What an absolutely pointless comparison.. nothing more to be said really.
The point is that in the cases he outlined it's considered acceptable for the government to override the individual's autonomy, for the good of society as a whole. Indeed, that's the entire basis of law in the first place - to provide a framework of rules to maximise social wellbeing.
In some cases, breaking the law won't result in harm to society, making the 'criminal' morally justified in some sense. From his perspective, the state is bearing down on him for no justifiable reason. However, if the rule was not in place we'd all be worse off, so we have to accept these problem cases. It's the same situation with censorship. Products are censored not because it's judged that the individual doesn't have the right to decide for himself, or because he's seen as automatically morally/emotionally/intellectually inferior to some authority, but because
giving him the ability to choose carries significant costs of its own; social costs that occur when individuals make the wrong choices.
Such censorship is normally out of the question, because we value individual freedom so much, and because in practice giving government these powers opens up the potential for abuse - the slippery slope. There's also the fact that the costs/benefits of censorship are hard to determine, especially when you consider 'the erosion of belief in civil liberties', i.e the situation where individuals stop questioning the governments' right to control their life.
However as mentioned previously, in certain cases, as with drugs and pedophillic material, it's judged that 'the slippery slope' isn't a factor and that the social cost of the choices individuals are making is so large, that the government must intervene - at the expense of civil liberty. So this idyllic society where individual freedoms are always respected simply doesn't exist. And nor does taking away some freedoms automatically doom us to languish in some Orwellian dystopia. In reality the issues are far more complex.
When considering the BBFC's decision, we have to recognise that the BBFC has always had the power to ban games! And the last time they banned a title was 10 years ago. Furthermore, they operate according to strict guidelines and must be able to effectively justify their decisions if they're to retain their credibility. So I simply don't buy that their powers represent a 'dangerous precedent', or are open to abuse. The precedent already exists and has existed for some time.
The question then becomes 'were the BBFC right?'. Are there large costs to releasing Manhunt? Are these costs worth overriding individual liberty? Well, none of has have even played Manhunt 2, so I don't see how that could be judged. And any decision will based on a subjective assessment of probabilities/moral values.
So it's all very unclear. However I hope in this post I've demonstrated that things are nowhere near as black and white as: 'stopping someone from buying a product they want is always an unacceptable violation of their liberties'. In reality, liberties are very fuzzy indeed.
