If you’ve always wanted to relieve some stress and unwind by watching people abuse animals after a long, tiresome day, well, now you can.

For the first time in over a decade, it is legal to both create and sell images depicting animal cruelty.

On April 20, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of repealing statute 18 U.S.C. Section 48 that prohibited the creation, sale or possession of any visual form of animal cruelty. According to the code, animal cruelty is described as “conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed.”

In 1999, the Supreme Court passed Title 18, Section 48 of the U.S. Code regarding federal crimes after a “crush video” surfaced. The video in question featured a woman in high heels torturing and eventually murdering a cat to appeal to some sexual fetish.

Usually, I would say to each his own. Everyone has his or her own sexual preferences. But really, if your fantasy includes blood, animals, torture or any combination of the three, it is simply a sexual disorder and not acceptable. These types of disorders do indeed require therapy and censorship just as pedophilia would. Furthermore, I certainly wouldn’t want you living anywhere near my dogs or me.

The court case in question, U.S. v. Stevens, challenged the federal code on the basis it violated First Amendment rights, and all but one justice agreed.

The justices likened banning videos of animal cruelty in America to banning hunting videos in D.C., because hunting is illegal there. This comparison is irrelevant. There are guidelines for hunting. Rules and regulations are in place to restrict hunting certain animals by season, and only with certain ammunition. Additionally, the products of hunting — unless you follow a vegan diet — are necessary for survival, and when people hunt for sport it’s monitored on a state-by-state case. Animal cruelty, on the other hand, is illegal in all of America. Period. There are no legal “degrees” of animal abuse. There is no underlying benefit to their abuse, and definitions of what constitutes animal abuse don’t vary by state. It isn’t legal to bludgeon a cat in California when it’s illegal in Oregon, you couldn’t skin live puppies in Wisconsin, and only drown them by the litter in Illinois. There is federal protocol when it comes to the treatment of animals. Iconography of animal abuse definitely is not in the same category as hunting imagery.

According to The New York Times, after the ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts mentioned the Court would entertain the notion of revisiting image restrictions for animal abuse. Specifically, in a manner that would not violate First Amendment rights, the Court would decide how to prohibit the creation, possession and sale of images that could feed sexual fetishes and would show extreme cases of abuse. However, the restrictions within Title 18, Section 48 did not violate First Amendment rights in the first place. The 1999 Supreme Court ruling was directed at abuse for abuse’s sake, and it had an exceptions clause that legalized depictions of “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value.” If the Court attempts to restructure the law, it would be a step in the right direction, but it would beg the question: What is the difference between mistreatment and abuse? Where would the courts draw the line between animal owner discretion and animal cruelty?

If you whack your dog with a newspaper when it snaps at someone, or if you spray water at your dog with a spritzer to curb its behavior when you’re “training” it, technically you are mistreating your dog and clearly you need to take “Dog Training 101,” but is this also abuse? Aren’t all cases of abuse extreme? In which case, since abuse is illegal, shouldn’t all videos, pictures, etc. of people abusing their animals be illegal too because by patronizing the footage you support the action in question? Animal abuse should not be appealing or give any form of release to anyone. If it is, it is a reason to seek help and not have easy access to this taboo.

According to the Amicus Curiae from the case, Stevens initially got in trouble for being in the dogfight market. Stevens earned “$20,000 in two-and-a-half years from selling nearly 700 videos.” Additionally, the Amicus Curiae cited other examples of crime-scene videos like “snuff films” and gang initiation right footage the government could easily prohibit “without raising serious First Amendment objections,” but these issues have not been debated because there is not a large enough market for them, unlike the large market for dogfighting. Also, dogfighting does not just harm the animals involved in this form of abuse. It has subsequent effects. Most notably, society discriminates against pit bulls because of people like Stevens who prey on their proclivity toward violence. Pit bulls fill up animal shelters, and eventually, especially in times of economic crisis, they are killed.

But in the meantime, Michael Vick, rest assured. All the hidden footage of the various acts of animal abuse that wasn’t discovered is now legal.

Devan Grossblatt ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in history and art history.