Yes As disgusting as I find dog fighting to prohibit videos of it would not end dog fighting or the distribution of videos and would instead open the door to the banning or criminalizing all sorts of media simply because someone finds it cruel or distasteful. Where does that end?

Free speech means you can verbaly defend any crime, However, promoting a crime does not fall under the protection of free speech. Publishing a video in which you are defending murder is protected, but publishing a video of you commiting murder... I think you get my point. The principle doesn't change for lesser crimes. +4

An instructional video for artificial insemination of animals? An instructional video on butchery? Leave our butchers and vets untrained? Become compulsorily vegan?

You've hit one of the most interesting (and toughest) issues in First Amendment jurisprudence. . The best counterpart analogy I can think of is child pornography. . If it's real, the sale and distribution can be made illegal (at least under current U.S. Supreme Court precedent). . But what if it's a cartoon? . The Court has generally drawn the distinction on the question of whether or not an actual child was harmed. . To put it in the animal cruelty context, would the difference be between, say, a theatrical movie where special effects are used to portray cruelty to a dog and a "sports" (sheesh) video showing an actual dog fighting match? What about a documentary or news report showing exactly the same thing, but for the purpose of blowing the whistle on a dogfighting ring? . What about the Humane Society producing an educational video about the horrible conditions as some puppy farms? . My gut reaction to your question is "Yes, it should be." But honestly, I can't figure out how you would carve out a First Amendment exception that wouldn't bleed over into other things. The issue of selling the videos arguably takes it into the realm of commercial speech, but the Court has been narrowing the differences between individual and commercial speech for years. . Hopefully somebody smarter than me will figure it out.

I never thought these kinds of videos constitute "speech". Now, a cartoon or something like that is speech. But when a real person/animal is shown in the video it is not merely "speech". It concerns me how we took the leap from books/drawings to actual beings with such ease.