Okay, it isn't just governments, although one might argue that The Church in the 13th century was the biggest government. Idealogical groups can do it too.
It isn't just something people with power do, an editor exercising his power to maintain his vision for a particular publication isn't censoring. John Campbell certainly taught authors to write stories according to his vision, and wouldn't buy them otherwise.
An idealogical organization certainly has the right to choose what they publish. It wouldn't be censorship for the Catholic Monthly to refuse to print "How to be a Wiccan".
On the other hand, if an organization has no part in the creation, publication, or transmission of a given work, and their only role is to limit what can be published or transmitted, that is censorship. They must needs have the power to control that publication or transmission. Groups like the Moral Majority can censor - one idiot writing a letter complaining that you shouldn't make movies where a black man has sex with a white woman is just whining, a thousand of them organized together are trying to impose effective censorship. Comstock's Society for the Suppression of Vice was not a part of the government, but they burned books and put pressure on the government to pass the Comstock Obscenity Laws.
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It isn't just something people with power do, an editor exercising his power to maintain his vision for a particular publication isn't censoring. John Campbell certainly taught authors to write stories according to his vision, and wouldn't buy them otherwise.
An idealogical organization certainly has the right to choose what they publish. It wouldn't be censorship for the Catholic Monthly to refuse to print "How to be a Wiccan".
On the other hand, if an organization has no part in the creation, publication, or transmission of a given work, and their only role is to limit what can be published or transmitted, that is censorship. They must needs have the power to control that publication or transmission. Groups like the Moral Majority can censor - one idiot writing a letter complaining that you shouldn't make movies where a black man has sex with a white woman is just whining, a thousand of them organized together are trying to impose effective censorship. Comstock's Society for the Suppression of Vice was not a part of the government, but they burned books and put pressure on the government to pass the Comstock Obscenity Laws.