by Virginia Postrel

About the author: Virginia Postrel is the editor of Reason magazine and the author of The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress.

Showing the public relations savvy we expect from media moguls, the heads of the Hollywood studios declined to testify [in May of 1999] when the Senate Commerce Committee held hearings on “marketing violence to children.” So when television reported the story, viewers saw movie clips of Keanu Reeves facing off against evil, rather than a tape of an anonymous executive squirming in the witness chair. Films remained works of art, protected by the First Amendment, rather than mere corporate products to be regulated at Washington’s whim.

The distinction didn’t last. At the hearings...