Australia Thinks The Internet Causes Suicides?
from the not-helping-the-real-issue... dept
Hearing about people, often young, committing suicide is never a pleasant subject -- but dealing with those who are feeling suicidal means dealing with the real issues they face. Instead, it looks like Australia is taking the simple way out. They're making it illegal to have a website with suicide information on it. Realistically, that's only whitewashing the problem by pretending that if they get rid of the information, it will make the problem go away. It's like blaming the internet for suicides, rather than realizing that it's the individuals who are troubled and who need help. As some have noted, in forcing that information offline, it can make people feel more isolated and alone, and not realize that they need help, potentially leading to more suicides. Whether or not that's what really happens, it does seem clear that simply banning websites isn't addressing the real problem at all in trying to get help for people who are severely depressed. It's basically a way of avoiding the discussion completely.
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Suicide Nation
But yeah, if other nations ban topical matter, then it's booming business for small countries like Tuvalu or Nauru. Most Japanese hard-core porn is hosted on servers in those countries.
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Will Sports Results be illegal?
Parliament of Australia
"Something is seriously out of joint in the Australian cricket team, which endured perhaps its darkest day in the Welsh capital of Cardiff on Saturday. Losses to England in a Twenty20 match and Somerset in a county game were one thing, but the five-wicket loss to Bangladesh, nominally the world's worst one-day cricket team, invited a different scale of embarrassment altogether."
The Age (Australia)
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Suicide Sites
Of couse, since you can't really ban anything effectively on the internet, it's pretty much a useless law. These twisted freaks of hell that put up such sites will just move them somewhere outside of Australia's jurisdiction.
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Re: Suicide Sites
Isn't there also an argument that publicity about suicides tends to incite copycats, which is why media coverage of suicide tends to be very minimal?
(I'm not sure how accurate the publicity-suicide link is, does anyone know?).
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What?
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OMFG
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Re: Suicide Nation
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Re: Suicide Nation
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suicide sites
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