Death Threat Redux

a rational person should do the rational thing.

sometimes that is dismissing stuff. and sometimes not.

in this case, the person who feels threaten should act according to their sense of personal danger. you don't feel threatened, so you think liv shouldn't do anything, but you aren't liv.

Interesting.

And my questions in "Hotline to Linden" remains unanswered...

Because Cristiano, in the past, threads referring to death threats, including one that I posted, naming people by name, and or attacks of any reason, are prime subjects to be locked/deleted.

You know me. I'm in favor of not telling the Lindens anything, getting a hammer, and dealing with it that way. By all means leave the thread open, I just happened to notice Pathfinder seems to be on the rampage these days. Nothing more, or less than that.

The individual that sparked this thread has to be a total idiot to put that sort of thing in their profile. Why not get a job teaching and tattoo "drug dealer" on your forehead.

Sorry Cristiano for the personal attack towards you...

I feel a bit bad that I let myself do that... One of the first rules of rhetoric and debate is to never resort to personal attacks.

I feel strongly about trying to garner real freedom here... and I don't like that annonymous idiots can effect people into wanting universal restriction.

Yashu - it's sort of like... my right to swing my fist ends at your nose, right? (that is NOT a threat! even if I disagree with someone, I'm not the "beat them into agreement" type...)

I think words are the same though. My right to say whatever I damn well please ENDS when it becomes threatening towards another person.

Just how I personally feel.

Apparently you missed the Native American boy who shot up his school a few weeks ago? Yeah, he was posting racist stuff and death threats on the Internet. But, to the people in that forum, he was an anonymous poster.

There's plenty of examples of Internet stalkers turning into RL crims. Not the least of which is pedophilia. Should, by your advice, parents dismiss Internet pedophiles talking to their kids as a "nonsensical bullshit" threat? Is that really the "rational" thing to do?

SL has not had a tragedy of this sort, as far as I know. Let's keep it that way through intelligent prevention & removal of warped individuals who threaten people over the Internet.

This threat is exactly the sort of real life problem that makes us need a real life government, a government which would have access to the threatener's real name and address and would contact the local authorities advising them of this persons possible illlegal actions and threats of violence.

Just banning that acount from SL is hardly sufficient to protect someone from harm. A new credit card and maybe a change of internet companies and the stalker is back in action.
Linden Lab won't take the chance of a lawsuit if they report someone to the local authorities who isn't found guilty of a crime. A real player government with true legal power and access to customer records equal to that of any geographically based government would report such information to the police . Governments share such information all the time.

Im sorry, a player ran government would be controled by LL. And no way would anyone allow there personal info to be handed over to any group of players. That is inviting more problems than it could ever possibly solve.

If players had access to this info then it could end up being misused, and probably would be. This is NOT RL this is a privately owned service we pay for so any references to governments sharing information has nothing at all to do with SL. Any player government is strictly a game played by a few who wish this. Wish their ideas and ideals to be forced on others.

Invect Hasp... You yourself are trying to impersonate someone in game... EVERYONE READ THIS... INVECT HASP is NOT INVECT PSALTERY OR SNIV HASP.

He is someone trying to trash the real invect's name.

Besides, the real invect would never be for a restrictive universe.

wait.. can I make death threats against whole groups? that's presumably ok, right?

*so confused by all these rules*

I believe the FBI has a section that investigates on-line death threats.

Any rational person would have seen in the news how on-line stalking is a REAL problem in the US, and SHOULD know how victims of this type of behavior can seriously be affected by it. While most griefers are harmless little dweebs hiding behind a computer, there are more than a few who are seriously unbalanced. Evidently you aren't very informed about what happens in RL.

The Lindens have never adequately answered this question to many peoples satisfaction. They are way over the top on issues of 'privacy'. Privacy is fine and dandy when it comes to real life info, but they go to ridiculous lengths to protect the privacy of a toon sometimes.

Ted Bundy, Richard Speck, Jeffery Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy were anonymous idiots at one time too....all of whom were said to be very nice and quiet neighbors. You never know who or what you are dealing with ...even if it is some pasty assed dipshit who stares at a computer monitor all day. Death threats whether implied or straight out should always be taken seriously and asswipes like this have no place in SL.

Show me where anyone is proposing a universal restriction?

Let me clear something up:

Death threats are are already illegal. This person has already commited a very serious RL crime.

We simply want LL to act on this fact.

Reitsuki, I am so going to kill you for that! Yeah. I'ma kill you dead, bubba!
Watch out! I have a pop gun and I'm not afraid to use it. It's powerful stuff - made by the great Philip Linden himself!

If the person recieving the death threat takes it seriously then they need to report it to their local law enforcement. I know having to explain how you use SL to a police officer isn't an attractive prospect, but they have been known to take online threats seriously in the past so hopefully they will take the complaint seriously. SecondLife isn't an anonymous forum - LL knows all the user's identities and if they start recieving subpoenas maybe they'll start taking the issue seriously.

