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Banned Books published by Google
Lens Hood Man writes "Marking the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week, Google is inviting users to celebrate their freedom to read by making Banned Books available to all. From the Google Blog: "...you can use Google Book Search to explore some of the best novels of the 20th century which have been challenged or banned." Those books challenged this year include 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Lolita'."
When Humbert Humbert has sex with Lolita at the Enchanted Hunters for the first time, is Nabokov describing a rape or consensual sex?
I can probably find some banned books that they might find an interesting read, especdially sans redaction...
China will just see a big photo of Mao when you try to load the books on Google. Maybe they could get a backdrop of the glowing fire from a pile of books being burned too!
stuff |
Be sure to get your RML pin today!
k s/radicalbutton.htm
http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/basics/basicrelatedlin
It seems to just previews not the whole books.
... except that Call of the Wild is by Jack London, not James Baldwin...
"Google is inviting users to celebrate their freedom to read by making Banned Books available to all."
Google has not made these books available to read online, it just gives you the ability to find a library that has the book.
these books are actually banned? this lists sounds more like a list of required-reading books than banned books.
put Anarchist Cookbook on there. i dare you.
Heck most libraries don't carry everything anyway, I can't go get Hustler and Playboy at my Library. At my local library I can't find copies of the Jane's Reference books, or many other books.
There are good books on that list, but you don't need to hype them by saying that they have been banned or censored by "the man." You should take the books as what they are.
"To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee ...Challenged in the Normal, ILL Community High Schools sophomore literature class (2003) as being degrading to African Americans."
I read this book in high school, and I came away from it with a new appreciation for the horrors of racism and injustice. How the hell is it degrading? By showing just how fucked-up the law was in regards to nonwhites?
Really, some people just can't see the forest for the trees...
If it weren't for these free speech forums, then information could possibly be censored so that no person knew about it! Examples include books about what's under the clay (if you dig 3 ft. you get clay), and books that claim yet cannot prove that certain politicians are cheating. Luckily those things can be posted here.
------
The backyard hole / claymine website: http://amtgard.shop.tm/
Great! I've been meaning to read up on some musical history.
This guy's the limit!
Has Lolita really been banned? In the US?
I thought there was something in the US constitution about "freedom of speech". Is it still possible to ban a book? And a book which happens to be one of the best books by one of the best authors of the 20th century...
What about the beautiful Kubrick film with Peter Sellers?
[1] http://www.amazon.com/100-Banned-Books-Censorship- Literature/dp/0816040591 k s/100mostfrequently.htm
[2] http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlin
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Google promoting banned books by linking to a preview of the book isn't doing much in helping remove censorship, especially when most of the books have expired copyrights. Google got burned by the publishing companies.
The books are still banned from general public distribution.
Because of copyright extensions, the latest in 1998, A book written in 1926 will now not not be available for public distribution until 2022.
The "Public library" is a compensation for the lack of public information created by unreasonable copyright extensions. With a "Public Library", the government ( being the entity that granted near infinite publishing monopolies ), pays the created monopolies for the "right" to allow limited public access to the works of which the authors are often dead or no longer receive compensation.
From the list of Top 100 challenged books:
#7 : Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
#19: Sex by Madonna
#88: Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford
You're right. They're not publishing these, just making the searchable by all ... er most (pending China's great firewall).
... I was hoping Google would provide the original typesetting (that Joyce was very particular about) but instead it seems I just get a preview :-(
A lot of these I have seen on Project Gutenberg.
Sometimes when I'm dying in my cubicle at work, I open up a random page of James Joyce's Ulysses and drift away
My work here is dung.
I can get to "limited previews" for the books, but can I read the whole thing?
Yes, Stephen King is truly an American icon.
Stephen King's writing is atrocious. He may write good stories but his use of language is painful...
On our banned books, we get a pix of laura and george bush.
1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lord of the Flies, Ulysses, Heart of Darkness, A Farewell to Arms, Invisible Man.
Why not just ban all books from the second half of the 20th century and be done with it? These are CLASSICS, the books literature experts practically memorize by heart. What next? Are we going to ban The Odyssey because of the violence?
Heinlein. Card. Asimov. Sturgeon. Ellison.
King's very good, but "the best"?
