Tech Brush Set

So, let's review some events he has been involved with!

Claimed that his opponent in the 1988 Dade County State Attorney race, Janet Reno, was a closet lesbian, suffered from various mental disorders as side effects of Parkinson's medication, and that she was being blackmailed by the Mafia.

Thompson became prominently involved in First Amendment issues, particularly concerning the possible effects of sexually violent material. Interestingly, the Florida Supreme Court ordered that he undergo psychiatric testing during this campaign, which he successfully passed. He later quipped that this made him one of the few sane lawyers working in the state

Thompson led the campaign against the 1989 2 Live Crew album As Nasty As They Wanna Be. In the 1990 federal trial which ruled the album obscene, he submitted material as an amicus curiae. He would reprise this role as a third-party "expert" in various videogames cases (see below). The court's decision led to the arrest of several members of the group and a record retailer, although the ruling was soon reversed.

In 1992, Thompson represented Oliver North's Freedom Alliance at the annual Time Warner shareholders' meeting, regarding Ice T's song Cop Killer. He put forward the argument that, should the song inflame listeners and lead to the killing of police officers, widows would be able to sue Time Warner over the content of the record. Time Warner subsequently dropped the performer. Ice T now portrays a police officer in the crime drama Law & Order: SVU.

In 1999 Thompson filed a $130 million federal products liability lawsuit against several entertainment companies on behalf of the parents of victims of the 1997 Paducah schoolhouse shootings. These included the producers and distributors of the movie The Basketball Diaries, Internet sex website operators and a variety of video game producers. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case in 2002.

Despite the failure of the Paducah lawsuit, Thompson has continued to pursue in court the makers of violent video games. For example, he has attempted to link the Columbine High School massacre and the Washington Sniper to first-person shooters, in the latter making various claims regarding God mode and the zoom function of Halo's sniper rifle and pistol. He has frequently attacked Rockstar, linking Rockstar North's Manhunt game and Grand Theft Auto series to a wide variety of murders, particularly those involving vehicles or weapons other than firearms.

More recently, he has attempted to persuade the lawyers defending Dustin Lynch, charged with the murder of JoLynn Mishne, that videogames were responsible for the defendant's actions. The lawyers have declined to do so, and Thompson has subsequently offered to defend Lynch for free, presumably in the hope that he may use and thus create credibility behind the "video games defense".

As well as propagating the "video games made me do it" defense, Thompson has also attempted to predict which violent crimes will be caused by specific videogames; in the Washington Sniper case, he was the first individual to suggest to the press that videogames may have been the source of the sniper's skills, a conjecture vindicated by the discovery of a ubiquitous PlayStation in the van used as a "mobile hideout" by the two men responsible. Dateline NBC reported that Malvo trained extensively on the Xbox game "Halo". Because of this report, Thompson believes that " Microsoft should be sued and held liable for money damages by the victims of the Beltway Snipers." It is important to note, however, that John Allen Muhammad was a former soldier with significant rifle training, as predicted by the police, and that Lee Boyd Malvo's shooting skills could have easily been the result of instruction by Muhammad.

In addition, Thompson blames the Columbus, Ohio sniper shootings on video games since it was found that Charles McCoy Jr. had a Playstation 2 and the game "The Getaway". Thompson also proactively linked Grand Theft Auto III to violent crime in general, although he failed to do so in the case of Manhunt.

In one of a series of "videogame violence" interviews by CBS, he compared Doug Lowenstein of the Entertainment Software Association to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, although the response has since been edited. Months thereafter, Thompson instead compared Lowenstein to Adolf Hitler, in a wordy personal attack nominally veiled as an open letter. In the June 2005 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, Thompson was interviewed and again discussed Lowenstein, this time implying he was worse than Saddam Hussein. In July 2005, Thompson released the aforementioned open letter, simultaneously praising Hillary Clinton's call for federal game legislation and targeting Lowenstein with yet another barrage of personal attacks.

In July 2005, he once again attacked Rockstar North, specifically the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game was found to contain explicit sexual content on the disc that the developers had removed all in-game access to, but had failed to remove from the disc itself. The so called "Hot Coffee" sex minigame involved the game's main character and his girlfriend. The content was inaccessible from the unmodified game (and therefore would not, by custom, be considered a part of the game), but through 3rd party alterations unapproved by and unassociated with developer Rockstar Games, one could access the material and play the sex minigame. As a result of Thompson's attacks, as well as attacks from many other activists against video games, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) gave in to pressure and changed the games rating from "Mature" (M) to "Adults Only" (AO).

On August 3, 2005, Thompson claimed that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has within it code that can be brought out through similar devices as the ones used to obtain access to the Hot Coffee modification, when the player's character enters a strip club with what would otherwise be a non-nude sex scene. He has claimed that the code allows for full frontal nudity and sexual activity of an extremely vulgar nature. When questioned about his latest accusation among others, his only response was two words: not interested.

On July 22, 2005, after the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas case was settled, Thompson sought after The Sims 2, citing that it was "worse than Hot Coffee", due to the availability of a mod that removes the censorship fields from all characters when they are nude, allowing pedophiles to see computer-rendered nude children. In another instance, he claimed "Sims 2, the latest version of the Sims video game franchise...contains, according to video game news sites, full frontal nudity, including nipples, penises, labia, and pubic hair." He added an accusation that EA and Maxis were cooperating with the mod community to peddle vile to minors. In reality, even with the "blur" removed, The Sims 2 contains no such details; the characters have no visible reproductive organs or pubic hair whatsoever, similar to children's dolls, a

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