Ghettopoly: A Game that Bashes the Ghetto

Would you giggle if you saw a big, black man with a gun in his left hand and Malt liquor in his right hand? Would sticking up a bank tickle your funny bone? If "You got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack" and collected $50, would you crack up? No pun intended.

For over six months, a Taiwanese man named David Chang had been selling the game he created called Ghettopoly with Yahoo! MTV, the same television station that categorized Sisqo and TLC as hip-hop, was one of his research tools, along with video games and lyrics from hip-hop and rap music. Where he got the idea to purposely misspell Dr. King's name and picture him scratching his private parts is unknown at the time.

Ghettopoly pieces include forty crack houses, seventeen projects, seven game pieces (pimp, ho, 40 oz. liquor bottle, machine gun, marijuana leaf, basketball and crack). On the Ghettopoly game board are landmarks like Chico's Bodega, Smitty's XXX Peep Show, and Trailer Trash Court.

On October 13, 2003, Yahoo! shut down Ghettopoly.com (the website where Chang's game could be bought). I sent him an e-mail about his game and received an automated response that he was "...pissed off." He plans to "...use all legal resources to see that it will never happen again to anyone else", referring to Yahoo! shutting down his account. He explains that he's "...not entirely sure why Yahoo! has decided to shut down the website" although Yahoo! thoroughly explains their Yahoo! Terms of Service. The main rule that Yahoo sent him to clarify his closed account stated that in rule 3.2, Yahoo! reserves the right to refuse to host or continue to host any store which it believes in its sole discretion: (1) offers for sale goods or services, or uses or displays materials that are illegal, obscene, vulgar, offensive, dangerous, or are otherwise inappropriate."