Individuals and institutions, of course, can and do choose to limit their own speech and other forms of expression. Such a policy is simply an ordinary exercise of one's judgment, a kind of voluntary behavior not included in the definition or concept of censorship. The often-heard term "self-censorship" is a misnomer—or what Rand would have identified as a "stolen concept," that is, an attempt to apply a concept to a context that contradicts the earlier concepts on which it depends. True censorship is a species of initiated force, and force by definition (see Glossary) cannot logically be applied against oneself. For instance, a film company may choose not to produce movies that feature excessive or offensive violence, in order to preserve its reputation among its customers. Such a policy, if undertaken voluntarily, does not involve force and thus does not constitute "self-censorship" or any other form of censorship.

On the other hand, if such action is taken under duress, it is not voluntary in any meaningful sense. As we have already observed, the threat of initiated force is praxeologically equivalent to overt initiated force, and action taken under such threats is thus no longer voluntary (pp. 4.5:10, 4.11:7-10). If we see a woman hand her purse to a thief under threat of force, we have witnessed not "self-robbery," but simply robbery. Similarly, if the film company is obliged to suppress certain scenes from its movies in order to forestall a clearly imminent governmental intervention, that suppression represents not "self-censorship," but censorship (albeit indirect) by government authorities. More generally, any threat of aggressive force leading to the restriction of speech or other expression constitutes censorship.