Efforts to censor movies started almost as early as movies themselves. By 1897 citizens were complaining that there was too much sex and violence in the "shorts" shown in storefront movie theaters. The first-major legal regulationof motion, pictures occurred at the state level, when Pennsylvania created a state board of censors in 1911. Within four years Ohio Kansas and Maryland had done the same. A key legal victory for the censors came with a 1915 Supreme Court case, Mutual Film Corporation v. Ohio, in which the justices ruled that motion pictures were not protected by the First Amendment. (This precedent held until 1952, when the Court ruled that the motion picture is "a significant mediun for the communication of ideas" and may be protected, by the First Amendment.) In1922 Hollywood took a proactive stance on the issue of censorship and began regulating itself, appointing Postmaster...