Quote (Skinned @ Jul 24 2017 11:24pm)

No law was broken, and I agree with it. They should have called someone, and it would have been the moral thing to do to call for help or helping...but I'm speaking from a position from privilege, because I'm a strong swimmer and I wouldn't be blamed by authorities for being a suspicious looking person at what could potentially be a crime scene.

There was something similar that happened, when a man in NYC fell into a subway track, and freaked out and panicked and people were reluctant to help him....because what if he panicked and pulled them in?

Calling people would have right, only so that his body didn't bloat too bad and he could have a decent funeral, or save the family the anguish of having one of their own be a missing person.

Quote (BardOfXiix @ Jul 25 2017 06:52pm)

The YouTube thread isn't for actual videos and topics, it's for idiots to put all their shitposts in one place so the rest of us don't have to deal with them. Anything important deserves an actual thread, like this.

Not gonna watch the video, 'cuz I don't get my rocks off to snuff films, but it sounds like a fucked up incident. I think it says a lot about our culture and youth today that their actions don't surprise me in the least. As for mandatory help laws, they're idiotic without Good Samaritan laws protecting those who are now obligated to offer help. There was a case a few years back where someone got sued for saving someone else's life, lost the case, and had to pay financial reparations for saving a life. I don't see any reason why laws shouldn't stipulate the necessity of notifying law enforcement or rescue officials in the case of a life-threatening event.

More to the point, however, I wish we didn't have to legislate this stuff. What do you think needs to change so that we wouldn't have to put laws on the books like "don't videotape people dying and laugh"? This reminds me of Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood, where the main character spends a lot of his time in his youth watching the most horrible, depraved shit he can find on the internet. Brutal videos of people getting sold into sex slavery and raped and then beaten to death, etc. That's really where the internet can take you today, unfortunately, with shit like 50/50 Reddit, where it's either a kitten or someone getting their throat slit. Stuff like this is just becoming par for the course as we strive to reach a critical level of stimulation that is pushed ever higher by the constant bombardment of information, just so we can vainly try to fill the hole in our hearts left by the nigh complete and utter dissociation from humans that the digital age has brought upon us.

It's pretty grim shit, and it's certainly not going anywhere any time soon. I don't have any good answers.

Quote (Handcuffs @ Jul 25 2017 01:04pm)

That's a good point about the Good Samaritan Laws, and while although I can't say that I'm fully on-board with legal requirements to provide aid, I would certainly expect Good Samaritan Laws to be in place should there ever be a legal requirement to provide aid. Or, even if there isn't a legal requirement to do so, Good Samaritan Laws are beneficial for folks who would seek to provide aid regardless of the law.

As for your second point, I certainly don't have any good answers either. Such depraved indifference to human life is interesting, because I wonder whether the advances of technology result in people "striving" for more and new depraved stimulation, of if it's always been the case in the minds of people, and that technology is merely allowing for an index to be created to catalog what has always existed? I could see compelling arguments made for both sides, honestly.

Quote (Handcuffs @ Jul 25 2017 12:59pm)

While I understand your first point about swimming ability and how this applies to this case, I am hesitant to embrace your second point about confidence with safety when contacting the authorities. Could that argument not be applied to all situations in which emergency services are needed to be contacted generally? Such as situations in which a crime is being committed? I can't reconcile that in my mind, especially because contacting emergency services can include things like calling for an ambulance (where, yes, police may still come) or even just giving an anonymous tip. There's, as far as I know, no legal requirement to stay in the vicinity after contacting emergency services.

At the same time, however, I don't think that time in jail or prison really does all that much to help in a situation like this. Of course, as a family member or loved one, you would be enraged, but I do think that feeling translates to a desire of punishment being equivalent to vengeance rather than justice. It's the same observation that's been made about the death penalty, really. Someone else in this thread mentioned punishment for a case like this being more about community service than time spent incarcerated, which I could get behind. The reality is that we have to accept that in situations like this there will never be a "completely just" reconciliation in the eyes of the family members, and that that's okay.

At minimum, I believe contacting aid should be a legal requirement, especially because there's the potential that emergency services may be able to arrive in time to save the person's life. While I'm sure that cases may end up being tricky in terms of figuring out if someone had a duty to contact aid or not, I figure that if maritime law has it set that people actually have to provide aid legally, and that they've been able to figure it out, that at the very least we can figure out cases where it's a legal requirement to contact aid.

Quote (majorblood @ Jul 25 2017 01:25am)

seems like most people on the left here support the legal requirement to intervene except skinned

Quote (majorblood @ Jul 24 2017 11:39pm)

No legal duty to do anything, but would be unethical

Quote (Skinned @ 25 Jul 2017 01:00)

Quote (Scaly @ Jul 25 2017 01:35pm)