Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indy Star, has an article about prominent Republican consultant Mary Matalin making a video for PETA urging the defeat of SB 373: the “ag gag” bill, as the Indiana Law Blog calls it.
As currently written, at its broadest, SB 373 makes it unlawful for a person to enter agricultural or industrial property with intent to indirectly harm the business relationship between the business and its customers by taking video or pictures without the written consent of the owner and disseminating them.
Matalin says she’s a meat eating Republican but thinks the bill is a bad idea because animals should be treated humanely and such videos have been used to uncover wrongdoing in the past. She joins Bob Barker as a celebrity against this provision.
But isn’t this bill unduly specific? Why single out the interests of agricultural and industrial businesses? If this is good for them, isn’t it good for anyone who doesn’t want to be the unknowing subject of video or photography? Maybe the property owners where the Steubenville rapes took place would have preferred that no photos or video of the incident be taken or disseminated. Then, when local law enforcement chose to look the other way, there wouldn’t have been any public pressure and the property owners could have avoided a lot of unpleasantness; rape of a teen girl on the premises notwithstanding.
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