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Considering we're coming up on Banned Books Week 2006, this is the perfect time to make these books available.
And yes, every book that Google has up there has been banned or challenged in public libraries across the country. There are still places where 'To Kill A Mockingbird' or 'Tom Sawyer' are considered improper reading for children - and for adults.
Good work, Google. Keep on it.
Brazil has decided you're cute.
these are books that were historically banned... at various points in time... not books currently banned anywhere. Learn some history.
I don't see how 1984 is that edgy.
It's just a rather blunt warning on freedom of speech and propaganda.
It's just in a story, rather than a simple explanation of why free speech and free thought are important.
As is in the case in so many of these situations, this list has just piqued my interest more. I've read many of these novels but now I just have more in my reading list.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
these books are actually banned? this lists sounds more like a list of required-reading books than banned books.
These "Banned Books" lists that librarians like to trumpet tend to be lists of books which were ever banned anywhere by any library at any time, not books which are banned today. So if they can find that some old biddy in Vermont in 1903 didn't like "Huckleberry Finn", it goes straight on the list. The conclusion that you're supposed to draw is that Literature is Under Attack Even Today by Reactionaries who are hiding under your bed.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
King is the best writer of the last half? Ouch... I wouldn't imagine so. That his novels found an audience is certainly believable due to his interesting imagination. I personally don't like his work much.. but know others that do. That said, I certainly wouldn't name him the best. Perhaps the favorite amongst a certain group though, that is certainly plausible.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
I can't help but notice that most of these books have been carried everywhere since they were published: in every library, in every book store. Perhaps one small rural school system somewhere decided not to order it, hence they start crying about it being banned. That doesn't seem to be much of a ban. In contract, books that have really been banned don't appear on the list anywhere. For example, "Jewish Supremacism" by David Duke is officially banned in Canada and gets intercepted at the border and burned. That to me constitutes a real, actual banned book.
(from TFA):
The Call of the Wild
James Baldwin
"Baldwin... has really unusual substantive powers but conventional ingenuity in form...[a] beautiful, furious first novel." - The New York Times
I do believe it was Jack London.
meh
I was surprised to find that five of the 42 "banned books" were ones I studied at high school in the 1970s: To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, Sons & Lovers.
That's 12%. Can anyone do better?
Paid Q&A/Research
If you want quality, serious science fiction, check out Gardner Dozois's "Year's Best Science Fiction" ongoing anthology. There are no Star Wars stories in it, but you WILL find a lot of great MODERN science fiction writers who raise many interesting questions about present-day humanity.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Getting excited about stuff that isn't actually banned anymore is a pretty cheap and easy way of feeling like a rebel ...
Banned books are a historical curiosity now, at least in the lands where people are going to get excited about this. You aren't brave for reading Lolita.
Why would Stephen King be banned?
He's never written anything contraversial. Never challanged any established ideas. IT was entertaining, but it doesn't have a political message or force us to re-evaluate how we define 'crazy.' It doesn't warn us of the dangers of certain ways of thinking like 1984 does or Brave New World.
Honestly, how could someone even think any of King's books are even in the same league.
If by "best" your measuring stick is sheer volume, then sure -- he's rather prolific. But in terms of quality, surely you can think of a couple of authors whose writing is a bit better than his? My reading selection tends to be fairly narrow and I can think of quite a few authors whose writing surpasses King's.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
1984? Of Mice and Men? These aren't books that any sane person would ban, even if some private schools ran by fools do so, it's going to be availible in every library.
Upload books that have been banned for a "good" reason, like Mein Kampf, and this could actually be interesting.
Google Cut and Paste for the LOSE! The correct entry: Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin "Baldwin... has really unusual substantive powers but conventional ingenuity in form...[a] beautiful, furious first novel." - The New York Times Books about Go Tell it on the Mountain followed later by the incorrect entry: The Call of the Wild James Baldwin "Baldwin... has really unusual substantive powers but conventional ingenuity in form...[a] beautiful, furious first novel." - The New York Times Books about The Call of the Wild
meh
Just kidding, I guess there aren't that many people who read slashdot.
In unrelated news, who knew that James Baldwin ghost-wrote for Jack London? Google, that's who.
