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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.
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
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.
This might be explained or at least rationalised slightly better if you understand the differences between Asian culture and the one which, presumably, you come from (My assumption is the US, but I could be wrong)
Now, I don't make the rules here, so when I say it is sometimes seen as a 'very grave family insult' to commit suicide, you might think this is stupid, backward, and crazy arsed dumb 12 ways from Sunday. And you would be right too. Thai people tend not to want to directly confront any problem head on, they like to tackle things a little more obliquely, talk about it in vague hand waving first. "Yes" often actually means no, or just maybe.
Knee jerk reactions such as this do sort themselves out in parliament or the legal system. Give it a month or two to have the person responsible for this action will get slapped around, the law might not get stricken from record, but it wont really be enforced either. Aside from this, there are always deeper issues at play, people using tragedy as an excuse to push their agenda. None of us anywhere in the world are stranger to this though!
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.
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.