have a look at the ‘testing the realness of DCs’ topic in reaserch.
there are alot of people who belive that some of the DCs are real beings that inhabit the dream world. so by harming them you would be harming real beings.
its a pretty strange question with heaps of different ways of looking at it.
at the moment im open minded on the whole dream world/real wprld thing and waiting to find out for myself 
ppl may believe what ever they want of course but I tested dc’s and they were just empty shells in my lds. I merged with them and absorbed them and they were empty projections, empty associations there was no conscious insight. I even tried to absorb the whole dream world inside of me and that to was just an association.
Fenoderee a dream is always a projection, when its no longer a projection you dont call it a dream!
Jeff
Too many LaBerge heads here 
First off, I have been following the “testing the realness of DC’s” thread intently since it started here last spring. It was one of the things that got me interested in this site. 
I should have picked my words better when I said that I believe not all dreams are mere projections. I should have said something more like: not all lucid phenomena we experience through the night are what we can simply classify as a ‘dream’. In my opinion there are windows in our dreams (or what Moss refers to as “Dreamgates”) through which we can travel to hightened states of perception and other “planes”, which can be considered real in every sense of the word as we know it. I use the word “plane” reluctantly, as I know most of you do not believe in the existence of an astral plane. This is not what I’m referring to here. Anyways, I know access to these realities can be an extremely rare affair. Furthermore we are very likely to think of them as being only dreams, because this is what we are always told is the only thing we can experience when we travel out of range of our normal perceptional field we hold while awake(AKA being asleep). I think there is a very strong chance we could be too programmed into “sleep=dream mode” to be critically observant enough of our “dream” content. Excuse me for rambling on about this and straying off subject, but I feel I also needed to support my views a little. We need to consider the possibility of reality in our dreams before we can really decide if DC’s have human rights.
Sorry if I sound like a jerk, I don’t mean to. This just interests me a lot 
I also think this topic is both interesting and difficult. First off I´d like to say that I don´t really have a strong opinion about it, so the following is just meant to provocate some new thoughts.
In history class I learned that the american consitution said “all humans are created equal”, but blacks weren´t considered humans. Actions were justificated like “blacks don´t feel pain the way we do”.
It was just common sense that they weren´t councious beings like the whites are.
Now, don´t we do the same thing?
How do we know blacks feel pain and DCs don´t? Perhaps it is even the other way round? (again, don´t get me wrong).
Let´s assume DCs don´t feel pain and aren´t living beings in a physical way. Could they still be some sorts of beings?
Shamans say that dreams are journeys to other worlds. Perhaps they are right? Are we dreamers the representatives of mankind or the physical world in general?
Let´s assume dreams are really completely within us. But what does “us” mean? Don´t we know already that there are some parts of us that we don´t really know?
I feel like there are two parts of myself in the dreamworld. One part is my dreambody, it´s controlled by my waking/lucid-counciousness (which I usually just call “me”). The other parts are the DCs, they are controlled by my subcounciousness. Now killing DCs perhaps isn´t exactly harmful, but perhaps your subcounciousness consideres it quite rude?
Just remember how “you” waking counciousness) feel when the other part sleeping counciousness) is trying to kill you. Those are nightmares.
If you decide against the points above, I don´t think that there is a ethical problem with killing DCs. I believe that there is a “dark side” to every human being. Seen the german film “Das Experiment”?
Humans just have some tendency to aggression, to dominate other people or perhaps even to torture them. This is normal, sick is if you can´t control these desires and handle them in a way that nobody gets hurt.
just some thoughts
tapir
Last night I tested what I posted yesterday. During one of my LDs I had some sexual interaction with two of my DCs. It went fine, they were consensual and had a blast, but then as i got involved in the activity instead of the LD, my subcouncious started controlling my dream. One of the DCs looked at me and said “You know this is a different dream now?” and I looked out the door and a bunch of sketchy mobsters where comming. I feel that my actions in the LD, lead my subcouncious to different conclusions than my councious.
