Free Speech, We Hardly Knew Ye: Senate Passes Anti-Crush Video Bill!
The World's Greatest Deliberative Body has spoken yet again:
The Senate passed the legislation late Tuesday. It now goes to the US House of Representatives, which passed its own version of the bill in July.
The Senate version goes further than the House legislation in that it specifically prohibits the creation of animal crush videos, not just their sale.
It also prohibits such videos from being distributed for free, a common practice on the Internet via file-sharing per-to-peer networks.
I'm for the law if it retroactively bans Michael Jackson's pre-pubescent ode to an interspecies love that dare not speak its name:
Jacob Sullum on the Supreme Court's overturning of a law against crush videos earlier this year.
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The above makes the Colbert testimony look more like the Ruby Ridge investigation.
Old thread retread, OM. Not an airsoft AR. I have six 30.06s, and an M14 (M1A). Plus some 7.92s, 7.62/39, and others. A .22 is a necessity, as well as a shotgun.
As for crush videos, don't get it. Fuck the crushers.
Is this why we haven't seen Sugarfree much in the last few days? Has he been testifying in DC?
He is a paid shill for the crush lobby, but he told me that he'd do it even if they didn't pay him.
How to Trick an Online Scammer Into Carving a Computer Out of Wood
After digging deep into the archives with Mark Twain, Apollo-era NASA scientists, and the promoter of the helicopter, we're coming back to the recent past, the June 2007 issue. In it we find Ron Rosenbaum's fascinating feature about a group of anti-scammers who prank, humiliate and defeat the people who e-mail you with tales of Senegalese princes, or barristers in London, or whatever.
They hang out together on a site called 419eater, where they swap tips and show off "trophies" of their exploits. And of those trophies, the carved and polished wood replica of the Commodore 64 has got to be the all-time best. Rosenbaum dives deep in the ethics of anti-scamming -- and you should certainly read it -- but let's just revel in this "ingenious act of cybervengeance" for a moment:
http://www.theatlantic.com/tec.....ood/63674/
This seems like a law in search of a crime. Has anyone ever come across any crush videos? I've seen a lot of deviant internet shit, and I've never seen one.
The closest I've come was a video of some asian guy killing and cooking a kitten, but that's not really the same thing.
I have not actually watched a crush video (much less do I want to), but I have come across links to them - which I purposely and carefully have avoided clicking.
That is some sick shit right there. I could see kicking a guy's ass to the curb if I came across him filming some stupid slut stomping on a kitten.
Damn, humans are a fucked-up species.
I have not actually watched a crush video (much less do I want to), but I have come across links to them
Probably in these comments, if I know the commentariat.
Here you go Warty. This is some sick shit.
True. Fucked-up enough to beat the filmer, and not the crusher. Some weird priorities you got there buddy.
Zippocat? Thanks for reminding me of that, asshole.
Goddammit, now I had to go look that up. No, the thing I saw was years ago.
Can't say I've seen a video but anon used to put up a series of sequential stills of some skanky chick stomping a kitten with her heels.
Finally, America is safe. From those five videos. Unless we want to watch them, or someone shows them to us.
USA
I'm for the law if it retroactively bans Michael Jackson's pre-pubescent ode to an interspecies love that dare not speak its name:
And a a pre-pubescent Donnie Osmund singing "Go Away Little Girl".
I'm for the law if it retroactively bans Michael Jackson's pre-pubescent ode to an interspecies love that dare not speak its name
So he's the ratfucker!
Code name: Puppy Love
I made a million by the time I was ten.
I wrote a love song to a rat named Ben.
And then I got a nose job,
And changed my chin and made my skin light...
Look me in the face and tell me
If you think I'm black or white.
This is weird; reply function not working?
Only for you. It hateses you.
cant wait for the republican pledge to america to be adopted so we can find out which article, section, sentence, power listed in the constitution allows congress to prohibit anyone from killing magpies with their kids pellet gun while being filmed by their kid and then viewing the film with their kids and their friends.
+.177
Commerce clause, it's always the commerce clause.
Really? I thought it was the general welfare clause.
Whatever.
It's bipartisan, and that is what counts.
First they came for the crushers, and I said nothing...
Crushing sounds sick and twisted, but this law is immoral as is any law that infringes on the freedom of Americans in favor of non-existant animal rights.
