When does a video do harm? How can you be harmed by watching a video? If you don't like it, close your browser. If you don't want your kids seeing it, using parental controls or watch them when they use the computer.
This just reeks of governments trying to impose censorship by using recent terror events as leverage.
I saw an animal torture video once. It went very fast and because I was in both a state of shock/fear/sadness/whatever, I couldn't even get myself to stop, pause or close it in time. The torture just happened too fast.
I own and care a great deal for my own pets. So what happened to the same animals in the video.. it haunted me for weeks and was a really depressing experience.
Sure, I'm more careful now.. heck, I'm even outright censoring a lot of stuff from myself, because of this experience.
But it sounds like you are saying "videos can never do harm" and I just really disagree with this, because of how I was affected by this particular one.
Why are you trying to "expose" animal cruelty? That's a crime. Give your video to the police. Uploading it to YouTube so the general public can see it not helpful.
What is uploading it to YouTube going to do? The only motive I can think of there is to try and shame someone for something, but that's rarely applicable. Besides, nobody is saying "the police did nothing, therefore I uploaded it to YouTube".
The best reason I can think of for sharing an animal cruelty video with the public (or at least doing so before exhausting any effective strategy) is when you need help identifying the culprit, so you can properly report it. But YouTube isn't the right community for that sort of thing.
> And what of states where creating that video in the first place is itself a crime?
How does that excuse uploading the video to YouTube? If making the video itself is a crime, then sharing it with the public seems like a great way to get yourself in trouble.
If your intention was to try and distribute the video anonymously, surely there's ways to anonymously submit complaints + evidence to the police.
> What if the abuse is not criminal, but you wish to convince the public that it should be?
Good question, perhaps that situation does warrant uploading to YouTube and spreading publicly. Although you'd need to be careful of exposing yourself to a defamation lawsuit there depending on whether the perpetrator in the video is identifiable. Although even in this case I'm skeptical as to the efficacy of this action.
Related to this, I'd say that the best justification for uploading such a video would be if the video is considered to be in the public interest. This would cover situations such as a government-funded institution engaging in unethical/criminal behavior (I'm thinking here of things like Abu Ghraib). But in such a situation I still think uploading to YouTube is probably the wrong approach; I would expect you could find journalists that would be interested in a story like that and would be much better-positioned to bring attention to the unethical/criminal behavior.
This just reeks of governments trying to impose censorship by using recent terror events as leverage.