Techdirt. Stories filed under "suicide" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "suicide"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:40:50 PDT From Lori Drew To Dharun Ravi, Punishing People Based On Others' Suicides Is A Mistake Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120319/04115818155/lori-drew-to-dharun-ravi-punishing-people-based-others-suicides-is-mistake.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120319/04115818155/lori-drew-to-dharun-ravi-punishing-people-based-others-suicides-is-mistake.shtml Lori Drew case, involving charges brought against a woman who stupidly set up a fake user account on MySpace to try to find out what was going on with a girl the woman's daughter had some issues with. The "fake account" was of a boy who the real 13-year-old girl became very friendly with. At some point, the "boy" turned on the girl, said some nasty things to her -- including "the world would be better off without" her -- and cut off communications. The girl committed suicide soon after. Lots and lots of people wanted Lori Drew brought up on charges for the girl's death. While we found Drew's actions to be incredibly immature and ridiculous, we were much more concerned with efforts to pin the suicide on her. Of course, the law wouldn't allow such a thing, so prosecutors trumped up some charges, involving a claim that she committed a felony by not following MySpace's terms of service. She was found guilty of a misdemeanor (not felony) charge -- which was then dropped by the judge, who wasn't comfortable with the ruling.

Of course, this did lead to a flurry of attempts to pass "cyberbullying" laws -- which try to make it a crime of some sort to be a jerk online. This is problematic for a variety of reasons, especially since it raises significant First Amendment issues, in part because "being a jerk" is extremely subjective. But the worst part is that much of what is considered to be "jerky" behavior is determined after the other party commits suicide. This is extremely problematic -- because whether or not your actions are seen as criminal depends almost entirely on how someone else reacts to them. If they shake off your actions, then you're fine. If they commit suicide, you get punished. Thus, the incentive then is actually for kids to seriously hurt themselves, if someone acts in a mean way towards them, as that increases the likelihood of the bully getting punished. That doesn't sound like a good incentive system.

I'm thinking about all of this after hearing about the guilty verdict against Dharun Ravi -- the Rutgers student who surreptitiously filmed his roommate engaged in a sexual encounter with another male. That roommate, Tyler Clementi, later killed himself, once he found out about it being filmed. Like the Lori Drew case, much of the prosecution focused on the dead teenager -- and you can understand why. It's a horrible (and horrifying) story. But, again, the reaction is much more based on the end results, rather than the initial action. No doubt, what Ravi did was despicable, but is it really criminal? Law professor Paul Butler has an excellent opinion piece explaining why this is an overreaction. He notes that Ravi was clearly immature and did an obnoxious thing in invading his roommate's privacy, but the desire to see him locked up (and apparently there's a good chance he'll be deported to India, despite not having lived there since he was 2 years old) is almost entirely because of Clementi's tragic death:
Let's be honest. A lot of people want a pound of flesh from Ravi because they blame him for Clementi's death. Tyler's reaction was tragic, and it was idiosyncratic.... No judge in the country would have allowed a homicide prosecution, because, legally speaking, Ravi did not cause the death, nor was it reasonably foreseeable. Of the millions of people who are bullied or who suffer invasions of privacy, few kill themselves.

[....]

For his stupidity, Ravi should be shamed by his fellow students and kicked out of his dorm, but he should not be sent to prison for years and then banished from the United States.
As Butler notes, the rush to the criminal justice system, and the focus on blaming Ravi, takes us away from a more reasonable place in thinking about how to deal with these things:
The problem with broad laws like New Jersey's is that they come too close to punishing people for what they think. Bigotry, including homophobia, is morally condemnable, but in a free country, it should not be a punishable offense....

[....]

Ravi did not invent homophobia, but he is being scapegoated for it. Bias against gay people is, sadly, embedded in American culture. Until last year people were being kicked out of the military because they were homosexuals. None of the four leading presidential candidates -- President Obama, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich -- thinks that gay people should be allowed to get married. A better way to honor the life of Clementi would be for everyone to get off their high horse about a 20-year-old kid and instead think about how we can promote civil rights in our own lives.

