Is it legal to guide someone to suicide? The context here is a video game, which I won't name as it'd be a bit of a spoiler, but the relevant part of the plot is: The deuteragonist's boyfriend was guided and goaded to suicide by one of the antagonists, who gave full details on how to end his life, how to obtain the materials, etc, etc, etc. The story took place in England, but I'm looking for general viewpoints that would apply to multiple jurisdictions. The deuteragonist went on a quest of vengeance, rather than seeking legal recourse. My question is: Had she been able to positively identify the person who did this, would he have been able to be charged with a crime? Or alternatively, would she have been able to sue him in civil court? All the materials used were completely legal (I'm not 100% sure if the physics and chemistry actually work, but I'm not asking about that). There were significant difficulties in identifying the person behind the user name, which constitute a significant portion of the game's plot, but if there'd been anything definitely illegal happening, it would have been possible to bypass a lot of that via a subpoena to an ISP. But if what he did wasn't illegal, then the next question is: what is the legal status of a vengeance rampage against him? I suspect she may possibly have been opening herself up to some serious criminal charges.
In England and Wales, under section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961 (as amended by section 59 and Schedule 12 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009) it's a criminal offence to do an act capable of encouraging or assisting someone to commit suicide. I think that applies to Scotland too, and there is similar law in Northern Ireland. Encouraging suicide is also a criminal offence in some other common law jurisdictions, e.g. in Australia. While in other common law jurisdictions, if there isn't such a law, the person might instead be prosecuted for manslaughter - or not at all. The minimum, maximum and recommended penalties may well differ between jurisdictions. I don't know what you mean by "vengeance rampage" but I'm not aware of any jurisdictions where it is lawful for a person to cause harm to someone for revenge. States tend to reserve for themselves a monopoly on the use of force.
Given that both parties have committed criminal offenses (the 'bad actor' is attempting fraud and the 'victim' has committed unauthorized access to a computer system), no court would hear a civil case between these parties. As a matter of public policy, criminals do not owe a duty of care to each other so no one can win this case.
There is no US law licensing journalists or people who report the news, or requiring such people to identify themselves by legal name. Nor can there be under the US First Amendment. There is also no law requiring a person to identify himself or herself by legal name online. Some sites, including Wikipedia, have policies against having multiple undisclosed user IDs for the same person, but that is a matter of the site's own rules, not a matter of law. Any US law mandating this would again run afoul of the First Amendment to the US Federal Constitution. This article on Anonymous Speech reviews and cites a number of US Supreme court cases on the subject of anonymity, mostly in political contexts. This article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) discusses the same general subject. Both articles mention that The Federalist (analyzing and advocating for the then-unratified US Constitution) was originally published under the pseudonym "Publis". The EFF Article "Court Recognizes First Amendment Right to Anonymity Even After Speakers Lose Lawsuits" discusses the 6th Circuit case of Signature Management Team, LLC v. John Doe in which it was held that an anonymous blogger who lost a copyright infringement suit could nonetheless remain anonymous. This page apparently from a Harvard course, lists and briefly describes several cases on the same subject. In Doe v. Cahill, 884 A.2d 451 (Del. 2005) an elected official sued an online poster for defamation, and sought to force the ISP involved to disclose the poster's identity. The Delaware Supreme Court ruled against this, setting a standard offering greater protection for such anonymous online speech than previous cases had. This answer is very US-centric. Laws in other countries are different. The OP has not specified a country or jurisdiction.
An "inquisitorial" system is one where the Judge or Magistrate actively questions the accused and witnesses to attempt to determine the facts. The Judge may also determine, at least in part, what witnesses to call in what order. An "adversarial" system is one in which each side presents its case, and the judge acts as an umpire deciding on procedure, and possibly makes the final ruling (or directs a jury to do so) but is not actively involved in questioning witnesses or deciding what witnesses to call. I don't see anything which would prevent a common-law jurisdiction from establishing an "inquisitorial" system by statute except longstanding tradition, but as far as i know no such jurisdiction has ever had such a system in place for dealing with criminal matters. The informal procedures in some small claims courts do have judges more actively involved than in other courts. I think this is also true in some family courts as well. I think I have heard of some civil-law jurisdictions which use something like an adversary system, but i am not sure of that. Certainly a civil-law country could pass a law setting up such a system if it chose to.
