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Student Arrested For Posting Zombie-Killing AR Game Clip Filmed at His High School (yahoo.com)
18-year-old high school student Sean Small was arrested in Indiana on Tuesday and charged with a misdemeanor for posting a videogame clip to social media. An anonymous reader quotes Yahoo Lifestyle:
The clip in question is Sean playing The Walking Dead: Our World, which is an augmented reality game that animates characters into a real-world setting. In this case, players kill zombies. Along with Sean's video he wrote, "Finally something better than Pokemon Go," which is also an augmented reality game....
Sean, who is a member of the Indiana National Guard, pleaded not guilty to an intimidation charge. He was released on $1,000, and his school expulsion hearing is set for next week. The video featured other students walking through the halls as Sean allegedly attempted to kill the zombies the game placed among them.
Realistic footage of shootings in the high school's hallways apparently alarmed the off-duty sheriff's deputy hired to work at the high school -- who then filed the misdemeanor intimidation charge with the county prosecutor.
Sean, who is a member of the Indiana National Guard, pleaded not guilty to an intimidation charge. He was released on $1,000, and his school expulsion hearing is set for next week. The video featured other students walking through the halls as Sean allegedly attempted to kill the zombies the game placed among them.
Realistic footage of shootings in the high school's hallways apparently alarmed the off-duty sheriff's deputy hired to work at the high school -- who then filed the misdemeanor intimidation charge with the county prosecutor.
There seems to be a grey area between fiction, and really harmful content. However the line between free speech, and being uncomfortable about something is very hard to draw.
I'm not sure how to objectively draw a boundary. However if the game is setup to allow real life footage to be amended with zombie shooting, this would have happened sooner or later.
How this finally plays out is actually important for the future boundaries of free speech.
And effective gun control is a must to remove the fear of shootings.
That's all.
From the summary, it doesn't sound to me, as though he thought he was pushing any boundaries. He was just playing a game, and thought he'd share it on social media. It wasn't a depiction of shooting students or civilians, only literal monsters. This genuinely sounds like an overreaction to me.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
To play this game you move around with your smartphone and click buttons in the smartphone's screen to destroy pixels which make up zombie images.
Nobody in the school could have been intimidated by a student walking around waving his phone and clicking on it.
This is not even a thought crime. A thought crime would be "I so would like to kill this teacher who makes such difficult exams". Killing zombies in real life (yes, I realize how absurd that was) is no crime, thus phantasies about it are not thought crimes.
A wrongful arrest is absolutely an infringement of the arrestee's rights.
And this was a video of a game, not a video of a plausible violation of the school's rules on contraband (unless cell phones are contraband there).
Let me get this straight, you think that the guy is rather silly because he posted game footage that also included a public place? What's the real difference between that and a movie about a killing spree in down-town Washington filmed in said location? The actual playing of the game is rather harmless as no guns are wielded, just a (deadly?) phone!
I find it difficult that it is no longer possible for many people and powers that be to distinguish between a make-believe and reality. I am sure that the sheriff's department would be informed had a real incident happened. At least check the facts before arresting people. I think the silliness, if not outright stupidity, is to be found among people overreacting to literally harmless publishings like this.
My conclusion: The terrorists have won!
People are now so terrified of even little things that it is difficult to have fun if it is not entirely PC. Put the terrorist threat into context and look at how many people have died in the traffic in the last few years or from pneumonia or tuberculosis compared to how many people have died in terror attacks in the last 100 years.
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
" playing simulated lethal combat games within school grounds. "
Nothing lethal about it. See, the thing is, zombies are already dead.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'm upping a patch tonight to replace the weapons with grief counselors.
*thrown*
*hits zombie*
Counselor: "How does that make you feel? Did you take the physical contact personally?"
*Counselor pulls out a plush High School Musical doll*
Counselor: "Where on Zach Efron did I touch you?"
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
A few guys in my high school did a similar thing with Doom in the 90s. Made a model of the school and some of the students, teachers etc as monsters and you could play a level killing them all. Nobody thought it was threatening. Don't see why this one would be?
Congratulations on supporting a police state?
Something ambiguous that, depending on additional facts, either could be probable cause for a crime or could be innocuous is not itself PC. Those additional facts have to be deduced to find PC. In this case, they weren't there.