You know, if you go into the airport and joke about a bomb, they don't let you on the plane. Tell 'em it's made out of toilet paper and brown sugar, it won't matter.

Go into the Empire State Building (I teach there) and joke about a gun, even a fake one, and you will be detained.

In school, on your texts, scribble that you're going to kill a classmate. Put haha and a picture of a gun shooting cottonballs next to it to make sure people know you're not serious.

Make death threates in SL or in the forums, joking or real, in this day and age of stalkers and online dangers, and you should be minimally warned, maximum suspended. We're not talking about, "ooo I'm going to kill you!" but having somebody actually say that they are going to kill somebody, by name.

Publicly stating that you are going to kill, rape, or otherwise harm somebody, joking or not, is extremely foolish. Everybody is well advised to take any such threat seriously by default, and determine the sincerity of it AFTER, not before, that person is questioned about it. Especially if your knowledge of that person amounts to anonymous interaction on the Internet.

Don't believe me? Next time you're boarding a plane, or entering any room of people, point at somebody, and loudly announce, with a smile, that you are going to kill that person. Hell it can even be a friend of yours that doesn't care. Tell 'em you were just joking.

Maybe walk around your office and joke around about killing people here and there. Somebody complains? What a drama queen. But you'd be well advised to consider your actions as you stand on line at the dole.

Wrong day and age for such carelessness. I also do not think the TOS attempts to differentiate such statements as being "probably, even more than likely, in fact obviously, harmless," for any reason.

You're in the airport, you don't joke about bombs. In a public place of any kind, you don't joke about guns. In a roomful of people, you don't joke about killing somebody in that room.

It's good advice.

Yikes. If I was at the receiving end of this, I would be less than comfortable to log in.

Unfortunately Yashu, as much as I too want freedom, both online and in RL, the world is a crazy place, and what we once may have shrugged off as "just some idiot trying to get attention", now can indeed be a real and dangerous threat. Too many people are dead or harmed after shrugging and saying "I thought he was just some harmless creep".

While chances are that is is just some jerk wanting attention, he still has absolutely NO RIGHT to infringe on someone else's enjoyment of SL, nor should he be allowed to grief, harass or in anyway make another customer uncomfortable through intentional acts toward that person.

It's wrong. You know it, I know it, LL knows it and Codesmith knows it. To defend his actions, or belittle those that just want them to stop, is not the right path to walk on this issue.

Eggy, I am going to assume you just don't get it because you don't live in a country that has to deal with Internet stalkers becoming RL violent offenders.

Oooh, there's a gap in the market, Eggy. You could be like the first Portugese egg shaped internet serial stalking murderer. Or something.

Hiro, I don't know if its a case of 'not getting it' or 'not really caring'. For me personally, I understand people's concerns in this area, and it definitely does have to do with location I guess, but it's just not going to change my attitude on the subject.

Of course, I'm not going to shout about having a bomb in an airport irl because they're full of stuffy official assholes who have the power to arrest you.

SL, on the other hand, isn't like that just yet. And I think for the most part people take stuff way too seriously. I'm not saying there aren't psycho fuckheads out there that don't make threats and mean it, and I'm not trying to belittle anyone who has had any threats they perceived as having a real element of danger about them, but let's face it, if you live in fear of everything that could possibly threaten or harm you, you wouldn't do anything ever. Most threats are empty at best. Most that people get uptight about aren't even likely intended as real threats.

In the very unlikely event that a psycho nutjob off the internet actually has the balls to carry out his threat and shows up at my house, I'll think about dealing with it. Til then, I doubt I'll lose much sleep over it.

Btw - This Hero Codesmith guy got the Shelter as well last night. Which is really odd - because in reading his profile, I'd think we'd be the absolute last place he'd have a grudge against, seeing as how my whole point is to *not* be a sleezy, exploitative hole. It doesn't take much to be accepted warmly at the Shelter.

Of course, the Shelter is a club.... and *all* clubs are the same, right?

Whatever.

Luckily, I was in the basement when the bombs went off, and everyone got TP'ed back quick enough for everyone to file enough abuse reports to keep support busy for a while.

The "Help" -- "Report PVP Abuse" function? Nearly useless. Out of 20 people that got blown out, 2 had his name show up...the rest just had an empty list.

The new "Objects on Land" sorted by user function? Ooooh... that was nice & helpful

Travis

That they do. Unfortunately my wife and I had to contact them when my wife was receiving on-line death threats a few years back. After a number of months the little b*****d was arrested not only on the death threats, but a few other nastier charges.

A much as I can relate and empathize with the club owner's circumstances, expecting the Lindens to act as the SL-police, or even to announce the issue on these boards, is neither productive nor does a thing to resolve the problem. If the death threats are that serious, then this is an issue for 1L law enforcement, not for the court of popular opinion. Not to mention that such outcry probably only helps to validate and encourage the threatener's actions to continue, if not increase moreso.

- Newfie