I had this random fling with two business women in an tall office building. My subcouncious interpreted it as some kind of negative act, and the dream took on that kind of characteristic when I lost solid control. I just see this as a thread of proof that your actions in an LD do not go unseen, because your subcouncious sees them, and continues to develop its reality map from your actions in LDs just like your actions in real life.
I often use dream violence as a source of WL anger management, it’s never failed me. Any anger i have through out the day gets expressed in dreams (ld or nd) and come the morning i feel refreshed by it, when ever i don’t have these dream i often wake up stressed or wound-up.
I can’t say that it would work for murderers etc, but it works for me-
I wonder if psychopaths don’t have proper REM sleep? That would be an interesting one for the scientists 
– As for is it right/wrong? How can you define right or wrong to something that isn’t alive? Is it wrong for an author to kill off a character in a story? Because that’s exactly what we do in dreams when we kill a dream character is it not?
I see keep morality where it belongs “Real LIFE”
I think it is less a question of right and wrong and more a question of the results. For me lucid dreaming is more than just a good time, or I would like it to be. I also think that your lucid self is your qaking self, therefor if you rip apart your insides with vice and hatred your waking self will become a desolate waste land, tainted by your midnight excursions.
Well DarkMatter i think psychopaths have some brain part(s) less developed, has all to do with empathy and such. But i think they will have normal rem sleep because else they wouldnt be able to learn things because rem sleep has an important function for new memory imprints.
I tried what Neo does in the first Matrix movie, dive into a dc and then absorb him/her, also copied myself into a dc, creating from a dc a copy of myself in lds and i never experiencend anything from them then being empty shells. just associations of my mind.
Fenodree, those windows in a dream is a totally other thing
And have to do with the 7 levels of sleep and chakras.
However iam sure that 95% of the dreamers have no clue there anyway.
Jeff
Well, this is quite an interesting topic.
My initial reaction would be that they don’t really exist, so we can do whatever we like with them. But you never know…
An interesting idea. Well, they always disappear when you wake up, so that would be like genocide…
Or how about the environment in your dreams? When you wake up, it all disappears - talk about deforestation.
Yeah like many have already said it just depends on what you intend to do in your LD’s. If you find that LD’s are a good place to vent off anger, then all the power to you. Jus because someone vents off anger in their LDs doenst mean that is all they do with their LD’s. Though i personally believe that if you are angry IRL and you vent it off and do not deal with the actual source of the anger you’ll end up where you started and have wasted a good LD.
Personally i see LD’s as opportunity to learn about myself, to learn about life, and to explore the deeper things…spirituality and whatnot. To share a personal example i had a dream where friends and i were being attacked by this weird monster that had a back growth that would power up and do a big flash of light, disentegrating all living things caught in the light (except itself). We were all running around some sort of archaic blue lit cave, i saw a friend (friend in dream, dont know irl) die right before me in a flash, which was disturbing. Later i had somehow managed to get the light thing and could activate it at will. I was pissed off at it cuz it totally zapped my friends, but then i had second thoughts, looked at the creature and saw it was a living, breathing creature, and i could not bring myself to destroy it. If i had just totally vented and blasted the thing, the dream would have had less of an impact on me, i would just have considered it to be just crappy monster dream. Oh this by the way wasnt an LD though but thats not the point which is that i learned more (but more like experienced) about the pointless nature of conflict and i think ive become a better person because of it.
Oh an interesting thought: What about the prospect of shared dreaming or dreamwalking? Your venting off of seemingly harmless steam could be someone elses nightmare of a stranger that killed them. It does of course depend on whether you believe in such concepts, and that if you dont believe in them you wont have them and thus theres nothing to worry about. That is assuming that you are limited by what you believe, but maybe one could not believe in it and still have a shared dream or dreamwalk, obviously you can tell that i do believe in such and my bias… If you do believe in them and vent off steam, you may have a problem. As far as distinction from DC and other dreamers, it could be that you are lucid and the other seems a DC but is actually a non lucid dreamer.
