Japan Asks ISPs For Help In Fight Against Web-Inspired Suicides
by Tim Stevens, posted May 1st 2008 at 4:21PM
Pages providing information about and encouragement for suicide are growing with alarming speed on the Internet. In Wales, 17 people have killed themselves seemingly in the hopes of earning the respect of their friends via online memorial pages. In Australia a man ended his life in his driveway using a robot he built using plans downloaded from the Internet.In Japan the current trend is to induce death with deadly hydrogen sulphide gas, generated from bath salts and laundry detergent via a process described on many Web sites. In response, the Japanese government is now asking ISPs to take down any pages containing those instructions.
The request is a voluntary one, as the government is being careful to not be accused of censorship, but that just seems to make the request all the more futile. Trying to remove information from the 'Net has proven to be impossible time and again, most recently with one company's failed attempt to take whistle-blowing site Wikileaks offline, an effort that just resulted in more and more copies of the site springing up in countries around the world.
Our hearts go out to those who have lost loved ones to suicide, especially those who got support in their acts online. But, that doesn't change the fact that hiding information is the wrong way to prevent it. [Source: Ars Technica]
