Using the Net to plan suicide
p2pnet.net News:- ISPs in Japan may soon have to give up client information to help stop deaths in which the Net is implicated.
Last year there were 55 “Internet suicides” in Japan but although “this number is very small compared with the total suicide toll, the phenomenon is peculiar in that complete strangers with different motivations are getting together over the Internet to plan their deaths together,” says the Japan Times.
More than 34,000 killed themselves in Japan the year in 2003, surpassing 30,000 for the six consecutive year, says the story.
But the number of cases, “in which people solicit others on the Internet to commit group suicide” is on the rise, it states, and, “ To deal with this, a panel of learned people set up by the National Police Agency has called on Internet providers to disclose the names, addresses and birth dates of people sending such messages.”
People who “give notice of suicide” online can’t be protected unless they’re identified, Japan Times says, going on:
“However, the police will be required to tighten procedures to prevent abuse, and the provider business as a whole, in order to protect human life, will have to be thoroughly prepared to disclose customer information as much as possible despite the obvious conflict with the principle of guarding the confidentiality of communications.”
The post says in Australia, “a criminal code revision bill prohibiting speech over the Internet that might incite suicide has passed the House of Representatives and is currently being deliberated in the Senate.”
But, “In Japan, it would seem wiser to choose a path by which businesses voluntarily cooperate in preventing Internet-assisted suicide.”
“Above all, we must try to ameliorate the factors that are isolating young people from their workplaces, families and schools and thus driving them to the Internet,” says Japan Times, adding:
“In other words, we must promote the building of an environment that they can call home.”
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See:-
Japan Times – Halting Internet-assisted suicide, May 29, 2005
