My Argument is that what the framers had in mind with the First Amendment was to protect the expression of unpopular ideas and to protect political dissent.
My point is that there is nothing in animal cruelty videos to protect. It is a recording of crime being committed. I understand that it was a weak law that was being struck down, and that's fine we'll have to come up with a better law, but I don't think there is a First Amendment argument to be made here. Like I said, if someone were to depict realistic images of dogs fighting or or squirrels being crushed I wouldn't have a problem because there is no "act". In my mind the First Amendment protects the expression of an idea not an action. For instance, I respect someone's right to say in any medium or public forum "everyone named Pete should be killed" I don't respect their right to actually kill me and sell the videos.
I think of this way:
If someone rented a theatre and billed their act as crushing small animals onstage. They are protected. Everyone who bought a ticket to this event is protected. That's protection against prior restraint. However, as soon as the show begins and chip n' Dale get squished, the performer is no longer protected and can be arrested. In a video, the crime has already been committed so there is no prior restraint protection, the video is simply evidence of a crime being committed in which the person holding the camera is complicit. And whether someone buys the video or not a crime has occurred.
4 comments:
What about flag burning? Its an action and its protected.
Its not illegal.
I think the ruling does protect the expression of unpopular ideas. Anything that intends to convey a message, whatever the message, is arguably speech. All videos convey messages and thus are speech. Apparently some people get off on these videos for whatever reason, so it has value to them. What is obscene to one is beauty to another.
The only exception in this area ever has been child porno, which everyone agrees is beyond sick and creates a real threat to children. Although crushing an animal is disturbing I'm not sure how much more disturbing and inhumane it is than slaughterhouses that kill chickens and cows.
I understand how these acts are illegal to do, but should they really be illegal to watch. What if they were filmed in a country where crushing animals wasn’t against the law? I don’t know, I don’t even crush spiders.
I agree with the intent of the law 150% and think that a suitable punishment for anyone making a crush video should be that they are strapped down and have and air conditioning unit dropped on their legs and then their head.
However, I thought that your original argument was condemning the decision to overturn the law. Unfortunately, legislators often use these types of laws for political gain, in which case they are more interested in getting any law on the books as opposed to spending a little time to get a good law on the books. I think this almost happened with one of the child molester laws. The intent was unarguable in my book, but the law they wrote would have sent a 19 year-old with a 17 year-old girlfriend to jail for 10+ years.
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