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Don't worry about remembering StileProject.Com (warning, the site is filled pornographic and offensive images) -- you're going to be hearing a lot about it from animal rights activists. The furor over this site is likely to make the anger over BonsaiKitten.Com pale in comparison.
According to Wired's Leander Kaheny, StileProject.Com is featuring a "graphic video show[ing] a conscious kitten being struck on the head, decapitated, butcher and cooked."
Wired seems to think the video is real (unlike the BonsaiKitten.Com parody), and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals's Peter Wood tells Kaheny that, "We're going to do everything in our power to have the folks who put this on the Web prosecuted. We look forward to bringing the powers that be down on them."
PETA hopes the owner of the site, Jonathan Biderman, will be indicted under a December 1999 law that made it a felony to possess "a depiction of animal cruelty."
The only problem with that idea, however, is that the law is clearly unconstitutional. At best Biderman might end up being the test case that has the law invalidated by an appeals court.
Moreover, it is not even clear if Biderman is violating the law against depicting animal cruelty even if you accept the legitimacy of the law. Like most anti-obscenity statutes, the law against depicting animal cruelty included a loophole for "serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value."
This is why no one's prosecuted PETA for the depictions of animal cruelty it posts on its own web site, and its a loophole big enough to drive an 18-wheeler through -- and certainly big enough for StileProject.Com to slip through.
In fact on his site Biderman puts a decidedly animal rights spin on the video, writing:
To us it seems like the ultimate taboo. How could those Godless Asians [Biderman claims the video originated in South Korea] do such a thing to such a beautiful creature? Well, I'm sure Indians wonder the same thing about us, but you don't see North Americans shedding a tear every time a cow is slaughtered ... When's the last time you cried over a Big Mac?
I do not condone animal abuse, and I view the video more as an educational tool than one of shock value. For us to say it is wrong, it would just make us all hypocrites since most of us eat meat.
Sorry, PETA, but as distasteful as it may be, Biderman has just as much right to post disturbing images of animals being slaughtered as you do. The investigation of Biderman will likely go about as far as the FBI's investigation into BonsaiKitten.Com.
This will probably end up making good fund raising material for PETA and other groups, but little else.
Source:
Gruesome movie sparks outrage. Leander Kahney, Wired, August 29, 2001.