President Obama has signed a bill banning crush videos. As noted a few posts down, a prior ban was struck as unconstitutional in United States v. Stevens. The enacted version follows the original Senate version of the bill (see comparison), in that it covers a broader definition of abuse, one partially rooted in federal criminal statutes involving human victims. In addition, the ban does not repeat the mistake of the pre-Stevens statute, which required an additional state or federal statutory violation. The Stevens court didn't like the possibility that state law violations, especially those for noncruel acts, could be "exported" to other states.
The only difference I can find between the original Senate version and the one what is now law has to do with inchoate offenses, i.e., acts falling short of commission of an act. The law does not expressly prohibit conspiracies or attempts to create, distribute, etc., the videos. There was some fear that the stripping of inchoate offenses might doom the bill, at least in the short term, but the bill passed in that form.
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