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Aus. Gov't Considers Fines for Online Suicide Info
downundarob writes "The Australian federal government is once again showing its cluelessness regarding the workings of the Internet. The short article tells us how, under legislation to be introduced this week, corporations would be fined up to AU$500,000 and individuals AU$100,000 if they use the Internet to incite or promote suicide methods. In Australia it is illegal to commit, or attempt to commit suicide."
Some people actually want to commit suicide a quiet way. I had a deep depression last winter and actively looked for such info but could not find some.
If I were to look again, I think I'd offer one $ more than the fine amount to the one who'd help me.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
seeing as the Internet is a major contributing factor to depression and suicide nowadays.
... the First Amendmentment gives us. As much as I despise some the the conservative laws in the US, I'm still proud of the fact that we support freedom of speech in some of the most extreme cases.
In Australia it is illegal to commit, or attempt to commit suicide.
Suicide and sedition: the only crimes where those who suceed aren't prosecuted.
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Governments everywhere legislate what is and what is not objectionable material. This is just part of australia saying that this is material that they do not want published in australian websites. Your views may differ as to whether it is right to or not, but it is not unreasonable for governments to object to sites showing how to do illegal things.
Different in terms of why it is objectionable, but the same reasons lie behind why governments legislate against kiddy pr0n, pull down sites with bomb making instructions, incitements for hatred (in many countries).
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World" 1 John 4:14
to commit suicide, you must not be seriously considering it. Because most people who are serious aren't too concerned about how they will die much less that they will in the end, die.
Give me a break, are they going to fine libraries for having murder mysteries? Oh my, he shot that man, perhaps I could shoot myself!
What a crock of dirty dog poo.
[cx]
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
I've noticed that everyone who is for death penalty has not been executed - me.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Before posting any more 'funny' jokes, try reading the article first: The law is about those inciting or promoting suicide, not those committing it. It also sounds perfectly sensible to me, why should any psycho be free to push desperate people kill themselves in the name of free speech? Depression needs careful approach and support, not some idiot advising you to suicide.
The biggest issue is actually assisting suicide, which, unlike suicide itself, can be a repeat offence!
argh, why can't people leave others alone? If they feel miserable enough to consider suicide, then respect their decision. you don't always know the whole story behind it, so just automatically saying "oh dont kill yourself, get professional help" goes in one ear and out the other. Seriously, I just ignore the default-talking-out-of-suicide talks because they're unbelievably redundant and irritating. Save yourself the trouble.
When I go through my suicidal phases, what helps most is talking to close friends who have dealt with similar issues, especially if they listen to you ranting (which really feels good). Not $random_person telling me it's a bad idea, blah blah.
Sorry for ranting.
What I didn't know is what methods would assuredly kill me. Or, if they wouldn't necessarily kill me, leave me without lasting harm. The Internet told me. There are all kinds of websites out there talking about the various suicide methods, with recommendations. You can easily order Final Exit, or even find the text online.
Moreover, the Internet provides knowledge for where to obtain lethal substances, and substances that put you in a state making it easier to kill yourself.
I am quite confident that I would never have attempted suicide if I didn't have access to the Internet. The method I chose would not have even occurred to me if I hadn't read about it online. Indeed, it was the most recommended method on the net, and I wouldn't have thought it.
So I think it's obvious that the Internet lowers the bar to committing suicide.
But that said, it's ridiculous to consider sensoring this information. There are the obvious free speech issues which I'm sure other people here will discuss. What I want to note, however, is that for me, research suicide options was also therapeutic. People think how terrible it is that someone would contemplate suicide, but they don't realize how much thinking about it can relieve the pain that you're in. I could lose all control of my thought processes, spiarling downward, but when I started imagining shooting myself, I felt *better*. In this way, the research I did on suicide was also soothing. Instead of curling up in a ball on the floor, I could focus my mind on this subject, and this subject alone, and I would calm down and feel relief.
So it's a two-edged sword. The knowledge I gained on the Internet did enable my attempt. But being able to research that material made me feel better, better than I would have otherwise.
Final disclaimer: All happy people are more or less the same, but all depressed people are depressed in their own way. So this is my experience only. (Yes, I've been doing well for some time--thanks for asking!)
"My girlfriend's got sodium laureth sulfate hair."
