[stametseater]

Who said anything about the government? In the article, Spielberg laments his own decision to censor the guns in ET. It was his decision to alter his own movie, not government-imposed. The article isn't about government-imposed censorship specifically, it's Spielberg lamenting censorship generally.

inb4 "it's not real censorship unless the government does it"

[oneeyedpigeon]

I think the word censorship really has to relate to government action - if it's extended to an author reworking their own output, it really loses all sense of meaning.

[stametseater]

Hey no fair, I said inb4

Anyway, you're wrong and I think you know it because you said "government-mandated censorship." The first two words clarify the third. This wouldn't be necessary if the third truly implied the first two.

Have you ever heard of the Hays Code? It's quite infamous, you probably have; it was a system of self-imposed censorship from Hollywood to ban scandalous content from movies, such as people kissing or husbands and wives only having a single bed in their bedroom (oh the implications!) But the point is this censorship was self-imposed, there was no act of congress requiring it. The claim that true censorship must come from the government is simply wrong.

> if it's extended to an author reworking their own output, it really loses all sense of meaning.

It doesn't lose all meaning. It loses only the very narrow meaning you wish to impose (probably because it's an ugly word and you don't want to think yourself capable of censoring.)

[bombcar]

The Hays Code and the Comic Code were both arguably an industry self-censoring "somewhat" (for whatever value of that you want) so as to side-step government legislation.