18:07 May 23 2012
Times Read: 652
Cyber Bullying and Vampire Rave
While bullying and harassment of any sort can be very damaging to the victim it is important to note that there are no Federally cyber specific laws about bullying.
In most cases of claimed bullying both parties have some blame but in other there is a real victim, I'll get to that later.
First the laws.
There are 3 sets of "laws" which govern VR, the site's TOS, State law (in this case Nevada) and Federal law.
The VR TOS states about content:
----XIV. PROFILE, PORTFOLIO, JOURNAL, FORUM, SOCIETIES, GROUPS, EVENTS, & OTHER USER CONTENT
Guidelines for posting user content to VampireRave.com and the Service shall be as follows:
All Content posted to VampireRave.com in any way, is the responsibility and property of the author. VampireRave.com is committed to keeping the Service in decent standing for all audiences but is not responsible for the monitoring or filtering of any user Content. Within the confines of international and local law, VampireRave.com will generally not place a limit on the type, or appropriateness of user content within the Service. Those users posting material not suitable for all audiences must agree that they are fully responsible for all the content they have posted anywhere on the service. Should content be deemed illegal by such law having jurisdiction over the user, VampireRave.com is committed to submitting all necessary information to the proper authorities;
Should any Content be reported to VampireRave.com as being offensive or inappropriate, VampireRave.com might call upon the poster to retract, modify, or protect (by means of adult submission or private to friends only) the Content in question within a reasonable amount of time, as set forth by the VampireRave.com staff. Should the poster fail to meet such a request from VampireRave.com staff, VampireRave.com has the full authority to terminate any such reported and verified account holding such inappropriate content. VampireRave.com, however, is under no obligation to restrict or monitor member's Content in any way; VampireRave.com claims no ownership or control over any Content posted by its users. The author retains all patent, trademark, and copyright to all Content posted within available fields, and is responsible for protecting those rights, but is not entitled to the help of the VampireRave.com staff in protecting such Content. The user posting any Content represents that the poster has all rights necessary to post such Content (and for VampireRave.com to serve such Content) without violation of any intellectual property or other rights or any laws or regulations;
XVII. MEMBER CONDUCT
You understand that all information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, messages or other materials, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, are the sole responsibility of the person from which such Content originated. VampireRave.com does not control Content posted via the Service and, as such, does not guarantee the validity of such Content. You also understand that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent or objectionable. Should Content be found or reported to be in violation with, but not limited to, the following terms, it will be VampireRave.com's sole discretion as to what action should be taken. You agree to NOT use the Service to:
Upload, post or otherwise transmit any content that is in VampireRave.com's opinion to be unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive to another's privacy (up to, but not excluding any address, email, phone number, or any other contact information with out the written consent of the owner of such information), hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
Harm minors in any way, as seen by VampireRave.com or applicable law;
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Now that basically means that while harassing members goes against VR's TOS what constitutes harassment is up to the administration alone.
----Nevada State Law
The only law in Nevada that deals with cyber bullying is SB 163 and it ONLY deals with bullying in schools and any areas under the State Dept of Education. It does not apply to Vampire Rave.
----Federal Law
There are NO Federal laws against cyber bullying. The only possible applicable law is USC title 18, part 1, chapter 41, section 875 on Interstate Communications. It states:
(a)Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any demand or request for a ransom or reward for the release of any kidnapped person, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
(b)Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
(c)Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
(d)Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another or the reputation of a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
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So basically what is understood as common cyber bullying is not a federal crime, nor a state crime and it's up to the site admins to determine what is or isn't not true bullying and most laws in general that deal with this issue only apply to minors as well.
VR does take seriously the protection of minors but it also takes seriously the rights of the user to engage in idiotic "coven wars" and so forth and if you take part in the harassment then you only make it worse.
If you are truly being harassed you more than likely have done nothing wrong and didn't reply to a threat with "you stupid cunt, leave me alone or I'll get my friends to find you"...for example.
Should you be a good member, who maybe got in a fight weeks ago or had never had any drama here before and you log into your account and see harassing messages you can BLOCK the member(s). It is highly unlikely that you would have dozens of "thugs" on the site harass you at the beck and call of the main "bad guy". In the end, keep the messages, don't reply except for possibly a basic "please leave me alone" and should things continue despite blocking go and talk to a site Admin (not Cancer directly) and hold on to all messages, screen shots etc.
But this whole "until someone sues VR this will continue" bull crap, it ain't gonna happen so try growing up a little.
COMMENTS
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LordFangor
19:37 May 31 2012
Agreed