Editing Shock site (section)

== Legality ==
Currently, there is no federal or state legislation in the [[United States]] that outlaws possessing or viewing videos or images that depict the death of a human being.<ref name=":0" /> In 2000, a bill was introduced in the [[California State Legislature]] to outlaw these films, but after the [[American Civil Liberties Union]] (ACLU) raised protest over First Amendment concerns, the bill failed to pass. No other bill has passed since.<ref name=":0" /> In the case of ''[[Miller v. California]]'', the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] established a test to determine whether content falls under the category of unprotected obscenity.<ref name=":0" /> The [[Miller test]] requires that content "appeals to the prurient interest" to be obscene, meaning content must have a sexual component.<ref name=":0" />

That test was modified by ''United States v. Richards'', which ruled that [[animal crush]] videos (videos that involve the killing of animals) can be obscene and therefore, are not protected by the First Amendment even though they do not clearly appeal to sexual interests.<ref name=":0" /> The court ruled animal crush videos to be unprotected obscenity for two reasons. First, animal crush videos can appeal to a "specific sexual fetish," which fits the sexual conduct requirement of the ''Miller'' test. Second, ''United States v. Richards'' modified the ''Miller'' test by ruling that obscenity "can also cover unusual deviant acts" even if they are not directly sexual.<ref name=":0" /> Child pornography also falls under the category of unprotected obscenity by these tests.<ref name=":0" /> Due to the combination of murder and [[pornography]] depicted on shock sites that contain murder videos like gore2gasm.com, legal scholars have argued that murder videos also appeal to specific sexual interests and are thus unprotected under ''United States v. Richards''.<ref name=":0" />

In terms of liability, unless death videos are illegal, third party providers like shock sites that host death videos are protected by the [[Communications Decency Act|Communications Decency Act of 1996]] (CDA).<ref name=":0" /> However, websites that require users to upload illegal content or actively encourage users to create and share illegal content can be held liable.<ref name=":0" /> Additionally, courts have granted increasing [[Right to privacy|privacy rights]] to families over the publication and distribution of images of deceased relatives.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last1=Calvert|first1=Clay|last2=Torres|first2=Mirelis|date=2011|title=Staring Death in the Face during Times of War: When Ethics, Law, and Self-Censorship in the News Media Hide the Morbidity of Authenticity|url=https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/ndlep25&id=89&div=&collection=|journal=Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy|volume=25|pages=87}}</ref> The owners of [[Rotten.com]] were successfully sued by families for hosting photos of dead people and videos of their deaths on the site.<ref name=":22">{{Citation|last=Reyes|first=Xavier Aldana|chapter=Violence and Mediation: The Ethics of Spectatorship in the Twenty-First Century Horror Film|date=2013|pages=145–160|editor-last=Matthews|editor-first=Graham|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|language=en|doi=10.1057/9781137296900_9|isbn=9781349451913|editor2-last=Goodman|editor2-first=Sam|title=Violence and the Limits of Representation}}</ref>

In the [[United Kingdom]], [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament]] passed the [[Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008]], which included a section outlawing [[extreme pornography]] (that which is intended to sexually arouse viewers that threatens a person's life, is likely to seriously harm a person's anus, breasts, or genitals, or involves a human corpse or an animal).<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6">{{Cite journal|last=Attwood|first=Feona|date=2011|title=The Paradigm Shift: Pornography Research, Sexualization and Extreme Images|journal=Sociology Compass|language=en|volume=5|issue=1|pages=13–22|doi=10.1111/j.1751-9020.2010.00356.x|issn=1751-9020}}</ref> This has resulted in shock sites, as well as American pornographers including [[Max Hardcore]] and [[Extreme Associates]], being convicted of [[obscenity]] in the United Kingdom.<ref name=":6" />

During the [[Christchurch mosque shootings]] in [[New Zealand]], the shooter broadcast the first shooting at [[Al Noor Mosque, Christchurch|Al Noor Mosque]] live on [[Facebook]].<ref name=":5">{{Cite web|url=https://www.businessinsider.com/new-zealand-shootings-isps-block-4chan-8chan-liveleak-over-stream-2019-3|title=4chan, 8chan, and LiveLeak blocked by Australian internet providers for hosting the livestream of New Zealand mosque shootings|last=Ma|first=Alexandra|website=Business Insider|access-date=2019-09-20}}</ref> The video was shared on Facebook and uploaded to [[YouTube]] shortly after. Footage of the mass murder was hosted on [[4chan]], [[8chan]], [[LiveLeak]], [[Voat]], [[Zero Hedge]], and [[Kiwi Farms|KiwiFarms]].<ref name=":5" /> Rather than the [[Australian government]] trying to ban this specific instance of murder video, [[internet service provider]]s in [[Australia]] chose to place temporary blocks on any sites that hosted the footage until all the footage was believed to be removed.<ref name=":5" />