At home in Colorado with her door bolted shut and an ongoing police investigation going down, blogger Kathy Sierra is not attending the O’Reilly Etech conference in San Diego as she was supposed to. Nearly a month ago, Sierra began receiving obscene and vicious death threats on her blog. Prompting the investigation, Sierra believes the threats are out stepping the boundaries of free speech.

“Do not let them get away with this. Freedom of speech, however distasteful and rude the speech may be – is crucial. But when those words contain threats of harm or death, they can destroy a life.”

The comments ranged from threats to slit her throat, to hanging, suffocation, and sexual violence. The Meankids.org blog has been taken down since the threats were posted. On this particular site featuring a picture of Sierra next to a noose, a member commenting under the name “Joey” posted, “the only thing Kathy has to offer me is that noose in her neck size.” Frank Paynter, who organized the blog, recognized the abuse and made a public apology on Sierra’s site.

Even blogger Robert Scoble has decided to make a protest against the abuse put upon Sierra. He has taken the week off and disabled all comments on his blog. On his site, socbleizer.com, he writes in reference to Sierra’s threats, “It makes me realize just how acerbic this industry and culture are toward women. This just makes me ill.”

However, not everyone agrees with Sierra. Today, some bloggers have given counteracting opinions to the stories filtering through the mainstream media about the case. Sierra says she is linking Chris Locke in relation to a site posting threatening comments. Locke says that none of the posts or graphics that Sierra is referring to were made by him, and he’s not too happy about the accusations.

Sierra has written on her blog that since the incident, she’s cancelled all speaking engagements and isn’t sure if she’ll ever post again.

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