If you need ideas on how to kill yourself, then you don't really want to die. As a Roman Empire era judge said to someone convicted of the capital crime of being a Christian because he refused to deny he was one, "I have better things to do than help you commit suicide. Are there not cliffs enough in the world for you to do that without me?" (paraphrased)
"The short article tells us how, under legislation to be introduced this week"
that says to me that it's just legislation that will be introduced and hasn't become a law yet.
not that i claim any familiarity with the australian system of government, but here in the states when new legislation is introduced it's not that amazing, it's if it passes in the house and senate and passes the president's veto power that it becomes law...
can anyone shed further light?
They are just saying their citizens and coporations should not be promoting the material. It is not a difficult law to enforce. If company X is selling pills to kill yourself with, and providing instructions on how to use them, Australia will fine them.
or else!
When did people lose the right to not live any longer? This topic has allways seemed silly to me, if someone wants to die let them. If they can't do it them selves for some reason, there should be some way they can ask for assitance.
Ones right to live is the same right to die.
TruePunk | Games
Great idea. Because of the amazing way the internet works (information only the learned nerds trully understand,) no one needs to take any responsibility for anything on the net. Great thinking here guys. As for whether death is a good way to solve unhappiness? I guess the happy and unhappy would have different views on this so I'm not sticking my nose into this one, suffice it to say that if the Australian's are happy with a law stating suicide is illegal, then this legislation is nothing more but a natural extension to that law. For those of you less learned in ways of lands beyond the US. There is no automatic guarantee of freedom of speech in Australia (much like Britain.) As such, discussion about the benefits and pitfalls of freedom of speech is best reserved for elsewhere.
My sister killed herself last year (almost to the day).
If she wasnt already dead I'd kill her for the pain and suffering she has cause me and especially my parents (and of course the rest of the family)
Suicide is never an option, unless maybe you are some hermit who no one loves. Nothing would be worth doing that to your wife. It would ruin her life forever.
I realize you're cured but you dont really seem to grasp how much it affects the people around you.
My parents are fucked up, my grades have gone to shit, and the whole family seems to just be permanently melancholie.
My advice to anyone contemplating suicide..DONT. Nothing is worth ruining the lives of your loved ones.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
The opposite of the evil situation where people who have recieved the death penalty are prevented from commiting suicide, because only the state gets to decide time and means of death of the person. The ultimate in fascist control. "You are a thing. We control you totally, life and death".
My own opinion is that people should have the right to decide what to do with their own lives, and that includes deciding how to die.
However, I still find suicide to be the ultimately selfish act. I was on a ski trip a few years back. One guy who came along (aquaintance of an aquaintance) talked a lot about having been depressed and still occasionally considering suicide. His closest friend on the trip said "Ok, but you will leave your children without a father, and emotionally devastated. Also consider what an example you are setting for them. You will show them that suicide is an acceptable situation when they are depressed. Consider that first."
The guy became very silent after that. I felt sorry for him of course. While true, the guilt might have been another emotional burden for him.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
I really loathe laws that are to 'protect the vulnerable - not me you understand'.
People objecting to pornography, violence on TV. Sex education in schools etc etc. It's always to protect other people from corruption. Who are these mythical people, with cheese for brains? Nobody ever demands it's removal to protect themselves.
"Think of the children" blah blah
The law should end at the surface of the skin, inside my body and my mind is my own kingdom.
I should have the right the think what I want.
Eat or Drink what I want.
Withdraw my Labour.
Withdraw my Life.
There can be no democracy without these freedoms.
Sure people make stupid descisions, especially when they are feeling depressed, society should help people out.
But some people make rational decisions and in the end that must be respected, it often is a brave thing to do.
PS there is no Hell cept on Earth.
"My advice to anyone contemplating suicide..DONT. Nothing is worth ruining the lives of your loved ones."
Yes, thats exactly the sort of moral blackmail that holds our society together.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
If you've gotten a few of those talks through your life, maybe you do have a problem. Your average person doesn't get those kind of talks, ever. Your average person also doesn't burden their friends with those kind of things. And your average person doesn't have "suicidal phases". Consider keeping a log of how often you feel frustrated with life and want to end it all. You might discover that you're spending 25% of your life being seriously depressed. Even if you don't kill yourself, that's the kind of thing that can interfere with school, career, relationships, and pretty much anything in your life.
