The semantics do not matter.
It is a crime to film what he filmed.
It is a crime to knowingly publish that film.
You call it a nanny state, I call it what is morally and legally right.
Where do you draw the line? Do you not draw the line at murder? Sexual assault? Dismemberment. That stuff should NOT be online.
No wonder LE has their hands full with the proliferation of crimes throughout the Internet. The deviant images and videos are prolific, and a LEO once told me the proliferation absolutely has an effect on criminals, and would-be criminals.
JMO
I agree with you, Wondergirl; as a former criminal prosecutor (aka District Attorney), and by way of analogy, having prosecuted a number of revolting people for possessing and downloading online child *advertiser censored* (CP), I know from research and studies that without people to consume such stuff online, there is little market for this crime. This crime is perpetuated by the market and demand that exists for it, which in turn fuels more production of online CP. Many CP sites require payment to enter, and these funds are simply channelled back into CP productions and producer's pockets. Accordingly, in Australia (the jurisdiction I am most familiar with) and many other Western states, it is a crime to upload AND download online CP.
In my view, for the reasons mentioned above, there is little if any difference between online CP and snuff films, hence snuff films are illegal and the making available of them ought to be too (if it is not already?).
In relation to the post to which you were replying (sorry for not requoting - still navigating my use of this site), regarding the suggestion that the video in question does not show a murder taking place, I have two points to make:
Firstly, LE has come out and confirmed that a longer, unedited version of the film which was posted online was obtained by LE in which the victim's "chilling screams" could be heard and acts of cannibalism were shown. These two things were not depicted in the video that was circulating on the net, perhaps explaining why many people have asserted there was no murder depicted. Of course, whilst screams alone do not a murder make, the circumstantial evidence of murder being committed on film is overwhelming.
Secondly, I have seen a number of people comment on this and other forums that the film does not show a murder taking place and I am curious to what people think would convince them of a murder taking place? Do we need to see a struggle? Hear screams? From the video it did appear that the victim was either drugged or dead by the time he was stabbed. However, a criminal case is rarely built around one piece of evidence alone, but rather 'cobbled together' from bits and pieces of evidence which, taken as a whole, construct the prosecution case. Moreover, the prosecutors in this case are already at an enormous advantage having such strong video evidence - circumstantial at worst; direct at best - in their evidence cache from the start. In addition, they have actions consistent with consciousness of guilt (LRM fleeing the country 1-2 days after the alleged crime and evading LEA; wearing a wig and using aliases in the process) and they also have a picture of the suspect in the film in question that very closely resembles many other pictures of the suspect which had been uploaded to the internet under LRM-associated aliases (the picture of LRM in one of the animal torture videos that he allegedly posted is almost identical to the frame shot from the murder video - same hair (wig?), same facial profile, and also wearing a hoodie...
Lastly, the argument that we should be allowed to decide for ourselves what we watch and don't watch and that all censorship is bad fails to take account of the fact that the freedoms of speech, expression, association etc, are not limitless; they must necessarily be restricted to the extent that my exercise of my rights does not impinge upon other rights, eg I cannot claim the right to free speech where my speech incites race hate violence, for eg. I agree that limits ought to be placed on what we can consume, technologically-speaking, but I also am very aware of the slippery slope that censorship can become, and of course there are attendant dangers with it. But the same argument was made many years ago in relation to vehicle seat-belts (ie that making it compulsory to wear them in Australia was impinging on one's individual right to make decisions about what one does), and yet most people today are glad that by enforcing the public to wear seatbelts, that protects not only the wearer but others in the seatbelt-wearer's vicinity too, should they have an accident.
WHOA - that was a long post!