While the killing of Du’a Khalil Aswad, a 17-year-old member of Iraq’s Yezidi religious minority from the village of Bahzan in northern Iraq, happened around April 7, according to Amnesty International, news of the murder began to circulate in late April, and finally exploded with a Boing Boing story over the weekend, which features links to Kurdish and Assyrian news sites that include the grisly and disturbing videos.

While YouTube apparently took down one clip of the murder, another "Stoning to Kurdish Teenage Girl," was posted in the last 24 hours behind YouTube's 18-or-older membership warning. But that video was also recently taken down, "due to terms of use violation," according to the website.

According to YouTube's "Terms of Use," the Google-owned company reserves the right to decide whether content is appropriate if it is "obscene or defamatory material," which certainly could account for the decision to remove images of a young women being beaten to death. Snuff videos are not the type of material that YouTube wants to be associated with.

But the news value of the footage is also important. And one angry YouTube user is crying foul, trying to raise awareness, by creating another YouTube post titled "YouTube Censors Stoning Video," which includes links to his own site -- which also includes the offensive clips.

Human-rights activism or exploitation, you decide.