New York Culls Sex Offenders From the Online Gaming Ranks

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New York Culls Sex Offenders From the Online Gaming Ranks

Posted by timothy on Thursday December 20, 2012 @05:53AM from the cradle-to-grave dept.

SternisheFan writes with a story at PC Mag that New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has announced that more than 2000 registered sex offenders have been kicked off various online gaming platforms, in an cooperative effort involving both the state and various gaming companies. From that article: "Earlier this year, the accounts of 3,500 additional offenders were removed from platforms operated by Microsoft, Apple, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Disney Interactive Media Group, and Warner Brothers. New York State's Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP) law requires convicted sex offenders to register all of their email addresses, screen names, and other Internet identifiers with the state. Schneiderman's office then makes that information available to certain websites so they can make sure that their communities were not being used by predators. Operation: Game Over, however, is the first time e-STOP has been applied to online gaming platforms, he said. Since many online gaming platforms let users send messages to other players anonymously, it's unsafe to have convicted offenders using these services, Schneiderman said."

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This will obviously help. by hazah · 2012-12-20 05:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

Everyone. Clearly.
1. Re:This will obviously help. by jedidiah · 2012-12-20 06:27 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You are preventing them from engaging in commerce and public life.
  It's basically Amish shunning or Hawthorne's Scarlet letter but without the obvious initial "buy in" of joining an extremist religious cult first.
  The sacred cow will ensure the precedent is set in general so that it can be applied to YOU next time.
  
  --
  A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
2. Re:This will obviously help. by MitchDev · 2012-12-20 06:42 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  It's the prison you go to after you get out of prison.
3. Re:This will obviously help. by hduff · 2012-12-20 07:05 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You are preventing them from engaging in commerce and public life.
  It's basically Amish shunning or Hawthorne's Scarlet letter but without the obvious initial "buy in" of joining an extremist religious cult first.
  The sacred cow will ensure the precedent is set in general so that it can be applied to YOU next time.
  I believe the intent is to prevent pedophile pedators from clandestinely communicating with potential underage prey. However, since sex-offender status is applied to more than just pedophiles, I would think that this is overly broad.
  But since creepy and pervy is so creepy and pervy and decent people don't want to be associated with creepy and pervy and doing so may alert law enforcement, I doubt anybody will actually object to this treatment. They basically adopt the "don't do kiddie porn, don't fark teens and kiddies, don't rape or grope anybody and don't expose yourself in public if you want to play online games" attitude.
  
  --
  "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
4. Re:This will obviously help. by Hoi+Polloi · 2012-12-20 07:19 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Yah, make sure they have lots of spare time they don't know what to do with now.
  
  --
  It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
5. Re:This will obviously help. by robot256 · 2012-12-20 07:24 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  How exactly is a lifetime of being treated as a leper proper punishment for drunken public urination? The problem is not that the treatment is inappropriate for some individuals based on their past crimes, but that many people are put on these all-powerful lists who really shouldn't be, given the consequences.
6. Re: This will obviously help. by Urza9814 · 2012-12-20 07:25 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  You do realize what these lists ACTUALLY are, right? Yes, they include rapists and molesters. They also include people who got drunk and pissed in the bushes that one time on college, or went streaking, or skinny-dipping (basically any form of public nudity) or sent topless pictures of themselves to their significant other when they were 17......
  Lots of ways to end up on these lists. Some are not even in your control.
7. Re:This will obviously help. by KiloByte · 2012-12-20 07:37 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  No, the intent is to show the public the current rulers are "tough on crime", children and citizens be damned.
  
  --
  The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
8. Re:This will obviously help. by Penguinisto · 2012-12-20 07:42 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  A clue you may have missed: not all people with the title "sex offender" was caught doing bad things to children, or even to other human beings.
  If the label were applied only to those who sexually assaulted children, then you might have had a point.
  