Though a national conversation about civility and respect would have been better, as usual for social problems, we looked to the criminal justice system. The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the world. We are an extraordinarily punitive people.
Indeed, as tragic as Clementi's death is, it did inspire thousands of people to act in a positive manner against homophobia by launching the It Gets Better project -- a very powerful way that tons of people have gathered to try to pass along the message to bullied teens (mainly from the LGBT community) that things do, in fact, get better. That response is a way of trying to deal with the actual problems. Going after Ravi with these charges just seems like a punitive action based on what Clementi did after Ravi's clearly childish and obnoxious actions. It certainly can be difficult to separate out what Ravi did from what Clementi did later, but in a society based on law, that's what we're supposed to do. Being a jerk should get you shunned, but not put in prison.

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]]> giving-the-wrong-message http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120319/04115818155 Fri, 14 May 2010 06:14:33 PDT Is It Illegal To Tell People How To Commit Suicide Online? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100514/0044209421.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100514/0044209421.shtml been arrested and charged with "assisting suicide" because he spent an awful lot of time on various "suicide" websites, telling people how to commit suicide, and sometimes even agreeing to "suicide pacts" with people. At least two of the people he spoke to did, in fact, commit suicide. Now, it's hard not to be sickened by this guy's actions. He almost certainly needs help. But is telling people how to commit suicide illegal? That gets tricky pretty fast. There are state laws against assisted suicide, but those are generally targeting people helping others commit suicide directly -- in person. Also, it's not clear that Minnesota's state law on this applies when the two suicides both took place not just out of Minnesota, but outside the US (one in Canada, one in the UK).

But, really, the bigger question is the First Amendment question. It seems as though Minnesota's assisted suicide law is really quite broad. The key provisions:
Subdivision 1.Aiding suicide.
Whoever intentionally advises, encourages, or assists another in taking the other's own life may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 15 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $30,000, or both.

Subd. 2.Aiding attempted suicide.
Whoever intentionally advises, encourages, or assists another who attempts but fails to take the other's own life may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than seven years or to payment of a fine of not more than $14,000, or both.
That "advises" part seems especially broad. Again, this is a tricky situation no matter what. It's certainly difficult to defend this guy and his actions. But, there are larger issues here, concerning freedom of expression and a potentially overly broad law.

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]]> first-amendment? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100514/0044209421 Thu, 1 Oct 2009 06:46:54 PDT And You Thought Your Job Was Stressful: France Telecom Employees Keep Committing Suicide Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090929/0220006344.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090929/0220006344.shtml 24 employees commit suicide in 18 months, with many blaming stress from the company as a reason, it makes you pay attention. Apparently, that's the situation at France Telecom, where the 24th suicide in the last 18 months took place earlier this week. The company says that it's going to look into how it handles human resources, which seems like a decent idea at this point. In the meantime, if you're prone to not dealing well with stress, perhaps cross France Telecom off your list of desired employers.

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]]> yikes http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090929/0220006344 Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:17:15 PDT The Google Trends Suicide Watch Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090710/0243185509.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090710/0243185509.shtml track the popularity of the search phrase "commit suicide painlessly." Perhaps not too surprisingly, it appears to track the economy. That is, it was relatively flat for a while, but spiked in October 2008 through March 2009 -- though, it's since come back down. As he notes, this isn't exactly a small blip -- it was over an extended period of time. He digs down a bit in the data, which suggests that while the US is a lot less suicidal these days, things are still a bit on edge over in the UK (you guys doing ok?). What would be interesting now would be to correlate that data with actual suicides. Oddly, Wagstaff notes that a similar boost is not seen in just the basic search of "how to commit suicide." That makes me wonder if the "commit suicide painlessly" search is suffering from a small sample size problem. Still, it's yet another fun little "economic indicator" found from public data, similar to the post we had recently on analyzing job trends via Facebook status. While the data might not mean much yet, the fact that there is so much more data so easily accessible is really powerful.

