It all depends a lot on how the law works. It also depends on state laws as well. I know when this kid over at GameTZ not only ripped me off, but a bunch of other people, he got away with it scott free. Turns out that he was having everyone mail their trades to a phony address in another state. Then every few months, he would come down to his friends house and get this stuff they were holding for him.

When the police found the residence with the stolen goods on the property, his friends admitted to everything and gave them a phone number and address. The only problem? We were told that he would have to be brought back to the state where the stuff was sent in order for him to be properly prosecuted. arresting him from several states away and bringing him back to that state would have cost far too much money, so we never were able to sue him. In the end, my stuff wasn't even at the property any more, so I got totally screwed in the end.

The same could be said for BYOND, they could try and sue DarkWizard, but they may have to sue him in whatever state the servers for BYOND run in. That could already become a pricey concept right there. Then they would have to have valid proof that it actually was DarkWizard. I mean, yeah, we know that he is responsible for some of the things that are happening, but do you have proof that he is responsble for everything is that is happening on BYOND? Given DarkWizard's reputation, we could say it is a good chance it is him, but where is the actual proof? As far as the whole breech of terms of service for an ISP goes, I can tell you from first hand experience that they Almost always don't care. As long as he is paying the bill, they are going to continue to offer him that service.

The Magic Man wrote:

There are other more complex methods that can be used too, such as making use of Java, which can be used to make it impossible for anyone but expert hackers from getting around something like an IP ban, excluding ISPs changing IP addresses (I'm not sure on the technical details behind it, all I know is it can be done and it does work very well).

Well changing IP addresses is fairly easy to do. It happens all the time for regular connections--even cable ones--and when a troll uses a proxy, the IP is pretty moot. Fortunately, Dark Wizard is incorrect in thinking a proxy provides good cover for his actions.

I'm not sure where you think Java is a solution here, because applets are quite limited in what they can do. Having designed a chat in Java where we didn't even have the system of making users register their names, I had to develop some sophisticated methods of screening IPs (without necessarily banning whole ranges outright) and even then it wasn't foolproof.

In which case you can probably just notify the ISP about said users actions because a lot of ISPs have a terms of service which including something along the lines of
"You may not:
Send a message or communication that is offensive, abusive, defamatory (damages someone's reputation), obscene, menacing or illegal;
Cause annoyance, nuisance, inconvenience or needless worry to, or break the rights of, any other person;"
And so on. That was taken from my ISPs terms of service, and after a quick look every other ISP I looked at included something along the same line as that. So even if what they are doing it not illegal, report them to their ISP, because chances are their ISP wont allow that sort of behavour, and when little Mr. Spammers Mommy gets a letter from their ISP saying he has been a bad boy, chances are he will stop.

That's one of the routes available to us, yes. Though in my experience a dedicated troll doesn't stop; they get a new ISP or they use their friends' machines.

Anyway some of the options we have in mind will be independent of the ISP itself, so they'll be more effective at shutting these kinds of twits down. In the meantime they paint nice bright trails to their own doorsteps.

Lummox JR

True that they could always get another ISP. But from what I am aware there was a new law put in place last year in America that makes it illegal to "annoy" people over the internet. It is a bit of a silly law but a law none the less, and an ISP would probably have a legal obligation to report any of their customers breaking said law to the proper authorities.

Also, from what I am aware people who come to a website with the intent to cause trouble and continue returning even after being banned are cyberstalking, and in most places cyberstalking is more or less treated the same as actual stalking and people caught doing it are punished in a similar fashion. Which in some cases can be very serious (a single threat of violence is enough to get the offender put in prison).

In most cases though it probably wont result in any legal action taken against the offender, but at the least they will have their account terminated by their ISP. And even if they do get a new ISP and come back for more, just report them again! Eventually legal action will be taken against them, or they'll just run out of ISPs to use. Hahaha.

Please, I hardly see any chance of him going to jail unless you can show me otherwise.

Jtgibson wrote:

We're just hoping he'll get bored and leave before he winds up saying hello to Bubba.

Where I come from, that is a suggestion of going to jail.

Revenant Jesus wrote:

Please, I hardly see any chance of him going to jail unless you can show me otherwise.

I suggest you bring your sarcasm detector in for routine maintenance. ;-)

Revenant Jesus wrote:

Except sarcasm can be really hard to detect when it comes to plain text. I usually take what people say as generally serious unless it is completely outrageous.

Well, jail time from posting shock images was a little outrageous, but you're right, I probably should've clarified it with a smiley. The intended effect (to make Dark Wizard think twice when he read my post, because you just know he's attention-whoring all of these posts) would've been lost if I did that, though.

i blame the underpants gnomes!