  --
  Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
9. Re:This will obviously help. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 07:44 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
  - H. L. Mencken
10. Re:This will obviously help. by fahrbot-bot · 2012-12-20 07:45 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I believe the intent is to prevent pedophile pedators from clandestinely communicating with potential underage prey.
  It's an attempt to prevent people that have been convicted of a crime and paid their dues / served their time from participating in legal activities on the basis that they *might* commit the same crime with new victims.
  Are car thieves prevented from owning/driving cars? Are bank robbers prevented from having bank accounts. Are rapist prevented from dating and/or getting married and/or having children? Nope, but as a sex offender, they can't play WoW - along with a whole bunch of other things they must do, like register themselves everywhere, avoid schools and parks, etc...
  I understand that sex offenders have an unusually high recidivism rate and the laws are intended to "protect the children" (or others) but isn't this simply shifting the responsibility of parents to teach their children, and for the children themselves, to act safely and responsibly and for parents to monitor their children properly?
  You know the financial industry gets away with the disclaimer, "Past performance is no guarantee of future results," and their failure rate is probably worse than the sex offender recidivism rate. But, I guess it's okay to ruin people financially, just don't show them your winky.
  
  --
  It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
11. Re:This will obviously help. by icebike · 2012-12-20 08:09 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I believe the intent is to prevent pedophile pedators from clandestinely communicating with potential underage prey. However, since sex-offender status is applied to more than just pedophiles, I would think that this is overly broad.
  Exactly. In many jurisdictions, you become a sex offender simply by peeing in a back alley in the dark after the bars close.
  There really needs to be a legal redefinition of the terminology to weed out the pedophiles from the person on the losing side of a he-said/she-said.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
12. Re:This will obviously help. by dryeo · 2012-12-20 08:12 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I understand that sex offenders have an unusually high recidivism rate
  This is a common misunderstanding as two minutes on Google will show. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offender#Recidivism sex offenders have a recidivism rate of 5.3% (or 43% when considering any crime rather then sex crimes) compared with 68% for non-sex crime recidivism.
  The way it's done in Canada is at sentencing the judge can include things like being put on the sex offender registry and being banned from certain activities if appropriate.
  
  --
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
13. Re:This will obviously help. by e3m4n · 2012-12-20 08:13 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I dont know the specifics of this law, but may of the 'for the children' laws that go after 'registered sex offenders' often end up using too broad of a fishing net. In many states a 23yr old has sex with a 16 or 17 yr old consentually is still found guilty of statuatory rape due to laws concerning age of concent having some relative age component. This can be even more problematic when the said 16 or 17yr old uses a fake id to get into a club and lies about their age. At the end of the day the law is still considered violated and the 23yr old got branded a sex offender. Now fast-forward 10yrs later. I just dont see how this same person should be lumped into having all his rights violated in an effert to protect children from poedophiles. At no time did this person behave in a way dangerous to children. Its also very likely that now that this person is 33yrs old is also still only attracted to people that are still only a few years younger putting them at 30ish in age.
  I know in my city they used a dragnet law 3yrs ago that said registered sex offenders could not live within 1000 yards of a school, church, or daycare. Well there really arent but 4 or 5 places here that can escape 1000 yards of a freakin church let alone schools and daycares. This town is church crazy, a damn church is on every city block. As a result of this law they evicted, by force, everyone in violation after a 60 day notice. Now they all live in this one small area of town. This _includes_ a few people in the exact same scenario I painted. Those people had grown up and had kids of their own now, and are forced to live with thier children surrounded by _real_ child predators.
  I have no faith in government legislators being able to pull their heads out of their asses and write laws specific enough that stupid shit like this doesnt end up causing more problems than they hope to avert.
14. Re:This will obviously help. by cayenne8 · 2012-12-20 08:57 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Drunk Drivers are often prevented from owning/driving cars; or at least forced to own a car with a built in sobriety detector.
  Not on a first conviction!!!!
  You aren't branded for life with one DWI conviction...and don't suffer that type of punishment.
  You have to have been convicted in most places like 5+ times to get that kind of driving ban placed on you.
  Hell, there's people out there with 2-3 DWI convictions under their belts, driving again perfectly legal after paying their 'legal dues'.
  
