[censorship] do community standards exist

Does anyone remember the 1971 Schoolkids Oz pornography trial in the UK? Does anyone remember Judge Alex Kozinski in 2008?

Not only does there seem rampant hypocrisy in the matter of what constitutes community standards and the actions of its supposed defenders but these days, I wager no one really knows what community standards are.

Let's face it, the games kids are playing on the net and using the new technology, the sex, drugs and the instantly clickable gross porn kids can access any time they want on the net has changed the ground rules completely. Parents are either naive, turning a blind eye or throwing up their hands in despair.

What are community standards now?

Censorship classifications are a case in point. Take three films I've seen in the past months - Saw [18], In Bruges [18] and From Russia with Love [12].

Now Saw deserves its classification for gratuitous violence [people hung up with meathooks, limbs being twisted asunder and so on]. So if that constitutes an 18 rating, then what of In Bruges?

It has tame sex [Clemence Poesy even keeps her clothes on], has swearing and one drug scene. There's a point where someone throws himself off a tower and you don't see the splat, you see a closeup of his face, still alive, with some ketchup spread about. Poesy, in an outtake, uses the F-word to describe the F-act.

That's it. So where's the 18 and for what? For swearing?

On the other hand, the re-released Lowry Bond FRWL is tame in itself but the menu and links feature unclad females who are quite clearly unclad and therefore the silhouettes don't work. Let alone the womanizing theme of Bond in the early episodes.

This is rated 12?

So I ask again, what are the community standards which lead the censors to decide on classifications, on what do they base it, who enforces it and is there any need for it at all?

My own view is that what adults watch is their affair but that kids need some form of protection. However, I'm well aware of the obvious flaw in that - where is the line drawn.