When Spielberg edited E.T. to replace guns with walkie-talkies, was that censorship? Or freedom of speech?
"Sensitivity readings" is hardly a recent concept. The Hardy Boy's were updated to remove the original depictions of racial stereotypes. Was that censorship? Or a desire to make more money?
The 1981 revised edition of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" were edited with edits for "modern sensibilities", including reducing sexist language [1]. Was that censorship?
When is the copyright owner and/or licensee morally obliged to not make legally allowed changes?
Only when the change can be seen as "politically correct"?
[1] For examples, "insurance man" was replaced with "insurance agent", and "leadership gravitates to the man who can talk" changed to "leadership gravitates to the person who can talk". It also dropped the section on marriage. ("Never get married until you have kissed the Blarney Stone. Praising a woman before marriage is a matter of inclination. But praising one after you marry her is a matter of necessity — and personal safety.")
“Speaking for myself, you know, I tried [modifying a film] once and I lived to regret it. Not because of fan outrage, but simply because I was disappointed in myself. I was overly sensitive to some of the criticism ET got from parent groups when it was first released in '82 having to do with Eliot saying "Penis Breath" or the guns...and then there were certain brilliant, but rough around the edges close ups of ET that I always felt, if technology ever evolves to the point where I can do some facial enhancement for ET, I'd like to. So I did an ET pass for like the third release of the movie and it was okay for a while, but then I realized that what I had done was I had robbed the people who loved ET of their memories of ET. And I regretted that.”
