Grand Theft Auto Lawsuit

The first thing that jumped out at me when I was reading about this lawsuit was that the grandma who purchased this game, bought it for her 14 year old grandson. The game was initially rated M for mature which means it was meant for people aged 17 and up. Not 14 year olds. So she should have never bought the game for her grandson in the first place. After all of the criticism that the game got for these sexual scenes, the company changed the rating to Adult Only. So that means 18 and up right? Is there really that much of a difference between the two? Having said that, I don’t think that it was right of the game company to have these scenes hidden. It was deceptive to people buying the game that were under 18, and I’m sure that with the warning of excessive violence that was on the box there wasn’t a warning of sexual material. That is not ok. I know nothing about video games, so ‘hidden areas’ that need to be unlocked with ‘secret codes’ is pretty foreign, but I can’t imagine that it’s hard for a kid of any age to find the secret codes to unlock these hidden scenes on the internet somewhere.

Maybe the gaming company made a mistake by putting these scenes in their video game. But the purchaser also made a mistake by buying an age inappropriate game for her young grandson. I’m sure that this happens all the time, but when an adult willingly buys a game that is clearly rated for kids 17 and up and gives it to someone under 17, is that the gaming companies fault? I agree that the company made a mistake by releasing this version of the video game to the public without the correct label and warning, and going forward I would hope that it wouldn’t happen again. I don’t think that it justifies a lawsuit. This 14 year old shouldn’t be playing a game rated M in the first place.

Blog Comments

I commented on The Zero Star's blog:

It's refreshing to hear positive comments about lawyers. I'm sure a very small percentage of law students go through school with career goals of screwing people over and being dishonest. Maybe that’s just me being an optimistic person, but I feel that the majority of lawyers are there to help you, and if they help you they end up helping themselves as well.

MySpace Hoax

When I was growing up we didn’t have myspace or facebook, and for most of my childhood the internet wasn’t widely available and certainly wasn’t a part of everyday life for a child. Now kids spend way too much time on computers and tend to live in a fictional world where your popularity is based on how many facebook friends you have, and the ‘cool kids’ don’t just ignore you at lunch, they post terrible things on the internet for everyone to see. What happened to Megan Meier is an example of how horrific this bullying can be. The worst part about this case is that it wasn’t another teenage girl making Megan’s life miserable, it was an adult woman with children of her own. Why Lori decided to create this fictional boy who pretended to have a crush on Megan and then break her heart and spread terrible rumors about her is unthinkable. “Both ethics and morals are concerned with standards of right and wrong.” (Essentials of Business Law, Liuzzo, pg. 19) While Lori Drew did not break one specific law, she certainly doesn’t have a very strong moral code. Everything about what she, and everyone involved did was wrong and it resulted in an already depressed little girl taking her own life.

To read that she was found guilty of something is a relief, but to find that she wasn’t found guilty of everything she was charged with is somewhat of a disappointment. While there are no laws in place that allowed Lori Drew to be charged with Megan’s suicide, hopefully something good will come from this tragedy and new laws will be put in place. “A precedent is a court decision on which later courts rely in similar cases. In some instances, a court may be influenced by precedent, in other cases it may not.” Essentials of Business Law, Liuzzo, pg. 5) This case has certainly raised awareness of internet bullying crimes, but hopefully the outcome will not be a precedent for other cases of this nature. People need to be held responsible for their actions, and if Lori Drew were found guilty of all of the charges brought against her anyone who may have thought about doing something like this, a child or an adult, would have second thoughts knowing that they would get in serious trouble.

Laywers...

Lawyers are an expensive and necessary solution to getting out of trouble. I understand that there are many crooked lawyers, and like we discussed in class today there are lawyers that use their connections to in turn make money off people. But in the long run people are better off having a crooked lawyer represent them then not having a lawyer at all. Personally I haven’t had much experience with lawyers (besides them being my friends). But I know that if I get in trouble I need to call one, and I hope the one that I call will be a good one. In the end it’s all about connections. Chances are you are going to call a lawyer that you know, have used or know someone who has used them and gotten favorable results. If you have a good friend of family member who hired a lawyer that lost a case for them, I’m sure you wouldn’t recommend them to anyone else or use them yourself.

One thing that I will never understand is how a lawyer can defend someone that they know is guilty, and on top of that, actually be happy that this guilty person doesn’t get convicted and punished for the crime that they committed. I have to believe that these lawyers are de-sensitized to the pain and suffering that their client may have inflicted upon others and are instead focused on their paychecks and the satisfaction of winning. I believe that you have to be able to trust your lawyer and hope that they are doing what’s best for you, and not what’s best for themselves or their firm which I can only imagine is a difficult thing to decipher. With all of the advertisements and commercials of lawyers promising you everything, how can you really know what to believe?