreaker …we think it desensitises certain people.

It is interesting to see the media jump on video games as the main culprit in this case, particularly when Reid’s upbringing also included sexual and physical abuse, marijuana use at the age of five, and chronic alcohol and substance abuse.

The Internet has been rife with Grand Theft Auto IV stories as of late. It seems as though any website with a merely tangential relationship to video games has mentioned Rockstar’s blockbuster and many gaming-centric sites have turned into little more than Grand Theft Auto RSS feeds. With record-breaking sales, unprecedented critical acclaim, and GTA’s uncanny ability to agitate pundits and parents alike, it is no wonder that people are finding plenty to talk about.

Laws of Play has been laying low and avoiding most of the hype because all that has really happened is a lot of political posturing. Or, at least, that was the case. Yesterday, Reuters reported that Grand Theft Auto publisher Take Two Interactive filed suit against the Chicago Transit Authority (“CTA”) earlier this week. Take Two alleges that by pulling advertisements for Grand Theft Auto IV from public transportation and bus terminals, the CTA has breeched contract and violated the company’s First Amendment rights. The suit seeks an order for the transit authority to run the ads as well as monetary damages of at least $300,000.

A Fox News broadcast (below) condemning the CTA for promoting the “unapologetically violent” video game is reportedly the cause for the recent action.

What’s interesting is that the CTA is not the only public transportation authority to pull ads for the controversial video game. Late last April the Miami-Dade transit authority similarly pulled GTA IV ads from its buses and stations after attorney Jack Thompson complained about them to Miami Mayor Carlos Alvarez.

There is no word whether Take Two Interactive will pursue any sort of legal action against Miami-Dade Transit. However, GamePolitics conducted a brief interview with Miami-Dade Transit Deputy Director Hugh Chen and Marketing Director Michael DeCossio concerning the pulling of the ads:

[GamePolitics]: 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…?

[Miami-Dade Transit]: 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.

After inquiring into the organization’s administrative decision-making process, GamePolitics continued:

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.

As GamePolitics astutely points out, this is a very curious answer. Miami-Dade Transit seems to believe that, as a governmental transit agency, they may be held to a lesser standard than a quasi-governmental transit agency — an odd conclusion when one considers the fact that First Amendment protections are held against state governments and not private parties.

Laws of Play will continue to cover both of these situations as they develop.

Ben Kuchera over at Ars Technica reports that a surprising number of UPS workers are being fired for stealing copies of Rockstar’s [tag]Grand Theft Auto IV[/tag]. Despite the collective cries of [tag]gamers[/tag] that GTA doesn’t lead to real [tag]crime[/tag], it seems that the opposite is occasionally true–if not in the way we expect. A UPS employee reports that this phenomenon is novel to GTA IV and has not occurred on this scale with previous big-name releases. Three workers were fired in a 24-hour period and further questioning into suspect conduct will be conducted in the near future.

“As long as the people loading the packages are doing their jobs, it’s easy to track down,” [a] source told Ars. “It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? It’s a game about theft, and people are stealing it.” His eyes began to shine as he said, “and I get to terminate them.”

While the shiny-eyed joy of firing employees is mildly disheartening, the fact that individuals are willing to commit theft and potentially lose their jobs over an early copy of a [tag]video game[/tag] is unbelievable. The informant at UPS further reported that these copies are largely being stolen for personal use, not for resale at inflated prices. No word on whether the thieves are going for the standard or collector’s editions, but I imagine that lockbox would be hard to stuff in your pants.

We all knew that people who play Grand Theft Auto games can be very dangerous as every last on of them turns into a homicidal mainiac, but did you know that the game itself is a threat to the safety and well being of people too? In fact one man feels so threatened by the game that he has filed a restraining order against the game. That man is prisoner 40948-018, a.k.a. Jonathan Lee Riches, and he feels that GTAIV and its predecessors are a direct threat to his well-being.

Riches, who was put into FCI Williamsburg in South Carolina, a medium security prison that is currently home to 1,638 male inmates, for wire-fraud, claims in his filing (seen above) that “Defendants contributed to Plaintiff committing identity theft. Defendant’s games show sex, drugs and violence which offends me.” But this isn’t the only horror the as of yet unreleased game has committed upon this troubled soul. Riches also states, “Defendants put me in prison. I face imminent danger from violent inmates who played Grand Theft Auto who will knock me out and take my gold Jesus cross.” Damn you, GTA! Damn you to hell for what you have done to this man!

As if this wasn’t enough for one man to endure, the Job-like Riches filed a complaint against NFL quarterback Michael Vick last year for “$63,000,000,000 billion dollars,” alleging Vick had ties to Al Qaeda. Sadly, he did not win. He has also unsuccessfully sued Martha Stuart, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, President George W. Bush, Steve Jobs and Britney Spears. Will the horror wrought by these foul people on poor Mr. Riches ever end? I for one hope that GTAIV is allowed no where near this man, for sake of his gold Jesus cross and all that is good in the world.

Take 2 Interactive recently announced that a settlement has been reached in the Hot Coffee Mod class action. Pending final approval from the US Dictrict Court for the Southern District of New York, members of the class will be entitled to exchange their game disc for a new disc without the offending content or recover $35 if they meet several criteria.¹

According to the press release, Take 2 has agreed to spend at least $1.025 million on settlement benefits, and the settlement generally caps the defendants’ out-of-pocket costs at no more than $2.75 million, in addition to the costs of providing notice to class members and paying a fee to plaintiffs’ counsel.

Take 2 CEO, Ben Feder, also commented on the settlement in the press release:

If the case had continued, we believe the court would have agreed that Take-Two was not liable for consumers acting independently to modify their games with third-party hardware and software to access normally inaccessible content… Nonetheless, we believe it is in the best interest of the Company to avoid protracted and costly litigation to prove our case and to finally put this matter behind us.

For the full press release: Take 2 Games

1. The members of the class must swear that they (1) bought a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas before July 20, 2005, (2) were offended and upset by the ability of consumers to modify and alter the game’s content using the third-party Hot Coffee modification, (3) would not have bought the game had they known that consumers could modify and alter the game’s content using the third-party Hot Coffee modification, and (4) would have returned the game, upon learning the game could be modified and altered, if they thought this possible.