  --
  Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
15. Re:This will obviously help. by Applekid · 2012-12-20 09:20 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I understand that sex offenders have an unusually high recidivism rate and the laws are intended to "protect the children" (or others) ...
  This fact is the smoking gun that pedophiles need to be treated as mentally ill, not as hardened criminals. With all the after-effects beyond mere incarceration making it impossible to live or work practically any place, I can't imagine any freed sex offenders can ever afford the costs of treatment, let alone rebuild their life. Even when it's a sick compulsion and not necessarily a choice.
  Even insane killers, in our society, can get help in an institution. And they KILLED people.
  But, hey, can't make any money for the prison industrial complex and give government an excuse to monitor another citizen 24/7 until his death by being compassionate and sensible.
  
  --
  More Twoson than Cupertino
16. Re:This will obviously help. by Applekid · 2012-12-20 09:25 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Yeah, it's getting to be a guy can't commit sex crimes without lasting consequences anymore. Sheesh.
  If you think the jail time wasn't enough, then petition for the sentences to be longer. Don't "free" them when their term is over, really free them. Even murderers get a better shake at life out of the big house.
  
  --
  More Twoson than Cupertino
17. Re:This will obviously help. by Belial6 · 2012-12-20 10:26 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  As a parent, I have more fear that my child will be seriously harmed by these laws than I am that my child might be harmed by a pedophile. Interestingly enough, if my next door neighbor had been convicted of being a cannibal that particularly enjoyed the taste of children, they wouldn't need to tell me that they were a danger. On the other hand, if they got caught streaking through a bar, they would need to notify me about how much of a danger they were to my child.
18. Re:This will obviously help. by arth1 · 2012-12-20 10:43 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  No, but what are human rights are protection from double jeopardy and retroactive sentencing. When you have paid your debt to society, society can't say "wait a minute, we now also want to restrict you from ...". No matter whether it's a $0.01 fine, public flogging, or being banned from activities that others can join.
  If you really want sex offenders serving life time sentences, you need to give them life time sentences. Changing the sentence afterwards is a direct human rights violation.
  And unless you're very stupid and short sighted, you do not want to hand out the maximum sentences when you can avoid it. If that's what a rapist is facing, what would stop him from killing the victim and get rid of the witness? If he's going to get the maximum penalty anyhow, there's nothing to lose.
  What this is is moral indignation, nothing more, nothing less. It has nothing to do with justice, and everything to do with feeling superior to those you take out your anger on. Because they are not us, and thus does not have to be treated like us.
  Fucking double standards.
19. Re:This will obviously help. by Elldallan · 2012-12-20 13:25 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Well they're not public records here in Sweden and I think that is preferable, once you have served your punishment society shouldn't penalize you furter, you should be able to put your life back together. If you forever isolate anyone who's ever been convicted that just forces em to sink deeper and deeper into criminality because no one will give them a decent job.
  
  Court proceedings are public records here as well(but your criminal record is not) but it's somewhat of a hassle to get them, you have to go to the specific court that handed down the sentence and you have to request the specific case.
  Yes I know about the sex offender registry and I find it despicable, even convicted criminals has a right to privacy and to not be harassed, again making a phariah out of someone only increases their chance of relapsing into serious criminality
  
  Well over here you can't get a firearms license either if you have a conviction which is fine but also firearms is extremely limited, you can pretty much only get one if you're a licensed hunter or a member of a pistol/rifle club.
  And I think it's wrong to deprive someone of their right to vote forever just because you made an error of judgement.
Why not just block messaging? by sunderland56 · 2012-12-20 05:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

If the aim is to stop registered sex offenders from messaging, why block them from gaming completely? Just block their ability to message.
1. Re:Why not just block messaging? by Trepidity · 2012-12-20 05:58 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  rationality doesn't really come into play with "sex offender" laws.
  p.s. you can be put on a sex-offender registry because you "sexted" with your gf/bf when you were both in high school!
  
  --
  10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
2. Re:Why not just block messaging? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 06:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Exactly. This law isn't about keeping kids safe, it's about piling increasing the punishment ex post facto. See, it's an administrative response, not a punishment as far as the courts are concerned.
3. Re:Why not just block messaging? by Trepidity · 2012-12-20 06:09 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Or maybe you Christian-right nannies should fuck right off.
  