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]]> well,-that's-depressing http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090710/0243185509 Fri, 5 Dec 2008 08:44:00 PST Reminder: Not Everyone Online Is A Jerk Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081204/1849003026.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081204/1849003026.shtml Abraham Biggs' live broadcasting his suicide, plenty of "web 2.0" critics such as Andrew Keen jumped on the chance to blast the "anomie, cruelty and narcissism that characterises much of the web." Of course, if you think social networks are evil, you're going to interpret events that way, but, of course, as has been pointed out before, communication tools don't discriminate over who can use them -- so of course there are some awful people who use them, just as there are many good people. Communication tools don't change that. And, for every tragic Abraham Biggs story out there, it seems likely that there are many, many stories like Ayelet Waldman, who talks about how her online community of friends saved her from committing suicide. Of course, those stories don't get nearly as much attention, so folks like Keen can pretend they don't exist and that social networking communication tools are mainly used for shallow, meaningless conversations.

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]]> nice-to-know http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081204/1849003026 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:50:57 PDT Escaped Spammer Found Dead In Murder/Suicide Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080724/2317541786.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080724/2317541786.shtml escaped from a minimum security prison, where he was serving 21 months. Now the news is coming out that apparently he has apparently killed his wife and toddler before killing himself. Yikes.

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]]> wow http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080724/2317541786 Fri, 16 May 2008 05:53:19 PDT Prosecutors Go Overboard In Indicting Woman Involved In MySpace Hoax That Resulted In Suicide Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080515/1832441128.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080515/1832441128.shtml is not a crime. As stupid as the prank was, it wasn't designed to make the girl commit suicide.

But, of course, when you have a high profile case that includes a 13-year-old girl committing suicide after being misled, people are still going to push for something to be done (or they end up doing something themselves). So with state prosecutors failing to find anything, federal prosecutors stepped in, and have now indicted Lori Drew on a number of different charges, relating to "conspiracy and fraudulently gaining access to someone else's computer." This seems like a serious stretch. It's an effort to twist existing laws just to punish this particular woman because people are upset by the outcome. Legal scholars are already quite worried about how the indictments appear to twist the law in potentially unconstitutional ways.

Why? Well, some of the charges are based on computer anti-fraud laws that prevent "unauthorized access." And, here's where the prosecutors got creative: they claim that in not providing truthful info to MySpace when registering (i.e., in breaking the terms of service), effectively Lori Drew "hacked" into MySpace's computers in an unauthorized manner. Now, no matter what you think of what Lori Drew did (or what happened as a result), this would basically make anyone who fails to follow the exact terms of service of an online service a potential felony hacker. That is a problem. I recognize the desire to punish someone for what happened to Megan -- but twisting the law this way will have very dangerous consequences.

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]]> out-for-vengeance http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080515/1832441128 Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:33:00 PST Facebook? Suicide? That's All I Need... Don't Bother Me With Facts... Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080130/093919126.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080130/093919126.shtml connect Facebook to a series of suicides in the UK. It's the sort of thing that newspapers love to run with. Facebook is popular, and parents are already worried about it, so link it to suicide and *bam* immediate interest in the story. Of course, an equally accurate story could be "Paper Industry Linked To Suicide After Many Victims All Leave Notes!" Yet, that doesn't stop some people from trying. Con von Hoffman writes in to point out that the UK story has migrated down under, with an Australian newspaper warning parents about Facebook suicides in the UK. The only problem, there doesn't seem to be any support to the actual story -- as even the Australian article notes... though, buried down in the fourth paragraph: "a police spokesman in Bridgend said there was no evidence to date of a suicide pact and that the theory did not come from police." Despite that, the article still says that "experts remain concerned there may be a connection between the suicides and social networking sites." Meanwhile, the article also quotes someone saying: "The more stories that appear about young people having killed themselves in your area, the more it might appear to you to be a reasonable response to a particular kind of crisis." So, perhaps the Australian paper is trying to turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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]]> bury-the-facts http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080130/093919126