At the turn of the millennium, the British Board of Film Classification was undergoing its own process of reform, shifting its emphasis (and public image) away from censorship and toward a model of consumer information, bringing its policies into closer alignment with the aims and processes of the Motion Picture Association of America's current ratings system. Despite this shift toward the censor's self-cleansing, important distinctions persist between the operations of government classification bodies on both sides of the Atlantic and their industry-oriented American counterpart. Chiefly, the MPAA's rating process remains a voluntary one, which filmmakers and distributors can forgo if they are willing to assume the commercial risks of doing so.

By contrast, the mandatory review processes of the OFRB, the OFLC, and BBFC render criminal the exhibition of films that have not received government certification. The rationale for the persistence of this legal stricture—that it is a safeguard, albeit flimsy, against the exposure of children to adult material—is potentially complicated by the fact that censorship processes generate continuous revenue from the filmmakers and distributors who must pay fees to have their products reviewed. Furthermore, the voluntary nature of the MPAA's rating system places the power to ban or confiscate illegal filmic materials within the jurisdiction of a given state's criminal code, highlighting the redundancy of intermediary institutions with remit to censor film content. The OFRB retains that mandate exclusively, where “pornography” is concerned, and the BBFC extends it even further by continuing to censor “mainstream” commercial films containing only allegedly lurid depictions of sexual violence (A Serbian Film [2009] and Human Centipede II [2010] being two high-profile examples). Nevertheless, the implementation of institutional protections of free expression for filmmakers, if limited, that occurred in Ontario and Britain in the wake of the Fat Girl controversy can certainly be viewed as progress toward a more liberal reception of films.

With its emphasis on informing consumers and its de-emphasis on suppressing “dangerous” or “harmful” materials, classification is a proposition altogether less affronting to foundational principals of Western liberal democracies than censorship.