Hello,
I’ve been reading this discussion and have found it to be quite interesting. I just thought that I would throw my lot in with those who believe that you can do anything with your dream characters since they are creations of your mind.
One thing I’d like to ask people is if they view “killing” a dream character differently then the idea of raping a dream character?
For me, just thinking about it, the two acts just seem different. “Killing” a dream character seems just like playing a video game of some sort, but raping a character seems more sadistic. I.E. why would you want to torture anything? Even in your dreams?
ypm.
Well not really, that’s like saying that everyone else dies and everything disappears when you close your eyes IRL.
I would say that while there’s obviously nothing morally wrong with murdering, raping, and stealing from DCs, it’s still not a good idea. I mean, it’s hardly very constructive, and I doubt that it’s actually all that satisfying.
Although, in many ways it’s no different to killing someone IRL. I mean, you can’t prove that real people are more self-aware/intelligent/conscious than DCs. Maybe they are both just designed to act that way. Obviously though, you would have to be an exception to this rule.
I think your answer shows why that is:
We kill in video games, we kill in movies, we kill in wars (of course only to defend ourselves 
) we kill animals for food and we even kill animals for the fun of it. All young german males are taught how to kill other people, unless they prove that it is strongly against there morals (-> duty to go to the army). You can talk about killing, you can joke about killing, you can admit that you like killing as long as it only happens in virtual worlds.
Raping and killing both are cruel (and often go together), but raping is considered sick and killing is accepted.
I am just unsure wether this is cause killing really is a part of our nature while raping rather isn´t, or if it is cause wars have to be justified by the gouvernments of all times while raping hasn´t.
tapir
Tapir brings up a very good point. I’ve never really thought about it before, but I guess I think killing is worse than rape.
I guess what is appropriate and what is inappropriate has to do with what mood you’re in. If you’re in a bad mood, it would probably be healthier to let loose your fury upon DCs than in real life, thoguh I think rape is always questionable.
If you’re in a good mood, it would probably be counter-productive to mistreat your DCs, but then again, I would be more than happy to knock down a few buildings with DCs in them because because they seem to be what keep me from remaining lucid. Besides, you have to admit that it is fun watching videos of implosions and stuff.
Heh heh. I guess it is just human nature to enjoy seeing violence and turmoil every so often. I guess the thing is how you go about it.
[size=150]Good topic Dutch Thor,
Here’s my thoughts on this topic:
There have been times in my unconscious dreams where a DC tells me that I am in a dream, then that assists me in beoming Lucid.
Also, there have been times in my LD’s where I tell a DC that they are in a dream.
I wake up and think,"Is it possible for me to have unconsciously drifted into someone else’s LD, and posed as one of[/size] thier DC’s?
[size=150]Also, "In a LD, is it possible that if I punch a DC, someone on Earth will wake up and be like,“I just dreamed that I got punched!”
So I’m pretty neutral on this “Do Dream Characters Have Rights” topic. Some words I like to live by are,“Your Thoughts Create You Reality”, and “Whatever You Believe in is True”. So it’s whatever you want it to be.
And if we were, to say that they[/size] did have rights…
Who, how, and what would punish the murderous Lucid Dreamers? 
Dream characters, just like anything else in your dream, are just part of your imagination and are not real and there fore do not have any rights. At least not until the lucid ACLU files a lawsuit on behalf of some mistreated DC ‘s 
#Six
Actually, I think this would be pretty easy to test in a LD. Try and enter the dream of someone you know then ask them about it the next day.
Happy Dreaming All 
Woah, #Six! Stop with the HUGE text already!
milod789 - You can never prove that!
Also, how do you know that the character you see is that person in real life? And those who say that it works admit it doesn’t always work.