There is a disturbing social phenomenon that many people these days who witness a violent crime or other emergency in progress stand around and record a video of it to post online, rather than call 911 or do anything to help the victims.
We had an incident in Florida where a bunch people just stood around recording a lady being being sexually assaulted on a beach, rather than calling the police or raising any objection to the assault.
The concern over this practice has also extended to the issue of people recording and posting videos of street fights, or assault and battery videos, online.
Several states considering the issue have proposed making it illegal to post any videos of street fights online.
In particular, there are many states that are considering making it illegal to post videos of children having street fights.
The concern is that while the first amendment may extend to protecting the right of people to take videos, and post them online, it does not give people the right to post videos of children getting beat up, being humiliated, being bullied, or engaging in other activities where the mere existence of the video online may cause some harm to the child.
The other concern being that the posting of children’s fights online may encourage predatory children to film themselves beating up weaker children.
Personally, I try not to watch videos of kids street fighting. As self defense instructors, we have plenty of case study videos of adults getting beat up online to use as teaching/learning case studies, without having to use videos that may glamorize kid on kid violent assaults.
I think the practice of putting up videos of kids getting beat up is a practice that has too much in common with putting up videos of child pornography, and should not be a practice that is allowed to continue.
Only a mentally ill person would allow themselves to enjoy seeing a child trying to really hurt or humiliate another child.
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