Jack Thompson Spams Utah Senate, May Face Legal Action

eldavojohn writes "Yesterday, GamePolitics ran an interesting story about the Utah Senate President threatening Jack Thompson with the CAN-SPAM Act. You might recall Utah being Jack's last hope and hold-out after being disbarred in Florida and more or less made a mockery everywhere else. Well, from Utah's Senate Site, we get the picture of what Jack is up to now: spamming his last friends on the planet. The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting on Senate President Michael Waddoups' statements: 'I asked you before to remove me from your mailing list. I supported your bill but because of the harassment will not again. If I am not removed, I will turn you over to the AG for legal action.' The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Waddoups confirmed on Tuesday that he would attempt to pursue legal action under the federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 against Jack Thompson."

Finally

[thefear]

Will a spammer finally be prosecuted? It seems to me like a lot of these spam suites just don't stick

So, what was it?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Did he manage to spam them with anything interesting? I figure that, if this guy can somehow think that putting porn in a court filing is a good idea, anything is possible when he gets on the internet.

This is just more proof

[Spazztastic]

This is just more proof that Jack Thompson, much like Steve Balmer, was put on this earth to be an infinite source of entertainment. As long as people like Jack try to attack violent video games and remove them from the shelves, they will never succeed. His tactics of idiocy and harassment don't seem to work.

I wonder if anybody has ever pointed him to /. and everybody who hates him...

Re:Finally

[fictionpuss]

You know, not *everything* written about Jack Thompson is true. A while back I went to the trouble of tracking down his email address to quiz him over some outrageous comment.

I was somewhat surprised, but more disappointed to receive a civil and level-headed response.

How does this work?

[digitig]

I don't know the politics behind this -- am I correct in reading it as Waddoup being fine with everybody else being spammed, and only objecting when he discovered that he could get spammed too?

Re:First Amendment

[SBacks]

You have a very interesting point. However, he's petitioning the Utah state government, which he is not a constituent of. Does the 1st apply to just your local/state/national government, or to every local/state government?

Any lawyers around to clarify?

Re:How does this work?

[orclevegam]

I read it more as most spam comes from random relays over in China which we can't really do anything about, but here is an instance where it's trivially easy to point out exactly who is sending the spam. It gets even easier from a prosecution standpoint because Jack is too simple (read boneheaded) to even consider trying to deny sending the e-mails, rather he's going to try to argue that the e-mails constitute protected speech under the first amendment (oh the irony), and just to dig himself a bit deeper start throwing allegations of corruption, bribery, and conspiracy at anyone who disagrees with him (as if the only way someone might not have exactly the same views as him is if they've been bought by some megacorp).

Re:First Amendment

[Animaether]

I'm no big fan of Jack Thompson, but in addition to what you said about any CAN-SPAM bits, this (if true) caught my eye..

Senate President Michael Waddoups' statements: 'I asked you before to remove me from your mailing list. I supported your bill but because of the harassment will not again. If I am not removed,

"Stop sending me spam or I will not support your bill" sounds dangerously close to "send me $ or I will not support your bill". I realize that word on the street is that all politicians are corrupt anyway, but a public admission to in my opinion a less-than-honorable ethic? Yikes.

If Thompson's bill was worth supporting before, then his bill should still be worth supporting after annoying e-mails, spam or for all I care: murder. If it was only worth supporting because he liked the guy, then it was never worth supporting to begin with. Either way, Senator President Michael Waddoups needs to take a real close look at what he said.

We're not writing off ReiserFS just because Hans Reiser was convicted of murder - this should be no different.
( ReiserFS is being written off for technical reasons in many situations, but that's a different story on a different website. )

hmm

[immakiku]

"I supported your bill but because of the harassment will not again". Why is this senator publicly letting personal affairs affect legislation? I hope he is never re-elected.

Re:This is just more proof

[Spazztastic]

What a bizarre comparision. As much as you may hate him because of your personal issues, Steve Ballmer is one of the richest guys on the planet, therefore by most definitions is pretty successful. Jack Thompson is just a criminal who's not quite been caught yet.

I compared them in a sense of their antics and how hilarious they are. Anything from Jack Thompson asking a judge to declare the Florida Bar unconstitutional [wikipedia.org] to Steve Ballmer throwing a chair and declaring he's going to "Fucking kill google." [wikipedia.org]

Re:This use of CAN-SPAM is unconstitutional

[_Sprocket_]

Can you imagine if a Congressman was legally required to read every piece of correspondence and listen to every speaker? You could paralyze a government by hiring enough speakers / writers to take up every available moment of the Congressman's time (and then still file a lawsuit because your hired army never got their time due to waiting in line behind all the other hired armies).

Re:Finally

[nomadic]

This guy isn't a spammer in the typical sense. He's a hack 'lawyer' that's been permanently disbarred in Florida for false statements, disparaging remarks, and humiliating litigants.

It was funny, right after being disbarred he sent a long, impassioned letter to all of the rest of us in the Florida Bar asking us to rally around him. I always wondered if anyone did.

Re:Finally

[PitaBred]

That veneer of lucidity is the only thing that got him his notoriety. Most crazy people that aren't locked up can pretend to be sane for long enough to stay mostly out of trouble.

That'll teach anybody to pay attention to him

[sirwired]

This episode serves the Utah Senate right. It was their bright idea to take up his bill, despite the fact that it's chief proponent is a 100% Pure, Unadulterated, Nutcase.

SirWired

unfortunately

[GregNorc]

As much as I dislike Thompson, it's already well accepted that we have the same right to e-mail legislature as we do to write them letters. I remember there was a lawsuit over a similar issue (in California I think) where someone in government was getting a ton of emails about a pending bill, and they set up a filter to delete them as they came in.