New “crush video” bill sent to Obama

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:

WASHINGTON D.C., BEIJING– U.S. President Barack Obama was
expected to sign legislation reinstating a ban on the sale of “crush”
videos “in the next week or so,” Humane Society Legislative Fund
president Mike Markarian told ANIMAL PEOPLE near press time. The
bill was approved by the House of Representatives on November 14,
2010, and by the Senate on November 19. It replaces a 1999 law
struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2010 as excessively
broad.
The 1999 bill was opposed by major journalism societies as a
potential threat to news reportage, but most took no position on the
redrafted replacement bill.

The new bill outlaws interstate distribution of videos
showing “actual conduct in which one or more living animal is
intentionally crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, or impaled in
a manner that would violate a criminal prohibition on cruelty to
animals.” It exempts videos showing hunting, trapping, fishing,
or any typical veterinary or agricultural husbandry practices.
As the new “crush” video bill was pending, Chinese
internet activists identified and exposed a young woman who confessed
to making such videos in 2007 and 2008 for intended distribution to
western buyers.