I think the number of people who knew of the stream, who’d want to tune in to watch two dudes going at it, had the desire to record the iChat stream, and the knowledge of how to do that is zero, for all intents and purposes.
Where, how and why would you assume such a thing?
Because it conveniently makes him right. Duh.
Well, I guess I based it on nothing referring to a video being distributed, being unable to find the video, and the combination of how few computers are setup for screen capture and the other factors.
I get the same impression. If cit2mo is really Tyler then it appears that he turned off the computer so no one actually would have seen him having sex that night. I assume other factors were at play, like harassment from Ravi, and maybe that pushed him over the edge.
It usually happens as a result of divorce settlements. Also if a student is under 26 and not married or a veteran his/her parents income is a factor in how much financial aid they can get regardless of whether or no the parents are actually paying anything. Parents can effectively reduce their child’s financial aid to zero simply by refusing to fill out the FAFSA forms.
On the flip side some states actually have laws allowing parents to sue their adult children for filial support.
I definitely get the feeling like there are details missing in this case.
What I’m reading here are lots jumping to the conclusion that Tyler was hiding his sexuality, but I haven’t read any evidence of that so far. He was certainly fine with his roommate knowing that he needed some private time with a dude for a few hours. If his dorm was anything like mine, any hooking up didn’t stay secret for long.
Even if him being gay was a big secret, how many people that he actually cared about do you think subscribe to his stupid roommate’s Twitter feed? Most certainly not his parents, the most obvious people he’d want to hid being gay from. So maybe now a few of his roommate’s HS buddies know he’s gay. Is that really that big of a deal?
The last thing I’m doing is condoning the roommate’s behavior; he should definitely be punished legally and kicked out of school. But to me this seems on the surface like a shitty but manageable situation and not something to jump off a bridge over. Yet, that’s what happened. I wonder if he told the roommate that he was going to the authorities and the roommate threatened to send the video to the whole school, or something extreme like that, and that’s what pushed him over the edge.
Good points all, imo.
Well, sez you. In both cases, people are making personal decisions about their private lives. Our society no longer considers it the public’s business to regulate people’s sex lives. So it doesn’t matter whether you believe any of them are doing something wrong.
Remember, there are plenty of people who believe that your case No. 2 does involve people doing something wrong, either because they aren’t married to each other or because they’re gay.
These opinions about wrongness, as well as yours, should be irrelevant.
Yeah, and with the gap between his posts on the message board (where he was describing it as a shitty-yet-manageable situation) and his suicide it’s hard to say what was going through his mind when he jumped. There really needs to be an investigation into what happened leading up to his death. It doesn’t quite fit together as is.
Everyone deserves the right to privacy, even people who are doing what others perceive as immoral acts.
Most college students are–wait for it–legal residents of their parents household and thus considered an insured under their parents homeowners policy.
If you look at paragraph 5(b) on the 1st page of this standard HO-03 form, insured is defined as:
- b. A student enrolled in school full time, as defined by the school, who was a resident of your household before moving out to attend school, provided the student is under the age of:
(1) 24 and your relative; or
(2) 21 and in your care or the care of a person described in a.(1) above
You can also buy an endorsement to cover an older student.
PDF link http://server.iii.org/yy_obj_data/binary/748905_1_0/HO3_sample.pdf
FYI, Eric Harris wasn’t a minor. He was 18.
But insurance does not cover deliberate crimes, there was nothing negligent about what the students did, and the there was nothing negligent in the supervision of the students by their parents or the school, so even if there was homeowners’ coverage extending to the students, it would not cover the circumstances at hand.
I’d be upset, and I’m going to make sure no one posts a video of me having sex…
…because I’m not very good at it.
I kid! I kid! I wish!
Really? I had a friend who recovered money from the car insurance policy of the drunk driver who killed her husband (though she’d rather have him back instead of the money).
Problems arising out of the use of vehicles and out of drunkenness are so very common and so severe that a combination of the two has resulted in public policy requiring an exception to the norm.
For example, diminished capacity is a criminal defence, but voluntary drunkenness is usually not a defence, despite drunkenness by its very nature diminishing the drunkard’s capacity. Why this public policy contradiction? Too many drunks are doing too much harm to let them get away with it, so we remove the defence and convict them.
Now let’s have a look at how public policy applies to insurance. The norm is that insurance does not cover intentional and criminal acts. It is against public policy to permit individuals or business to wander about clubbing people, and have their liability covered by insurance, for an important part of liability is its deterrence effect.
This, however, conflicts with the public policy that recognizes that so many people are injured by drunk drivers that something has to be done to meet the liability problem. Thus motor vehicle insurance usually covers liability caused by drunk drivers, despite the drunks being intentionally drunk to the point that they meet the definition of intent for criminal conviction, and despite their not being of diminished capacity in criminal law regardless of their being of diminished capacity in reality.
Thus if someone gets drunk and shoots you, or is not drunk at all and shoots you, his insurance will not cover it, but if he gets drunk and drives into you, his insurance will cover it. It is not logical, but it attempts to meet the various public policy needs of seeing that people cannot be insured for deliberately harming others, seeing that the damage caused by drunks in vehicles is covered, and seeing that the drunks themselves are convicted.
Since non-consensual public broadcasting of people having sex is not a particularly common problem, and seldom has a ramification as serious as the one in this thread, there has not been a public policy exception carved out the general practice of insurance not covering intentional or criminal acts the way there has been a public policy exception carved out for drunk drivers causing crashes.
There is no doubt that this is an incident filled with complexities, unforeseen consequences and a serious lack of boundaries. But does a lynch mob mentality really help? There is the ruination of lives all round already; and the guys responsible have to live with their part in the suicide of a young man for the rest of their lives. But it was only a part. Many, many people must have had some contribution in former events for Tyler to choose to kill himself. To me, suicide is a selfish act and the ultimate statement of revenge: see-how-sorry-you-are-NOW.
Do you think that if the perpetrators here don’t end up doing time, and/or being financially decimated it will compel them to repeat a similar stunt? What if criminal prosecution and the possibility of a damages suit had them commit suicide? What then?
I think you are misunderstanding what the crime is here.
The crime is not “cause someone to commit suicide.” I agree that that would not be a coherent law.
The crime is secretly recording sex acts without consent and distributing the recordings. The perpetrators are certainly guilty of this. The jury will certainly not be guilty of this if they convict.
I think they should be given the maximum sentence (which appears to be 5 years).
Thanks Carmady. Whatever the charge, it probably wouldn’t happen if no death was involved, or if what was filmed was a ‘proud (sexual) moment’ - with permission granted or not. It’s a pretty screwed up world, and technology is such a double-edged sword. Making everything so accessible to broadcast implies to some that because it can be done, it should be done.
This is one of those hot messes that will a Hot Button Topic for a long time, but this very unfortunate and tragic event will probably result in new rules on college campuses across the world and new legislation across the globe, to protect privacy.
One can hope it is Universally called “Tyler Clemeti’s Law”