Amen. But, is there an exception to the assault and battery statute that would allow me to beat the shit out of anyone I caught filming one of these things?
Why not beat the one doing the crushing?
That's nutty. The law doesn't create any animal "rights." It prohibits humans from doing something, namely crushing animals to death and filming it. Anti-cruelty laws have been around in the Anglo-American world for about two hundred years.
So prosecute them under state animal cruelty statutes. No issues with that at all. But banning videos, disgusting and tasteless though they may be, is not the way to go about this.
Cyto:
1) A very limited set of animal rights do exist under law (anti-cruelty laws), you just don't like it.
2) Don't get all uppity, you, too, are an animal. Humans are not the only species on the planet with language and tool-using behavior.
3) There is only one reason not to oppose crush vids - enabling sadism and animal cruelty. There are no theoretical FOS issues, here.
4) There is a huge overlap between serial killers (of humans) and abuse of animals. So, prohibiting crush videos, and keeping animal abuse illegal, ultimately makes it easier to find and treat/imprison future serial killers. You, personally, might benefit from these policies some day.
5) Reason, and libertarians in general, really, really undermine their credibility by coming down on the wrong side of this issue. There are some situations where you fight for abstract principals, and others where you STFU - this is one of the latter.
I'm out of here, permanently. Can't and won't support any movement or organization that speaks up for gratuitous cruelty. Not expecting this to make much of a difference, but encourage anyone who feels similarly to join me.
So I am confused, having not read the original SCOTUS case, how does Congress seek to correct the constitutional deficiency of the previous law? Did the court strike it down as too vague/overbroad?
The original law (struck down in US v. Stevens) was ridiculously overbroad. It criminalized the creation, sale, or possession of any depiction of "conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed, if such conduct is illegal under Federal law or the law of the State in which the creation, sale, or possession takes place."
This of course covered lots of conduct besides crush videos. Stevens was prosecuted for selling videos of dog fights made in Japan (where it is legal). Read literally, the law would also do things like outlaw the possession of hunting videos in DC, where all hunting is illegal.
Killing little animals is just wrong.
Word.
Please pass the chicken.
Which is why we have animal cruelty laws.
I wonder. Are spiders, crabs, fish, and wasps also protected "small animals", or do they fall outside the Constitution's newly discovered Cute-N-Fuzzy penumbra?
Congress couldn't pass a budget, but they found time for this.
Killing mice is legal. Wearing stilettos is legal. Making videos is legal. Not sure what the harm of mixing the three is.
Please pass the budget.
This is clearly what the Founders envisioned as the Federal Government's role.
Un-freaking-believable.
PS. Late breaking news: the Senate has just voted to make it illegal to make videos of people feeding their own toe-cheese to bound hamsters. Apparently, one Senator heard that someone in his kid's high school class had done that. Or their friend did. Or something.
To me this falls under the "Illinois Nazis" criteria. To prove you love freedom you must find the most find the thing that disgusts you the most and allow its existence.
... Hobbit
Aww, crap, edit as needed.
... Hobbit
At least we can still hunt, shoot, and kill animals over the internet, right?
In ten states anyways
The funniest thing about this law is that now people want to search for crush videos out of morbid curiosity, where we either didn't know about it or didn't care before.
Same with when the AGs tried to call negative attention to Craiglist for their adult services section. Even those of us with zero interest in hiring prostitutes went to go check it out where we would have spent our time on Facebook or commenting on Reason had they not made a big deal out of it.
When the music nannies tried to ban N.W.A. it helped send them to the top of the charts. When Obama tells people not to listen to Rush Limbaugh, everybody and their grandmother does whether they agree with him or not.
It's just so funny to me how nannies don't realize how self-defeating their moralizing is...
By the way, am I the only one who, after hearing that MJ song suddenly realizes with a taste of vomit in my mouth that Justin Bieber is not THAT bad? (shudder) That was freaking awful.
Sorry for shooting your dog's face off -- I was just expressing myself!
No, you can't shoot my dog. You have to shoot your own dog.
If we don't fight for people to tape squirrels being stomped into jam, the First Amendment means nothing!
Now you've got it!
Can no one hear the screams of the carrots as they are ripped from the womb of Mother Gaia? Don't you care?
This is just a back door way to make filming SWAT raids a federal offense.
+1
Gosh, yeah, this is a sick practice... but don't we have more important shit to fix?