Suicide Live via Webcam

In one of the most tragic stories i have come across recently a florida college student committed suicide on webcam while others watched.

Police found Abraham Biggs Jr. dead in his father's bed Wednesday, 12 hours after he first declared on the Web site for bodybuilders that he planned to take his own life. He took a fatal drug overdose in front of an Internet audience. Although some viewers contacted the Web site to notify police, authorities did not reach his house in time.

There are a lot of sick and messed up things out on the net including videos of death, rape etc. Those are terrible but i think that watching people commit suicide live is worse. Those people who laughed or encouraged him to follow though on his suicide could be charged as soliciting the crime and deserve to have some guilt.

The thing that seems most appalling is that the event took place over the course of hours and not minutes. How were authorities unable to locate and help Mr. Biggs in that time frame? If we have to pass a law allowing authorities access to physical addresses corresponding to ip addresses in cases where people threaten to commit suicide on webcams i think that might be narrowly tailored enough to be meaningful without encroaching on net neutrality. Sadly this will probably not be the last time a tragedy like this occurs.

Never take a person's threats to commit suicide lightly.