The word "censorship" is thrown around very loosely in this country. When WalMart declines to sell Eminem's latest record, or when video stores like Blockbuster won't stock dirty movies, it's not censorship.

Censorship is when the government bans or tries to ban some piece of art or entertainment or writing or speech. And in this country, censorship is actually pretty rare -- although when it does happen, it can take some highly American forms, as in Los Angeles right now.

The city of Los Angeles is demanding that filmmakers who want to portray its police to pay a licensing fee to do so. But LA is not doing this to generate revenue - rather, they're doing it to try to prevent unflattering fictional depictions of the LAPD.

Like those, presumably, in the terrific new TV series The Shield. Or in the two new shows about the department premiering this fall, Boomtown on NBC and Robbery, Homicide Division on CBS. Or the forthcoming movie Dark Blue, directed by Ron Shelton, which is about the LAPD around the time the four white cops were acquitted in the Rodney King case.

Los Angeles is claiming it has the right to say which artists can and can't fictionalize their police because it has trademarked the LAPD logo, just like Starbucks or Coke. And a spokesman for the city attorney actually said they'll sue to make sure its LAPD brand is "treated just like Starbucks and Coca-Cola."

It's funny. And scary, because it's a vehicle for real censorship. In fact, this gambit is more insidious than ordinary censorship because it's trying to suppress free speech ahead of time, in a wholesale fashion, and using the pretext of trademark protection to do so.

The Directors Guild of America is on the warpath about a different problem that they believe amounts to censorship. The movie and TV directors are complaining about a few small companies that serve customers who want to watch PG and R movies, but want the movies to be ….nice. One company called CleanFlicks physically edits video copies of movies, then sells and rents the cleaned-up versions.

This isn't censorship -- no government is behind the scheme, and no citizen who wants to watch the real, unexpurgated movies is being prevented from doing so. But it would certainly be annoying if you're the director, and it does sound to me like some kind of copyright violation.

The Directors Guild is also threatening to sue a company that sells a piece of software called Movie Mask. Movie Mask is a far more subtle and sophisticated form of bowdlerization. For each of the three potentially problematic areas of any movie -- language, violence and sex -- you customize the level of editing at home so that when you play the movie, Movie Mask automatically jumps past the moments or scenes that you deem too raw or racy.

Controlling what your children can watch is not censorship, and frankly, this software sounds like it would be kind of a gas to play around with. Say, for instance, that you're totally fine with scenes of violence, and don't mind a bit of sexual suggestiveness -- but that all rough language disgusts you. Set the computer controls, and voila, watch the film: you get to see "extreme gore, blood and mass destruction," as well as "implied nudity" and "immodest clothing." But as far as language goes, you'll hear nothing but "light name calling like 'goofball.'"

I think any parent has a right to buy and use software like this. Although if they really do so, they will and should be subject to light name-calling, like "goofball."

This is Kurt Andersen in Studio 360.

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