  --
  10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
4. Re:Why not just block messaging? by SJHillman · 2012-12-20 06:15 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  What about the sex offenders whose crimes had *nothing to do* with children? What if they took a piss behind a bush and a 70 year old lady happened to see them and reported it? It's not a "touched little kids" list, it's a "any act that uses any part of the part of the body conceivably used for sex" list.
  What you're doing is the same as lumping everyone who has ever had a speeding ticket or parking violation in with DWI offenders and then saying that *none of them* are allowed to go to bars just because a small subset of the group has done something bad related to alcohol.
5. Re:Why not just block messaging? by PhxBlue · 2012-12-20 06:18 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Or maybe you Christian-right nannies should fuck right off.
  They're going to need an instruction manual to do that. Just sayin'.
  
  --
  !#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
6. Re:Why not just block messaging? by firex726 · 2012-12-20 06:22 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  More like, what good is a list to protect kids if it's populated by people who are of no threat, and never have been?
7. Re:Why not just block messaging? by Joce640k · 2012-12-20 06:24 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  you can be put on a sex-offender registry because you "sexted" with your gf/bf when you were both in high school!
  Meanwhile the TSA can scan/grope children to their hearts content because the same government that passed this law passed some other ones too.
  The TSA is a dream job for a pedophile.
  
  --
  No sig today...
8. Re:Why not just block messaging? by Opportunist · 2012-12-20 06:58 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I'd rather side with pedos than with people who crap out laws like that.
  Think rationally about it: The pedos will never harm me. Those laws, on the other hand, might if I take a piss in the wrong spot.
  
  --
  We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
9. Re:Why not just block messaging? by Desler · 2012-12-20 07:09 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Plenty of people on sex offender lists are neither rapists or molestors.
Labels by IonOtter · 2012-12-20 06:01 · Score: 5, Funny

I would be much less worried about this, if it weren't for the fact that the label of "sex offender" is used for everything where genitalia are involved.
Did the cops follow you 20 yards into the thick forest along the interstate to catch you peeing? Sex offender.
Did your top get ripped off and carried away in the surf at Jones Beach? Sex offender.
Did you scratch yourself when a cop was looking? Sex offender.

--
[End Of Line]
1. Re:Labels by phayes · 2012-12-20 06:45 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Your ignorance is showing.
  A 17 year old girl can get on the list for having consensual sex with a 15 year old boy:
  http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2003101190_offender03.html
  Two 14 year olds boys got put on the list for putting their naked butts on the faces of two 12 year old boys :
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2017081/Two-teenagers-branded-sex-offenders-life-horseplay-incident.html
  You can get put on the list for answering the door undressed:
  http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2887/is-it-indecent-exposure-if-im-visibly-naked-while-on-my-own-private-property
  A few more dumb reasons for being put on the list:
  http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/sex_offender_registry_stupidity/
  In short, sex offender lists are being applied for anything having to do with nudity and on the other being used to justify barring people from anything to do with children. It's clearly bullshit but as most people don't pay attention to how laxist laws have become on placing people on the list they are easily swayed by prosecutors looking for a cheap & easy public display of how hard they are working.
  
  --
  Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Sex Offenders by Translation+Error · 2012-12-20 06:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

This is a good step, along with other such measures that do their best to prevent people convicted of sex crimes from having a chance of living a happy, productive life once they've served their time. We must continually tighten the screws on them and make sure they can't have lives that are worth too much to throw away in a moment of stress, rage, and frustration.

Because a dog that's constantly beaten and scolded is the one that behaves best, right?