DUI is a crime under Massachusetts law so Kurt would be prosecuted there by that state. Germany would offer consular assistance but this would not extend to preparing or paying for his defence. If convicted, and after serving his sentence, Germany and the USA would coordinate his deportation. The UK would offer consular assistance for the repatriation of Alice's body and for the participation of her family in the trial, again this would not extend to paying for it. They would not assist in any civil action Alice's family might take against Kurt in a Massachusetts court. While DUI is a crime in both Germany and the UK AFAIK they are not extraterritorial: that is the crime must be committed on their territory for them to prosecute it. Some crimes do have extraterritoriality but not DUI. Similarly, their courts would probably not hear a civil case because the correct venue is Massachusetts and they would probably entertain a motion to dismiss on that basis. Even if they did hear it, it would be heard under Massachusetts law.
Like many US legal questions, there is a Congressional Research Service report about this. It is not generally a violation of US law to do things in another country where the only connection with the US is that the offender is a US citizen. However, there are a number of general situations where the US has jurisdiction over federal crimes if either the victim or offender is a US citizen: if a place isn't within the jurisdiction of any country (e.g. Antarctica); a place used by a US government entity (like an embassy or airbase); crimes by American soldiers and those employed by or accompanying the military; etc. These are considered to be within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the US. Other laws apply if they say so. For instance, any US national committing war crimes inside or outside the US can be punished under US law; ditto for treason. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it illegal for a US national to bribe a foreign official anywhere outside the US for business reasons (if it's inside the US, there are more requirements). For instance, you aren't allowed to pay kickbacks to a foreign government's acquisition officer to buy your product. The CRS report has more (it doesn't include the FCPA, but that appears to be an oversight). Note that extraterritorial jurisdiction doesn't just apply if the person is a US national. US laws can also confer it if the victim is a US national, if the offense has a significant US component, if it's directed towards the US, if it's in violation of international law and the offender later turns up in the US, etc. For your scenarios: Dual citizenship doesn't matter. A US citizen is a US citizen, and is required to obey all laws that apply to US citizens, unless those laws explicitly exempt dual citizens. A dual citizen isn't treated differently by the government; as far as the US government is concerned, their US citizenship is all that matters (except for certain specific purposes like security clearances). In Kawakita v. United States, a US-Japanese dual citizen was convicted of treason against the US for aiding Japan in WWII. Depends. Plenty of these laws have no requirement that anything related to the crime actually happen in the US; for sex tourism, the subsection about traveling in foreign commerce for the purposes of engaging in illicit sexual conduct is followed by a subsection about engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places. "Travel with the purposes of X" or "with intent to X" means you must have intended to do X at the time you traveled, but most extraterritorial laws don't control travel with intent to X (they cover X directly). Depends on the law. Some laws (like child sex tourism) apply to any permanent resident of the US as well as any citizen. Some apply to anyone, because they're based on a conspiracy started in the US. Others apply just to US nationals; a noncitizen isn't bound by them (for instance, no one but a US national can be charged with treason against the US, for obvious reasons). Still others apply to anyone who later turns up in the US, even if that is literally the only connection between the US and the offense (this is basically reserved for crimes against international law, like genocide).
Hacking into a computer owned by someone else and accessing the data stored on it without permission is a misdemeanor according to StGB 202a (de|en). But only if it's successful. So a failed attempt isn't a misdemeanor yet. When you notice that someone might have committed a criminal offence (regardless of whether you are a victim or just a witness), then the usual procedure is to report it to the police. If they consider the crime serious enough to investigate, then they will request the identity from the ISP. But the copyright lawsuits which are filed in bulk by law firms working with media companies are not crime reports. They are civil lawsuits. A civil lawsuit is when someone had a tangible damage because of something someone else did, and now they want money in compensation. When there is no damage, then there is nothing to sue for. So when you want a judge to file an injunction to force an ISP to give them the identity of one of their users, then you would first have to explain to them how much financial damage you had because of that person and that this is enough damage to make it worth everyone's time. That might be quite challenging for nothing but a failed SSH login attempt. But it might be possible if a single person made so many login attempts that it incurred you non-negligible bandwidth cost or even caused a denial-of-service.
Murder is definined in Utah as: Murder is causing the death of another person under any of the following circumstances: ... Knowingly engaging in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person and under circumstances which evidence a depraved indifference to human life. It's not unreasonable to consider dropping 3,000,000 bouncy balls over a populated area as &quot;depraved indifference&quot;, particularly if someone had asked/read the question and would therefore know the potential consequences. Whether the killer would be charged with murder or manslaughter depends on the exact circumstances.