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Thai Gaming Sites Ordered Shut Down After Suicide
eldavojohn writes "Seventy-two websites have been ordered shut down by the courts in Thailand following the suicide of a 12-year-old boy who jumped from the sixth story of his school after his father banned him from playing computer games. This brings more action from the court: 'Some websites are rumored to take in over 100 million baht from online betting a night at peak periods, causing huge economic losses to the country. To prevent online gambling, the DSI, also a member of the internet safety committee, would notify all Internet service providers across the country about the court order. From now on, any provider found to encourage or provide online gambling will not only face a jail term and a fine, but also have his/her ISP license revoked by the ICT.' Thailand is no stranger to internet censorship of various sites."
It's illegal in the United States too. Well, sort of. And this is !gaming it's online poker and such. Also 100 million baht is a million dollars. Shrug.
a dad banned his kid from playing games and the kid killed himself.
then...
the thai government says this is bad, we need to stop those gaming sites.
then...
the thai government effectively bans everyone from gaming?
and no one else is supposed to kill themselves?
They're using their grammar skills there.
What do gambling sites have to do with the suicide of a 12-year-old?
Also, I find it funny that the response to a boy committing suicide when he was banned from playing games is to ban the entire country from playing games.
That seems very non sequitur. The kid killed himself because of the actions of his father, not the actions of the websites. Sounds like he needed better parenting, let alone the fact that a child who commits suicide over something like that obviously had some other issues. Go Thailand!
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
I've never really understood why countries take so many steps to censor things. What exactly was the problem? Kid liked games, parents took away the games, kid committed suicide. So obviously the answer is to ban all game sites? This is about the worst logic I have ever heard, heck, even Jack Thompson makes more sense than this...
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The article and summary heavily imply that the suicide caused the ban, but I read nothing to indicate that these are simply two events that happened in Thailand, one after the other. Indeed, the thrust appears to be against gambling, with additionally mentioned a call for psychological counseling for the bereaved.
100 million Thai baht = 2.9121 million U.S. dollars, annualized == $1.058 billion (granted that's a peak period, so it's probably half that)
Thailand's Population == 63.9 million
Thailand's GDP / Thailand's population == $3718
Thailand's game website expenditure (peak night) / population == about $22 or 215% of annualised GDP per capita!
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Nobody has investigated the possibility that this was not suicide, that an Italian or a gang of Italians PUSHED him! It is shocking that no one has come up with this yet, probably cowed into silence by the Italian lobby.
The kids probably buddhist. He'll just respawn later in the red light district. Of course he'll have to re-level his character to make up for lost XP.
Mod me down as a troll if you really want, but I feel like the intellectual zeitgeist in in Western countries is moving in a direction where this could very well happen.
Individualism, "personal responsibly" (often a bad buzzword, but whatever), individual rights, etc, are becoming more and more vilified in favor of "social responsibility" and "community values." Think I'm paranoid? You haven't been to a college campus recently. This applies to both the "left" and the "right" of course, but the "right" in American terms is losing ground particularly among youth so I'll just focus on left-wing politics.
It may yet still be over the horizon, but the notion of protecting people over the greater good is not new and I feel that the overall premise is whittling away at free speech. After all, if people can use rhetoric against hate crimes as having no "social value" or against guns in a similar fashion, what's the stop someone from also applying the same principles to speech and entertainment? They can just ask the same question, "what's the social value of video games?" and really your only answer is that "Well, I and others enjoy them" in which case you're a heartless selfish bastard that won't think of the poor kids. A misleading argument, since "social value" is always their OWN subjective determination of what's good and what's not, of course...
is to ban all buildings over 5 stories.
*sniffle*
Oh my God! My favorite web site just went down. Goodbye cruel world.
Nothing at all like the Lori Drew Incident that confirms that MySpace is more Train Wreck than Social Network, a spoiled little brat has to ruin it for everybody else because he doesn't want to be disciplined. Another thing to consider is if his dad was some high ranking bureaucrat trying to "save the children from the evils of sex and violence".
The court hasn't though about the children and the adults who know it is just a game.
So your dad grounded you from video games. SUCK IT UP! Do your punishment and get it over with. Unless your dad caught you going to some illegal gambling website (which I doubt any 12 y.o. would be doing) or going to one of the nefarious websites that have numbers that are unnecessary and strange suffixes, there is no reason for bratty behavior.
So you are banned from World of Warcraft for a week. Is killing yourself in real life going to resolve anything?
Thailand may think they may have people's best interest at heart but it is foolish to make a federal case out of an incident where parents must be accounable for their children's actions, not the government. Unless the kid steals a PS3 from a shop, mom and dad need to increase their discipline.