--
When someone says, "Any fool can see ..." they're usually exactly right.
Re:YAY I'm so glad!! by medcalf · 2012-12-20 06:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

I can understand the comfort thing, but at some point we have to decide either that people are so dangerous that they must be removed from the population, or that we have punished them enough and need to let them alone. The alternative is that the state gets to persecute and hound people forever, once convicted, continually piling on new punishments without court action, merely to assuage people's desire to "do something." And any time there are crimes that are so stigmatized (terrorism and "sex crimes" being the current boogymen) that anything can be done to punish the offenders, the natural tendency is to expand the original, horrible crimes beyond all recognition. It's the same thing as calling a handgun a "weapon of mass destruction," which originally meant chemical, nuclear and biological weapons that, when used as intended, could kill thousands at a single use. I simply think it's a bad idea to turn over to government the ability to persecute people indefinitely and infinitely, because that power will always be abused, and eventually I (or you) will be the victims of that abuse.

--
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Re:YAY I'm so glad!! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-20 06:07 · Score: 5, Funny

you sound hot.
Re:Too Much by firex726 · 2012-12-20 06:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

I do have to wonder if this will every be challenged as "Cruel and unusual".
They paid their time, if they were to be punished more throw them back behind bars, otherwise stop actively harassing them. Realistically they probably would have gotten off easier had they just committed a good ol' fashioned murder.
Re:Stupid by Kergan · 2012-12-20 06:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

I think it's pretty safe to bet that the US will go there eventually.
Let's slip into these sexually offending moccasins by VortexCortex · 2012-12-20 06:23 · Score: 4, Interesting

So, Say you're a "Sex Offender". You're required to register all your on-line account information with some agency... Say you decide to "relapse" into your wicked ways and do some sexual offending. Wouldn't you just not register that new on-line account? That is to say, it would be just as effective to simply require that sex offenders don't do any more sex offending ever again, right?
Bonus: Simply requiring sex offenders to stop performing sexually offensive acts would avoid the fairly brain dead Denial of Service that's now possible because they're letting deviants tell them which email addresses to black-list.
"I hate that fucker, I'll just register their email under my sex-offender accounts; Screw you and your on line games! Ha ha!"
Meanwhile, those that wanted to move on and be good people are constantly reminded of their past mistakes. Thus, the frustrating on-line processes, exclusion from parts of society, and reinforcement that they can never be cured will increase the chances that those who channel anger through sexual offenses will do so again.
I know! Why don't we just make it illegal to do bad things! That'll stop all the crime! Also, if they don't do this for violence related criminals too, i.e., murderers then they're damned hypocrites. Killing humans is less heinous than Raping humans? WTF? Won't someone think of the Children!? I'd rather have a raped but still alive kid than a dead one...
So picture this... by JustNiz · 2012-12-20 06:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

You're on a road trip driving on an empty road in the middle of nowhere, and you desperately need a pee. There isnt a town or anything at all for at least 50 miles and theres no way you can hang on that far anyway.
You finally have to pull over to the side of the road and take care of business. Unfortunately a cop car goes by at the wrong moment and he spotted you, turns around and arrests you for peeing in a public place. Congratulations you are now a registered sex offender. Thats how easy it is and how fucked up the system really is.
Re:YAY I'm so glad!! by wonkey_monkey · 2012-12-20 06:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you read tfa, a 12 year old boy was 'groomed' for a period of months by a sex offender using a Playstation. After gaining the youth's trust the sexual assaults began. Sex offenders do not belong around kids at all, it's too big a damn risk to take.
Then you'll just have to keep them locked up forever, unless you're willing to better define "around kids," because the damn things are everywhere (kids, not sex offenders).
The standard cliche (in the UK, at least) is that paedophiles groom children with the promise of puppies - better ban sex offenders from keeping pets!
A few months ago two men seriously sexually assaulted a child in a shopping centre - better ban sex offenders from shopping!
Forfty percent of all sex offenders have jobs and eat bread - well, you see where I'm going with this.
PS You've conflated sex offenders with paedophiles. Not all of one are the other.

--
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Different Games by coinreturn · 2012-12-20 06:46 · Score: 4, Funny

They should at least be able to play in some MMORPG that allows ONLY registered sex offenders to play.
Re:Too Much by Derekloffin · 2012-12-20 07:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

Actually, in the extreme cases, it is like you being convicted of drunk driving while your car was turned off and you were drunk, asleep in the driver seat (yes, you can be convicted under these circumstances), but then later not only are you refused ownership of a vehicle, but can't even go to car shows.