The Call of the Wild
James Baldwin
"Baldwin... has really unusual substantive powers but conventional ingenuity in form...[a] beautiful, furious first novel." - The New York Times
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
And yet, close to 70% of the books listed there were part of my high school's English curriculum. Not "suggested reading," or anything else we had to read on our own, but part of the coursework over my 4 years of high school. Maybe that's just how we do thing around here, but as "contraversial" as the subject matter of each book may or may not be, I can read that list and remember the ideas presented from each book. I remember discussing the credits and demerits of each concept in an objective way as part of the class. I can't see why anyone would want to ban these literary icons from schools or libraries, when the dissection of each only lends to the ability to think freely and creatively, and develop critical thinking and reasoning skills.
Wouldn't touch anything with Dozois's muddy fingerprints on it, ever.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Where the hell is Mein Kampf?
Sometimes books need to be banned or the terrorists-will-stop-thinking-about-the-children-a nd-win-the-war-of-evil.
Nazi's used to BURN the bookes they feared. See? We Americans are much better than Nazis.
Heinlein, Card, Asimov, Sturgeon, King: all absolute lightweights. If you mean Ralph Ellison -- and you don't -- then you're on the right track with the last one.
Mein Kampf isn't legally banned, at least not in the U.S. where that would be unconstitutional. I'm pretty sure you can buy it on Amazon and probably in many bookstores. Now maybe some libraries refuse to hold it. Also, there is no good reason to ban a book. Now, maybe its banned in Europe, as they do tend to limit speech more than the U.S., where we don't limit hate speech.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/100-Banned-Books-Censorship- Literature/dp/0816040591k s/100mostfrequently.htm
[2] http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlin
A quick glance at these 2 lists only confirms my suspicions. We are well and truely fucked as a nation.
"This list of books is exactly why we must not fail in our fight against terrorism. Ya see, the terrorists hate our freedom. They hate our way of life. This list of books shows how much they hate us."
*psst*
*mumble mumble mumble*
"America? Really?"
"Can't we jazz it up to so I can use it in a speech on terrorism? No? Karl will figure out a way."
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Yet again, slashdot acts as the fanboys in chief for Google. There is nothing to see here, literally. Google has plonked a few book titles in 'easy to use' clickable links then wrapped them up in a nice webpage. How much has google paid /. editors for these 'news' stories to appear day after day after day.
Reminds me of the old russian saying - "There is no Pravda in Izvestia, and there is no Izvestia in Pravda"
I'd hardly call Heinlein a "hack". I'm not saying he's the most important writer ever, but a "hack"? No.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
If they are banned how is it I can go buy them? A more honest and less inflammatory term would be controversial books. At least in the US they are not truly banned. Maybe not available in some school libraries or even some public libraries but that isn't the same thing as banned.
Frankly I would like to see libraries "ban" more books.
Chariot of the Gods would be a good start.
Why wasn't the Bible on the list? It is banned in and or restricted heavily in many countries.
Also I didn't see any Holocaust denial books or pro Nazi books on the list. Those have been banned in many countries as well.
If you are going to pretend that you support freedom of speech I guess posting a list of books "banned" in some US high schools is a freaking safe way to do it.
I have to admit that publishing a book online that you can can buy at most any book store in the US really does make up for censoring pro-democracy cites in China. Good for you Google. Let us all bask in your "Celebration of the Freedom to Read".
I think I will go puke now.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There were not any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you did not enjoy his work, there is no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I've been seeing a lot of comments about "Hey, I read most of those books in High School! How can they be banned?" First of all, this is a list taken out of context... many of those books were taken out of libraries due to topics that are not controversial now, but were controversial a few decades ago. Depictions of euthanasia ("Of Mice and Men"), drug addiction ("To Kill a Mockingbird", "Brave New World"), sex (Lots of books on the list), even favorable depictions of non-Caucasian races ("Adventures of Huckleberry Finn") all would be cause to get a book banned. In hindsight, it seems silly, but every generation has its taboos. Just TRY to get a book approved about terrorism or school shootings in today's English curriculum. AIDS is okay to talk about now, but it wasn't 20 years ago.
It's a lot like Rock stars. They do a lot of publicity stunts and live a lifestyle that seems garish and offensive to the social conservatives of their time, but looking back in hindsight, most of the hype is just plain silly. Biting off the head of a bat? Ozzie, your domestic home life is much scarier than that; so is the fact that we find it entertaining to televise it.
Second, I have a sneaking suspicion that many of these books are chosen by high school English teachers in a misguided attempt to jazz up their curriculum. "Ooo, this was a banned book. That'll reach out to my jaded kids who barely can read a page a day, let alone a whole book." I don't think they realize how big the Cliff Notes market is, or how easy it is to rip off essays about banned books from the Wikipedia.
Is she even old enough to consent? How old must someone be to consent?
It's pretty easy to celebrate books that were one banned but no longer challenge today's standards.
Google's banned book list looks like a required reading list from a college literature. I don't see any of Stephen King's books that were banned by various schools over the years. He's probably the best writer of the last half of the 20th century.
You'll be happy to know Stephen King is the 7th most banned author according to the ALA, for 1999-2004. He just writes so bloody many books in the same vein, that none of them are in the top 10 right now. Amusingly, he is beaten by J.K. Rowling and her witchcraft promoting Harry Potter books, which come in at number 4.
Notably absent from these pages are the words "in the United States". This list would be a hell of a lot longer if we included books banned by, for example, Nazi Germany. (Uh oh, I feel a Godwin coming on.)
I realize Google is based in the US and this isn't necessarily even an accusation of USA-centrism (why would I even object? I'm a US citizen myself..) but it is a factual omission that seems important considering this will be seen by Google's hundreds of millions of users all over the world.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
i went to a little redneck school in rural southwestern ohio and there was a copy of mein kampf in my highschool library.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
Seriously, "Of Mice and Men" banned? I read that at secondary school!
Also, if you click on Satanic Verses, google prints this:
*Your search - intitle:satanic intitle:verses inauthor:rushdie - did not match any documents.*
True. Anyone who has read the Dark Tower series would agree. Best books ever.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Stephen King only writes horror stories, made to scare, to play with angst and fears and to instill a sense of insecurity. Why would that be banned in today's USA?
After all, he neither talks about sex nor does he speak out for free speech or applying common sense.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I see Chocolate War by Robert Cormier on the list for "sexual content and offensive language". Having read this book numerous times over the years, where the hell was there sexual content?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I don't see Steal This Book on their list. I've been wanting to read it.
I completley agree; if hour govermant let me haev these books in schools, I too would be a better speler.
Fortunatley, I'm still smrt enough to call the kettel (as a nation) well and truely black...
I've read MK. In the original version (pays to have a grandfather who didn't burn his mandatory piece). In a nutshell: It's a piece of very poorly worded, very shoddy propaganda without any kind of substance or any content. Pages and pages of inane rambling about how certain groups of people undermine the system and leech from others, followed by the claim that peoples "in all times" strived to gain more room for themselves and how this needs to be reapplied.
In short, it's amazing how a "theory" like this could cause something like WW2. My guess is that few people really read it and thus nobody knew that Hitler was a loonie. Maybe it should've been banned earlier, more people would've probably seen where this is leading to.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
for a foreigner what "challanged" and "banned" exactly means?
... lots of those books I have read in school in the age of 14 - 18 .... sounds unbelieveable to me that the land of "free speach" does consor books, or what exactly is going on there?
I don#t really get it
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
MK is actually banned in Austria and Germany (the "core" countries of the Nazi Reich) under the law against "Wiederbetätigung" (law against reestablishing, propagandizing or promoting the nazi doctrine). There is a "commented and edited" version available for educational purposes only, and it's fairly hard to get as a "normal" person without a reason (i.e. not being a teacher who needs it for history class), which contains parts of the book, with comments correcting the propaganda lies therein.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
wow, that list looks like my old high school's list of choices we had for books to read junior year! What the hell, lol. We actually had to read some of those and forget all that stuff about what's in them, all the ones I read on that list should be banned purely because they suck sooooooooo bad! They are so rip your hair out, eye meltingly boring and stupid that no student should ever have to read them! Why can't we read more books like Huck Finn where at least stuff happens instead of just a bunch of losers sitting around talking about crap?! Btw where was 1984 banned, China? hehehe
now stop reading and go play Dance Dance Revolution!
Sort of ironic to celebrate Google's showing these banned books when Google China agreed to censor itself.
The box said I needed Windows XP or better so I bought a Mac.
Maybe someone should draw you a big, white piture...
Reading this article I tried to find Nabokov's novel by searching for "lolita" on google. Considering the number of results this definitely looks like a popular novel but how come isn't Nabokov Book the first result?
\u262D = \u5350
Ban Captain Underpants? What sort of social meme is at risk by this series of books? My son enjoys them and even I get a kick out of them.
Since when is cartoon violence a problem in the US? What the hell are these people thinking?
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
Well at least they aren't paid links to Amazon.com.
an ill wind that blows no good
It's very funny, I pretty much agree with your comment. However "Islamo-Fascist" is a meaningless term invented by neocons in a pathetically transparent attempt to link the current conflicts to World War II. Use of "Islamo-Fascist" ought to be considered covered by Godwin's law.
Wow, local govt "commonly" banning books from their local library? sounds like your country is more restrictive than the UK. Eeek, good luck over there guys, sounds like you need to chase some of that proverbial freedom for yourselves! Question to library people - how common are book bans for libraries in local government in the UK? or nationally? really interested to know.
I used to work in a UK library, we were restricted in what we could stock because we only had a limited budget (obviously) but we had a pretty decent interlibrary loan system which could theoretically turn up anything in the world if a library was connected to the system, which meant most of the western world for all intents and purposes, and if the person was prepared to wait while systems stepped through requests to the various levels (latest Harry Potter: sure, just a waiting list because everybody wants it and we can only afford 20 copies; highly expensive science report on fisheries in Iceland: give us a few months while we try our national library then get our national library to talk to Iceland's national library...) Some controversial stuff wasn't kept on the shelves, as far as I remember because lunatics would keep stealing such books (because they loved or hated the stuff) - prime example being Mein Kampf by Hitler. But the books were in stock and if somebody requested it we'd get it to them.
"I don't want to go on a rant, here, but America's foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first battle of Antietam. I mean when a neo-conservative defenestrates it's like Raskolnikov filibuster deoxymonohydroxinate..."
"What the hell does rant mean?"
Whatever man, I spelled it write!
Well, some of his books do contain some sex. More importantly though, a lot of that horror stuff that he write contain references to things that are downright unholy. The Dark Tower series went on for thousands of pages about an alternate pseudo-religion in which the characters allowed their lives to be steered by ka. It all sounds pretty blasphemous to me.
I went to the Google page and clicked on the "To Kill a Mockingbird" link to find that book at my local library.
What I got was a list of about 75 books with "To Kill a Mockingbird" in the title, including many screenplays, references, notes, etc. I think there are a lot of duplicates, too, with minor differences in the book's meta data. It was extremely difficult to distinguish which one is the "real" book.
After trying five or six links that looked like it might be the right one, I gave up.
-David
I read this book in high school, and I came away from it with a new appreciation for the horrors of racism and injustice. How the hell is it degrading? By showing just how fucked-up the law was in regards to nonwhites?
Some black parents in my school district recently tried to have Mockingbird removed from the curiculum (but not from the library) and my first reaction was similar to yours. The media reports made it sound like their whole objection was that the book uses The 'N' Word and discussing it in class was offensive to them. When I went to the meeting however, I quickly discovered the issue was more complex. The main problem is that mostly white teachers choose this 46-year-old book by a white author to teach students about racism. 46 years ago, a novel by a white author was about the only way such a message could reach a wide audience, but in 2006 there have got to be better ways. Any black author knows far more about racism than Harper Lee (despite Mr. Lee's best intentions), and it's time for the curiculum to reflect that.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
I only know she's underage. And I only know that because it's the whole point of the book.
http://www.icarusindie.com/Literature/Library/
. html
It's not overtly advertised as such but my collection started by looking up books that were banned at some time and then finding them on the gutenburg project and hosting them myself. I also have some books that I just thought were interesting and worth having.
UPenn has been directly some traffic my way from their banned book site here
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books
Maybe this is Google's feeble attempt at making up for suppressing speech elsewhere in the world.
Work Safe Porn
Carrie and The Dead Zone both made an American Library Assoc list (props to an earlier poster for finding the list) of the 100 most frequently banned books in the US between 1990 and 2000.
"Best author" is quite a commendation. Stephen King will never win the Nobel Prize for literature or anything remotely approaching that, but hey, if being the best author has any correlation at all to the number of film adaptations that came up far short of the book while earning the author gadzillions and not sullying future literary sales, I'll gladly concede the point. The man's career is stronger than ammonia.
You've hit upon the key flaw in Google's championing of liberty in the face of book banners/burners. Yes, once again its the shrill call of "pedophile", summoning all decent people the world over to stamp their boots on deserving human faces over and over.
Google has now committed an "indefensible" action, thus siding themselves with "inhuman hordes of evil". Expect this book and any like it to be dragged out and thumped repeatedly in condemnation the next time Google crosses the powers that be.
May the Maths Be with you!
Islam in it's normal state - as practiced by the vast majority of Muslims the world over - is generally very tolerant. Like Christianity, it's the extreemist nutjobs that cloak their cause with their religion that cause all the trouble.
Her full name is Nelle Harper Lee, and she's been a woman all her life.
For a real banned book:
m
i ornate_di_Sodoma
One that's not even in Project Gutenburg.
One that google won't even show you if you use moderate safesearch.
One that has been banned in more countries than any other.
120 days of Sodom, by Marquis de Sade
Warning: NSFW
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_120_Days_of_Sodo
Quite possibly the most fucked up thing ever written.
Or turned into a movie for that matter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sal%C3%B2_o_le_120_g
People ban stuff for the silliest reasons. Half of those books were banned merely because of racism or one or two possibly offensive subjects.
This is a true banned book. If you are not offended by it, you are quite possibly a horrible human being.
Even saying that, I think you should read it. It puts perspective on things.
Stephen King only writes horror stories, made to scare, to play with angst and fears and to instill a sense of insecurity. Why would that be banned in today's USA?
Yeah, you would think that if any horror / suspense / thriller type author would be a candidate for banning, it would be Dean Koontz. Why? Because the
many of his books present a very libertarian themed message, where the "bad guy" is the Government or a Corporation, and the "good guys" have to rely on themselves, their wits, ability, courage - and occasionally - guns, to fend off some evil and preserve their freedom Strangely enough, I started reading (and liked) Koontz' works far before I came to call myself a libertarian. In retrospect, I wonder how much Koontz' works actually influenced me in that direction?
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
How about a site listing the pages Google participates in being censored from Google.cn, in China?
Mein Kampf is banned in Germany. The owners of the copyright to Mein Kampf, the Barvarian state of Germany, try to oppose the publication and distribution of the book abroad, but with limited success. German libraries tend to carry heavily biased commentaries of the book.
In France and Hollond, it's illegal to sell the book, but not illegal to own the book. In the majority of European countries, mostly those that didn't feel the full force of the Nazi regime in World War 2, the book is legal to own and trade. This includes the United Kingdom. Furthermore, in Palestine, Mein Kampf hit number 6 on the bestseller's list.
"The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One stands for danger; the other for opportunity
But please don't use MS Word or something like that in the process. When things are going to be digitized, it should stay readable for many years no matter which hardware platform or software is used.
By using formats like DocBook or TEI much future work is saved when the book shall be converted to the current fashion of dataformats.
Some of these like The Jungle have always been available on Project Gutenberg. Many of them are also available for free offline at your local public library. Said institutions are often the places that spend the most effort fighting against banned books and doing so on total budgets smaller than Google's petty cash.
That's not to knowck what Google is doing. They are doing a good service here but let's not neglect the people who fight the fight every day of the week not just once a year.
Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds
Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds
Literature Suppressed on Political Grounds
The Editorial Review from the Library Journal (on the Amazon.com site)
Asimov is a lightweight??? Man, you need to read some of his books before talking, seriously...
Not to mention the "Demolicans"... Demolicans...Demo lican... Demo licking? hrmmm...
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Eh, in a few years, Google might stop agreeing to censor itself, and then they can't afford to ban Google entirely. Too many people will notice it...
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Liberals like to read books that have been banned somewhere, while conservatives like to form censorship committees and read them in a group setting.
I am officially gone from
Um, don't look now, but your accusation doesn't quite hold. The destruction has been attributed to many forces, without conclusive evidence. Clearly, many barbaric hordes raped the Roman Empire, and there are a handful of events when that library may have been destroyed. Only the last one of the likely ones is by a religious horde, and it isn't Christian -- it's Muslim. It's also thought it may have been destroyed in 48 BC. Bee See .. as in, Before Christ. If that one happens to be true, then the Christians who didn't exist until decades later must be a powerful bunch indeed!
The destruction of the Library of Alexandria was a tragedy for all humanity. Please, don't take away from that fact by blaming the party most convenient to you.
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
I tried reading the book once, just to see what all the fuss was about. It was written in such a boring and awful style that I didn't get beyond the first few pages. I find it hard to understand how it got banned, because I don't believe that anyone could possibly have forced themselves to read it.
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
Will there be a "The Trouble with Islam" day, or a "Where were you on 9/11" day?
Not a chance.
Google's a collection of moneygrubbers happy to use US protections to make a global fortune. EVIL pricks that they are.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
No, it's the literary equivalent of a gateway drug. If exposed to Worms in a Mouth, the student will inevitably progress to trying Snakes on a Plane.
At least Google Images brings it up with the search "Where's Waldo"
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Microsoft BOB for Dummies! I don't see it anywhere on the list?
load "$",8,1
I don't know where to stand on this issue despite having studied it, but couldn't copyright itself be considered a form of censorship? If the US Constitution didn't have a clause specifically authorizing the creation of Patent & Copyright Offices, then a law forbidding publication of certain books by anyone but the owner of a magic "C" would violate the First Amendment, wouldn't it?
And copyright has been used in attempts at true censorship, as with Diebold's apparent attempt to suppress embarassing memos regarding flaws in its voting machines.
Revive the Constitution.
by Karl Marx... I didn't see it wasn't it banned during the Cold War?
Yummy.
A way for people to get access to books that people have tried to ban? I'm all for it. Mind you, there's probably going to be some dipshit corporation out there who sues Google over this.
Patrolling ftw
For all the talk about banned books and such, I don't see my local library promoting this piece of work.
.... it is good that you hide your literary incompetence behind an AC comment.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Witch hunts are never right Mister, even if you catch only witches.
There is a thing called due process and rule of law.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Check the population of Indonesia.
Think about how many Indonesian terrorists there are (not many).
STFU.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There you go old chap.
Sorry to rain in your little parade.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That's the first constructive idea I've seen in this discussion.
(It occurs to me that such a list needn't be compiled/published by Google itself).
Oh, come on! You should have at least gotten a +1 Funny for that.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Not quite the same. They cancelled his speaking engagement. I guess we can say that's a form of censorship, if it's defined broadly, but it's more a denial of venue. It's somebody saying, "I'm not going to let you use my pulpit."
I would argue that their action is justified, since what they're saying is that they're not going to hand him a captive audience. If he wants to publish his theories, or disseminate them in any other public forum where people can choose whether to listen to him or not, he's more than welcome to.
The public schools are inherently subject to stricter rules on what gets taught there, than what a person can shout from a streetcorner -- as they should be. Unlike a person standing on the street, who can presumably just walk away from the speech they disagree with or find offensive, a student in a public school doesn't have a choice of whether to listen or not. They're required by law to show up (and private and home-schooling aren't alternatives for most people), and therefore get whatever's on the curriculum force-fed to them. Thus, something which might be perfectly acceptable in a library (where you have to take the book off the shelf and read it: an opt-in process) would be totally out of place in a lesson plan or curriculum (where there's no choice, or it is at best an opt-out process to avoid the material).
In other words, what you're allowed to put out into the commons and allow people to choose to read/listen-to, is different than what you're going to be allowed to say in a school, to a totally captive audience. McCalden got taken from him the latter, but not the former.
Now, if you want to see some real censorship, look at what happened to the Holocaust "revisionist" in Austria sometime last year -- he went to jail and was basically forced to recant his statements in order to avoid serious (on par with murder, IIRC) prison time. Now, I don't agree with what he was saying in the slightest, but I think it's rather disturbingly hypocritical to use such decidedly fascist tactics to prevent the spread of Nazism.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."