Remember, If you love you're children BEAT THEM!
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
The Bangkok Post article is combining two unrelated stories, and gets the chronology of the two events backwards. The kid's suicide has nothing to do with the DSI shutting down gambling websites (both articles in Thai, unfortunately... this may be an English article about the suicide, but it's currently giving me a MySQL error). Also, the Bangkok Post says the court order to shut down the sites is dated May 19, and that "the court order follows the death of a 12-year-old boy". However, the boy killed himself on May 21.
Law and order in Thailand is a crazy topic. It seems the people responsible for law in the country have some kind of mental disorder. Just last week, an Australian woman faced 5 years in prison for stealing a bar mat. I mean, WTF? Here in Australia we've heard over and over again about Shapelle Corby, who was sentenced for 20 years for carrying less than 10lbs of marijuana into the country. I'm not saying she didn't commit a crime, but does the punishment fit what she did?
I'm beginning to think Thailand is becoming "North Korea v2.0" with crazy officials trying to enforce ridiculous policy.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
What's worse? What ruins more lives? Is it apples and oranges?
Tag as "twentydollars" for the hundred million baht...
It's tragic a child killed himself. But simply over a computer game? Perhaps the dad was abusive and there's more to this story than we know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction
How come there isn't software to identify addiction? Or government agencies? Or social groups? My strip club addiction is poison to my wallet and my life. Where's my handout? I think we as people should have identified this long ago. It's not any kind of particular addiction, it's addiction itself. If we had it burned in at an early age on how to identify and combat, then no more global warming, no more WOW binges, no more drug cartels, no more casino empire, no more television stronghold. Not to say we wouldn't have the things that we are addicted, but maybe we could handle things more responsibly.
---
The only thing preventing utopia is addiction - unknown
You are using fact and reason to point out the sky isn't falling down. Do you know the harm this is doing to slashdot's advertising revenue? They NEED stories like this and wild random speculation on it to draw visitors. You sir are stealing the food out of the mouth of poor slashdot editors who hardly could get any other job with their skills. I hope you are proud of yourself.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You already been corrected on the drugs case, but what exactly is wrong with sentencing someone for a crime? There seems to be a lot missing from this story and the way it is written is the typical "we always write we want the goverment to be though on crime except when there is a sob story in it".
And considering that australia, the goverment this woman supports with her tax money, treats immigrants as prisoners, shouldn't you first look to your own legal system?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Oh no, if they prevent kids committing suicide because of game deprivation, how am I supposed to know which new games are good?
You can be an insane coder too, read: Insane Coding
One less dumb-ass in the world...
It took a while for me to understand what this was about. Please stop calling gambling "gaming". This is a use of words started by the big gambling companies to make gambling seem less like gambling and more friendly. It brings down the reputation of the videogame industry and is just confusing.
Another example, the German government's efforts to ban Paintball and Laser-Tag, on grounds that these games "offend common decency".
I'm going to guess that in the Thai language "gambling" and "gaming" are the same word. It's the only reasonable explanation for the apparent confusion between computer games and gambling sites.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
So, here's how I see it. As we can see, taking the game away from people can cause them to commit suicide.
Father bans game from kid.
Kid commits suicide.
State bans games from everybody.
Kids all over the country commit suicide.
There is a massive difference between beatings given in anger and simple physical discipline. My siblings and I got our fair share of spankings back when we were children, not because our parents were angry with us, but because they wanted to teach us not to do stuff like running out in the street as toddlers or playing with Dad's power tools in the garage.
Our parents were pretty good about keeping the dangerous stuff locked up, on high shelves, out of the way of little hands, but the world is full of potentially dangerous things and kids get very creative when it comes to injuring themselves. They don't yet have the understanding necessary to think things through to probably conclusions before they do them and have a great belief in their invincibility. Consequently, kids do some dumb, dangerous stuff. I know we sure did.
At the time, we learned "If I do this, I'll get a spanking" so we didn't do it because we didn't want to get spanked. Nobody waled on us with a belt or a 2x4, I don't ever remember getting a bruise, but it stung enough to make me want to avoid it. When we got older, we started realizing "If I'd gotten hit by a car while playing in the street, I'd probably be dead." D'oh! Our parents never punished us in anger, and while we might be mad at the time (I was just fine building a miniature gasoline-powered grill in my room to toast marshmallows! I knew what I was doing!) we knew our parents didn't want us to do things that would hurt us.
Ordinary, healthy discipline, whether physical (spanking, grounding) or limiting (no TV for a week, no dessert) should never be associated with abuse, which is given in anger and intended to hurt/humiliate the victim only to please the abuser.
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7