BTW, This Film is Not Yet Rated is one of my all-time favorite documentaries. If anyone doubts the MPAA’s pervasive influence and/or lack of credibility, please watch this documentary.

All directors were affected by this, even those known for their restraint. One classic example is Alfred Hitchcock.

I have since I watched that documentary wondered how much less subtle his work would have been if the Hays Code did not prohibit so much.

The only way that it could be argued that the MPAA and its associated theaters and movie stores are committing rights violations would be to argue that a movie maker has a human right to other people’s theaters and stores, and by extension the very lives and labor of the people responsible for bringing those theaters and stores into existence.

This isn’t to say that the MPAA isn’t still doing objectionable things, but it does mean that they are within their rights to do so, in the same sense and for the same reasons that we are within our rights to discuss their actions here, and that their actions are objectionable in a different sense than something characteristic of brutally oppressive regimes is objectionable.

No, because movie consumers only make the decision for themselves, and cannot, on the individual level, make or break a movie. The MPAA can, if only through their economic clout. I agree with you insofar as I’d prefer a different term be used for censorship with legal force versus this kind of unofficial censorship through economic power versus even lesser forms of censorship. But when it comes down to it, they’re all the same thing – remove this content or we’ll do what’s in our power to make things unpleasant for you.