The shaky cell phone footage is not particularly pristine or gruesome, but watching the death of the dictator has become an international pastime. What's next, DeathTube.com?

From the slitting of Daniel Pearl's throat to the sundry other hostage beheadings that have made their way onto the web, death is the latest forbidden mass entertainment to capitalize on the Internet since pornography. But not entirely perverse or illicit, public executions can also pass themselves off as legitimate news.

The major news networks chose not to air the moment of Hussein's hanging, or the frozen image of his cracked neck that has since invaded YouTube, but in their attempts at civility or decorum, the mainstream news has also shown its limitations, as the Los Angeles Times reported, "as Internet sites continue to supplant the traditional media as a source of information."

Should it be disturbing that the first viral web phenomenon of 2007 was of a man's death?

Our present fascination with state-sanctioned murder recalls The Running Man, the 1987 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger about a TV game show, in which convicts try to survive their own public executions. "I'll be back," says the future governor of California. Though Sadaam Hussein won't be returning, the public appetite for snuff videos looks as if it's only just begun.