Yes, I know it's been a while

[stripedpbj]

As I was doing research for my thesis on the differences in business method patent laws in different countries, I found that different nations often emphasize aspects of law (obviously to portray what they think is important for the betterment of society). An interesting fact that I found was that the U.S. in one of the only countries that has the "Freedom of Speech". For example, most of Europe does not even have that clause, but emphasize their laws more on social aspects. There is also probably the most obvious example, China. Although the First Amendment protects these freedoms, the U.S. has one of the strongest censorships for film. An example of this was the release of the movie "American Psycho", where the U.S. showed a cut version of the film while all of Europe showed the real version. Although, it might have been more of a corporate decision seeing how most movie theatres do not show movies with a rating higher than R. By all means, I thought the film was provocative enough seeing the even more cut version on television. However, the question is, with the importance of the Freedom of Speech in our Constitution, why do theatres have the pressure of banning more explicit movies?

PS. For some reason, I always update my livejournal when I'm in the stacks.