Blogger threatened by bloggers

JAVA WRITER< EXPERT and after dinner speaker Kathy Sierra has had to cancel a speaking engagement at eTech because she is terrified of a group of boggers who have threatened to kill her.

Sierra has had enough of blogging for now and has posted what might be her last blog entry for a while.

The people posting the threats are also quite famous in the 'blogsphere' and she has done the decent thing of naming them. One has since said sorry.

The group got together in a blog which has been closed down and amongst other things described some fairly graphic things they would like to do to her. The posts were anonymous and it is not clear how Sierra found out who the authors were.

Normally she says she would have thought that the poster was just mouthing off, but the posts were so disturbing that there was a possibility that one of them was actually deranged enough to carry them out.

"I do not want to be part of a culture, the Blogosphere, where this is considered acceptable. Where the price for being a blogger is kevlar-coated skin and daughters who are tough enough to not have their "widdy biddy sensibilities offended" when they see their own mother Photoshopped into nothing more than an objectified sexual orifice, possibly suffocated as part of some sexual fetish." she wrote.

Sierra added that such attacks should not be considered "social commentary", "protected speech", or simply "criticism".

She said she would not favour censoring speech, “these people can say all the misogynistic, vile, tasteless things they like”. However there needed to be a line where words and images become threats of violence were ruled out of order. µ