Quote Originally Posted by Syme View Post
Child pornography is an industry; people make child porn specifically for the purpose of providing it to people who want to see child porn. They make money off it. Banning the possession or distribution of that kind of material is part of fighting the industry that creates it, and therefore is part of preventing the kids from being abused in the first place. Videos of killings generally don't fit the same model. Al-Qaeda's beheading videos certainly don't, nor do those hammer-murder videos.

IF someone was videotaping murders for the purpose of selling the video to people who want to see it, then I'd be okay with banning that, because banning that sort of video would make it less likely that it'd be produced at all. But snuff videos of that kind are really an urban legend.
That seems kind of arbitrary. Simple illegality isn't enough for censorship, but if the material is produced on a large enough scale then it qualifies. Of course, money isn't the only object. Al Qaeda and others were probably counting on their video getting publicity for without it their killing of one or two hostages would be rendered useless; similarly, if producers of child pornography have no audience, it is also rendered useless as an industry.

Is there a distinction to be made between protecting the victims, or potential victims, portrayed in such material, and protecting the viewers? That seems to me to be a more realistic distinction, but then it comes back to the problem of who exactly decides what needs to be censored.

That said, I don't really have an answer myself right now.