About a week ago, a promo video started floating around for Kevin Smith’s upcoming Seth Rogen comedy, Zach and Miri Make a Porno. I didn’t write about it because, well, I have a hard time getting it up to care about new Kevin Smith movies. But I care about this! FilmDrunk alerts us to a post on Smith’s site, where the filmmaker explains that he was forced to remove the video from his production company’s movie news page because the MPAA insists on vetting all promo materials put forth by MPAA signatory companies, of which Porno’s distributor The Weinstein Company is one. An excerpt:

Turns out all promotional material for any film financed/distributed by a signatory of the MPAA has to be signed-off on by the MPAA - including internet-only materials. I never realized this, as it’d never been a problem in the past: we’ve been doing ‘net-only teasers since Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and nobody ever raised a red flag before (not even on the last flick, for which we also put up two ‘net-only teasers in advance of the rated trailer). But I guess since the teaser was so, shall we say, racy… a rating was in order.

It’s obviously a bit of a shock that the MPAA is now in the business of rating web-only videos, but I guess if they have the jurisdiction to take down billboards, it’s not *that* surprising. But in this case, there’s a loophole: the video was also posted on this Guardian UK blog. It’s still there, and I can only assume that’s because England has its own ratings board, and the MPAA doesn’t have jurisdiction on the promotion of films outside of the United States. Is this our first glimpse at a post-ratings board future, where the universal nature of the internet renders any attempts to assert local standards of censorship meaningless?