Gaming industry off the hook
Appeals court throws out school shooting case
Five years ago a teenage boy shot several students coming out of a prayer meeting at a high school in Kentucky. Since then the families of the three girls who were killed in the shooting have been trying to sue twenty five companies that they held responsible for turning the boy into a killer, including Nintendo, Sega, Sony and id Software, as well as pornographic websites and movie companies. The case was thrown out of court last April, and this week an Appeals Court panel turned down a request to reopen it. Hopefully this will bring an end to the crusade, although the lawyers behind the case are still considering taking the case to the US Supreme Court. In a rare display of common sense, one of the three judges who heard the appeal commented that "it is simply too far a leap from shooting characters on a video screen (an activity undertaken by millions) to shooting people in a classroom (an activity undertaken by a handful, at most)". Related Feature - Filipino girl killed over smack talk