Of course, it's one thing to be depressed or despondant because something happened (death of spouse or child), but it's another to be depressed for no reason. Depressed people might say, "I'm depressed because my life sucks." It could be that their life sucks because they're depressed a lot of the time and don't get any of the things done that usually give people satisfaction (e.g., success in work, school, relationships).
My other first post is car post.
These sites aren't about ideas, these bring together people who have suicidal thoughts. They discuss these thoughts and it can eventually develop into a group suicide.
People with suicidal thoughts need to speak to someone who can show them the good things in their life and can help them solve all their problems, they don't need to be speaking to someone who talks them into it.
That would be a penalty for murder then, not suicide
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Saying that there is no reason for that person to commit suicide without living that persons life is pretty selfish too. Regardless of the morality of the situation all opinions regarging the action are selfish. The parents post reeks of selfishness. Blaming every problem that he/she can on someone else's action without truly understanding the motivation.
Telling somebody who is unhappy to go on living to make you or someone else happy is similar to telling someone to do something to benefit you but not them. Sometimes life just isnt worth living. Not everyone wants to be a cube-whore who has no life a mortgage 2.3 kids and an overpriced house in suburbia. Thats hard for some people to understand because they enjoy that life. Not everyone is the same.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
So you're saying that you should live a life of constant misery so your selfish relatives can have a better life? I notice in your entire post you don't once mention the suffering your sister went through before she killed herself. Did you even consider that? Or are you more concerned with your own well-being?
It seems your family weren't there for her when she was alive, but now you're criticising her? You're saying that she should stay alive and suffer for your sake, but you don't have to do anything for her sake? Family-relationships work two ways, not just one.
If you hate her so much you'd kill her, why are you so bothered whether she's alive or not? Did you like her at all? If so, why are you more concerned with your own recent suffering rather than the suffering she was going through which caused it all in the first place?
Have some respect for others if you want others to respect you.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
The whole discourse on the matter of who is most blamworthy in such situations is selfish at the level of trying to assign responsiblity to one party. We do not live in a vacuum and all things in everyones lives are influenced by our relations with everyone else from past to present.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
I lost all of my friends and ruined relationships I thought would, and might have, lasted forever and have pretty much retreated from the world. For about two years I went through a severe depressed episode, the whole time almost getting help here and there. I truely thought all things were lost and started to slowly kill myself with any type of controlled substance I could get my hands on.
Ok, that was a severe exaggeration, but I was binging on everything. I started to do stupid (fun) things that would later set me up for a lot of trouble until something changed. I didn't get help, I just had a conversion. It happened to be a religious conversion but it wasn't religion that saved me. Well, I went through three religions before I settled on one I liked and incorporated everything else I learned.
During all of this I realized on the side that I was going to face bad days. I was going to be depressed and that my life wasn't going to end up the way I had always dreamed (which is a understatement-I barely function). But you know, I realized that hurting everyone else was pretty petty considering if I waited it out I would feel better some day. My chance of feeling like that forever was zero; so why not just say "Fuck it" and move on?
Not only is suicide the worst way to treat depression it is never the answer to any problem. Drugs, crime, shame, anything.... it's happened to someone before, lots of people. Some of them made it out. Shit, even if you are on crack - smoke that and say fuck it and live. You won't get a chance to do it again. I'm not even going to get on a high horse and tell you to quit the pipe - that is something to live for, it's a start.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Either way, it does pass. Or, it can be fixed.
"Résumé"
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smell awful;
You might as well live.
--Dorothy Parker, 1926.
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$tar -xvf
I wonder how much of this action in AU is related to JP suicide clubs?
"In Japan, the internet has been blamed for a spate of group suicides which appear to have been arranged in online chat rooms."
It appears that often the people facilitating these suicides are in fact sadists, who have no intention themselves of carrying through a suicide, but instead derive perverse pleasure from being instrumental in the death of another. If a similar phenomenon exists in AU, it would give the authorities an opportunity to intervene--and based on the text of TFA, this appears closer to their intent.
