Police raid Verder dorm room, confiscate computer.
February 7, 2001 11:47 AM   Subscribe

Police raid Verder dorm room, confiscate computer. Now this normally doesn't sound like anything out of the ordinary... we always hear about this stuff, right? But check out the web page in question. I think this is being taken just a little too far. I used to be an avid StarCraft player too, and I've seen my fair share of clan pages that have a page like the one that got these guys in trouble. Guess we're still in post-Columbine overcarefulness mode...
posted by PWA_BadBoy (14 comments total)
 
um...can you link to the story, please.
posted by jpoulos at 12:16 PM on February 7, 2001


Their web page doesn't seem too... well, interesting. Does the (non-linked) story explicitly say that this page was the reason they got busted?
posted by DaShiv at 12:55 PM on February 7, 2001


Slashdot had this yesterday: Cops Bust Starcraft Clan.
posted by pnevares at 12:59 PM on February 7, 2001


And here's the Kent State student newspaper article. The "reporter" falls into that typical "bad habit" of putting everything "in quotes". It's "really annoying".

From the scant facts we have, it looks like it was campus "cops" (sorry :-} ) who did the confiscating. Silly shits just didn't understand what they were looking at.
posted by jpoulos at 1:11 PM on February 7, 2001


What's most frightening to me is that post-Columbine craziness afflicts college administration as much as high school...
posted by rschram at 1:38 PM on February 7, 2001


Oops. Was a bit sloppy w/ the linking there. Here's the story.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 1:49 PM on February 7, 2001


Someone call the ACLU. The cops need to return the computer immediately and the school should pay damages for the invasion of privacy.

I don't play Starcraft, but in 2 minutes of reading their web page, it's obvious to me what they're talking about. They even say on the infamous "shit list" page, "...deserve to die (in the game itself, not the REAL world!!!)."

This is just hysteria. Could you imagine the police seizing a computer from a college sports writer for saying that he hoped his team annihilated the opposing team?


posted by ritualdevice at 2:01 PM on February 7, 2001


"...deserve to die (in the game itself, not the REAL world!!!)."

This makes it so obvious. Those pigs have to be morons.
posted by grank at 2:12 PM on February 7, 2001


ritualdevice

I said the same thing on slashdot. Call the ACLU!
posted by yangwar at 3:52 PM on February 7, 2001


Thanks for the links. Did it occur to the police that "Zerg Strategies" might not be referring to methods of killing classmates?
posted by DaShiv at 6:51 PM on February 7, 2001


UPDATE: According to this article from Adrenaline Vault, the police are now saying that the confiscation is completely unrelated to the clan's web site.
posted by DaShiv at 6:57 PM on February 7, 2001


I can't even imagine how a campus police force has any authority to confiscate personal property whatsoever. Just because it is in a dorm room, they reserve right to impound something that belongs to a student because of a complaint on how it is being used? In this case I could be flexible about suspending LAN access during an investigation, but no matter the reasoning behind it, this is an amazing infringement on the student's rights. Oh, the lawsuit I'd file.
posted by Dreama at 10:34 PM on February 7, 2001


Campus police are sometimes just cop-wannabe security guards, but large universities have professional police forces that are often deputized. As far as the dorm room, undoubtedly there was a contract signed giving the university access under certain conditions, probably going well beyond landlord-tenant relationships.

The AVault story says they had a warrant.
posted by dhartung at 11:01 PM on February 7, 2001


What's amazing is that today (thursday), there's no mention at all of any of this on the Kent State newspaper website. They do make sure to cover "Student takes break from school to run local pizza business", though.
posted by jpoulos at 2:17 PM on February 8, 2001


« Older Gore: It was your fault, sleazeball! Clinton: No...   |   The Business Software Alliance Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments