Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles

ctmurray writes "The independent writers who publish on Amazon report that erotica books containing incest are being taken down with no explanation by Amazon, and removed from the Kindles of purchasers of the books. Author Selena Kitt writes: 'I want to be clear that while the subject of incest may not appeal to some, there is no underage contact in any of my work, and I make that either explicitly clear in all my stories or I state it up front in the book's disclaimer. I don't condone or support actual incest, just as someone who writes mysteries about serial killers wouldn't condone killing. What I write is fiction.' Kindle's own TV ad features a book with a story line of sex between a 19-year-old and his stepmother, defined in some states as incest (Sleepwalking by Amy Bloom)."

Comments

Shakespeare?

[nospam007]

I hope they also remove Romeo and Juliet, since they had sex while Juliet was 14, a clear case of kiddie porn.

Re:Shakespeare?

[rolfwind]

I hope they also remove Romeo and Juliet, since they had sex while Juliet was 14, a clear case of kiddie porn.

Exactly. I also hate that the author explaining himself in the way he does - to me that's validating the line of questioning valid. Especially when she says there is no underage incest in her books.

Is "How to Train Your Dragon" then bad because there is underage violence? Or is that good because it was shown in all the theaters? I don't understand.

Fanfiction.net went this way long ago, with authors having to rate their stories using MPAA guidelines. Yes Virginia, they think images on the screen translate into words for purposes of ratings, and had to put an R rating if there was drug use!

WTF is fiction for if not exploring things that can't or shouldn't be explored in real life? Hell, why is a story that explores incest "bad" but when a newspaper reports it, it's okay to let even a 5 year old read? Why can action news report on Fritzl in the afternoon but all those type of storyline wait until after 9 pm?

Sodom and Gomorrah anyone? Why is the bible a good book? Double standards are littering the landscape, and in each and every instance, it comes PC police with too much time on their hands.

Personally, I would never buy this device that deigns to control my library. It's on there, you don't touch it. I don't care if the company thinks it's malware, copyright infringed, or for the children - delivery of books should be ONE WAY. Amazon should no more take digital books away than breaking into houses and stealing physical copies.

Stallman would be laughing.

[siddesu]

Except it is so sad, there's nothing to laugh about.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

And this is why e-books won't replace paper.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Not until this kind of crap stops being possible. I don't just mean "Amazon stops pulling Kindle books that people have already purchased and promises not to do it again," I mean when they can't -- i.e. when e-books can actually be purchased, in a non-DRM, non-phone-home format that the people who buy them actually own.

Yes, I know there are people selling plain PDFs, and good for them. But Amazon is such a dominant force in the market that they're going to have to take the lead, or be replaced at the top spot. I'm not optimistic -- this is going to drag on for years, maybe decades, and the potential of the e-book market will go largely unfulfilled in the meantime.

Re:And this is why e-books won't replace paper.

[Osty]

Kindle DRM has been broken for some time now. It's trivial to liberate your books. If you purchase anything from Amazon and don't liberate it, you have only yourself to blame when they kill-bit your book.

So long as ebooks are sold at paper prices, they should be treated like paper books. You own them. You can loan them to other people, sell them to a used bookstore, etc. Some of that doesn't necessarily translate well to the digital world (what does it mean to sell a used ebook?), but the point is that if you're going to have to pay $10 or $12 (or even $20, since ebook prices are based off of the lowest-priced paper book and if only a hardcover is available you'll get a ridiculous ebook price) for an ebook it should be yours to keep. Amazon can't reach out and destroy a paper book you bought from them, and so they should not be allowed to do the same to an electronic book. For now, the only way to do this is to liberate your books after purchase. If Amazon (and other ebook sellers) want to treat ebook purchases as rentals, the prices should reflect that.

Re:What's the open alternative?

[Barny]

Well, and keep this hush hush its new tech, there's these things called books, they are an analogue hard-copy format, the best part of them is, there is no link up to the cloud and no company has the rights to remotely disable your copy.

They
Just
Work

I hope they removed The Holy Bible too

[fishexe]

I sure hope they removed The Holy Bible, too. Lot has sex with both of his daughters, it's right there in Genesis. And Lot's even the hero of the story, the one righteous man allowed to escape Sodom. It would be a real shame if they applied a double standard.

What about murder?

[captainpanic]

Hell, if incest is bad... what about murder?
I think they should take down all books with murder, violence, incest, fraud, drug offenses, adultery, etc.

In fact, why sell fiction books? It's all blasphemy anyway. We should devote our lives to studying the state-propaganda. If that's good enough for the state, it is good enough for us.

Re:Yay for Freedom of the Press...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

My god man, can you imagine what a Constitution written in this politically-correct, image-driven, vagina-babble, lawyer-laden, market-speak, victim-mentality, feel-good, safety-at-all-costs, focus-on-the-nonessential, yada-yada-yada day and age would look like? Shit, the preamble would run 200 pages, and wouldn't say a damn thing.

That said, I still say we kill all the lawyers and MBAs.

Re:1984

[fyngyrz]

Not to worry. While they may be removing anything that hints at fucking your siblings, in the prcess, they're assuring they can still fuck you.