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$tar -xvf
Not illness, just condition - youth... immaturity, belief in simplicity, black and white, "now is how it is always", "nothing to see here", "I've seen it all", "oh, I am sooo old, no need to live further, for I have seen it all" and such toughts that sometimes plague inteligent young people.
..., southern?).
According to your description, she was obviously angry at the moment and acted impulsively. As the youngest child in a family she was probably generally untollerant to stress (you said: spoiled), perhaps even passive aggresive (the other, darker side of strong and supportive family background - emotional blackmail works, one learns to use it for punishment of loved ones). The anger response may run in your family, since that is how you feel now about her. This may be coming from your cultural herritage (European
You all will have to get over that. What You describe about Your family at present is sense of guilt, even there is none. My guess is that too much talk with her would have only made her angrier.
This loss could, but not nescesarily would, had happen in this part of her life in some other form - car accident or something, but you all would be a little bit less hurt then you are now. The true nature of event would be the same - accidental. Some years from now, she wouldn't ever consider suicide.
In Australia it is illegal to commit, or attempt to commit suicide.
Would some ausie enlighten me on how the former crime is prosecuted. Do they have special coffins with metal bars or something?
I am rarely serious on here but here it goes:
Just two things.
1) Just recently, I think it was in Canada (not 100%), where a man informed his friends, family and police that he was going to commit suicide. This was partially a protest or way of promoting euthenseia (spelling whatever). Anyway what it came down to is that he had terminal cancer. Was going to die anyway. For sure. Very painfully. He decided to kill himself as he still had the option to. If he let himself decline due to cancer he would be fucked as at somepoint he would no longer be able to do it on his own, and (at least in this country, probably most) it would be illegel for his doctor to help him in this way. From what I read his friends/family were not thrilled with the decision, but understood, and respected that decision.
2) That said I read most of the big posts, and everyone seems to be arguing if depressed if suicide should be promoted (or help available out there to who wants it)... I think that is silly. What if you were dying from a terminal illness? That is extreemly painfull, and takes its sweet time. (Not to get into the whole euthenasia discussion) Assuming it is illegal for a doctor or someone to help you commit suicide, I think I would like to see what options would be available to me. Granted this is a very last resort and not to be taken lightly.
I think this comes down to two principles: one is the fact that death is so final. Like capital punishment mistakes can be made, and there is no recourse. The other is the fact of coupibility (again with the spelling). Basically if someone is depressed or mentaly not there, are they capable of making these decisions for themselves. While someone could also make a very logical valid arguement to end ones life due to pain and suffering. You could also argue that someone under that kind of duress is unable to think in clear and concise terms.
Anyway it is really silly to make suicide illegal that is just dumb (it may be the case in Canada as well I am not sure). I also think that censoring informaion on how to do it painlessly or quickly or whatever is also silly. I can understand that you do not want to promote it or make it an easy choice for someone, but there is still a vaild use or need for it out there. I think the smartest thing to do would be to consult with your doctor, but because of various laws and perhaps ethics, doctors may feel obligated to prevent you, inform authorities, etc.. so who knows.
Anyway it goes beyond saying that it is a more complex problem than saying suicide is bad and information about it should be banned.
Of course after all this I didn't RTFA so it may be saying that information like that should only be controlled by certain groups like doctors and such....
I would just like to think that if I was in a situation of terminal painful death suffering, with basically no life before the end anyway. That I might be able to find help to end it mercifully would be nice. My body my choice kind of thing... pro-choice I guess. Mind you I think evaluation and discussion would be needed with doctor, friends/family etc...
What a horrible discussion topic eh? Needed, but horrible just the same.
And yes ok maybe I lied about there being just 2 things...
Anyway that is my thoughts.
Of course suicide is a selfish act. It is putting your own feelings of frustration, helplessness, or general lack of other options ahead of those who love you, care about you, want to help you, and generally want you to stay alive.
And of course telling someone that they should not commit suicide is selfish. It puts your own desire that a person stay alive ahead of that person's feelings of frustration and unhappiness with life.
I don't see either side as right or wrong, but both should consider the other side. The feelings of those who care about a person considering suicide should be a factor in their decision (but not the blanket "feelings" of an organization). Those feelings may be small in comparison to the prospect of carrying out the rest of a life that one considers to no longer have value. But a person making that decision has to understand that it does not just affect themself.