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

1984

[MrQuacker]

Didn't Amazon say that they would no longer remove books remotely?

Not Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this prove you're actually just subsidizing their content delivery system?

You don't actually own it, or anything on it.

What's the open alternative?

[ghostdoc]

I was literally just looking at buying a Kindle for myself for Xmas...and then read this...

I really really don't like the idea of Amazon being able to reach in to my library and burn my books.

So what's the open alternative?

Re:What's the open alternative?

[SuricouRaven]

With the exception of a few publishers that make non-DRMed books available (like Baen)... legally, there is none that I know of. I suggest you get yourself a netbook or tablet, then join the ebook piracy community. It runs on DC++ hubs, mostly.

Heinlein too?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they will also be removing Heinlein books. I think it was _Time Enough for Love_ that had some incest.

Relax everyone!

[nightfire-unique]

A spokesperson from Amazon will surely allay our fears - they aren't taking any of the books about murder, massacres, or war! You'll still be able to get your fill reading about people being beheaded, stabbed, maimed, .. even burned to death!

Honestly, what's all the fuss?

And so it begins (REPEAT)

[SmallFurryCreature]

I just posted this in the "Anonymous cannot take down mega-corp Amazon" story, but it also fits extremely well here. Just add this, the TV/Radio/Newspapers became mega-corps. Now book-publishing might do the same along with the internet. And the mega-corp then decides what does and what does not get published. First they came for the incest writers. Who is next? There used to be small publishers like Olympia Press, funded by daring indivuduals operating on shoe string budgets that dared to publish what nobody else dared to. How can Olympia Press compete with Amazon? Hint: Olympia Press books are (or more likely were as they are often pornograhphic including incest themes) sold on Amazon, the company itself is gone.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1910334&cid=34557794

What we are seeing here has been seen before. If you ever wondered just why TV, radio and the newspapers all seem to be controlled by a handfull of men, then you must realize that this was not always the case. The first newspapers were created by concerned citizens, reasonably well off concernced citizens who could afford to setup a new business but hardly the super rich.

First radio? Amateurs, geeks and nerds of their day who took their hobby of messing about with this new stuff to a new level. Ham radio to the max. Television? Same thing, done from peoples living room. Some dutch broadcasting license holders still got it in their name AVRO (Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep) Veronica started as a pirate station to bring the new music of the age to the airwaves that the by then established AVRO and others didn't play. Or not enough.

But Veronica, the pirate, went commerical and were bought out. Nothing of its original nature remains, it is now a mere name in SBS Broadcasting. A soulless mega-corp were absolutely nothing counts but ad-revenue.

Yet how did this happen? How did we go from amateur and politically motivated Radio, TV and newspapers to the current mass-produced elite controlled bland media?

It is simple. Scale. Veronica tried to go commercial on its own (the dutch broadcasting system is inexplainable but briefly, Veronica became part of the public network by a system where air time is allocated according to the number of subscribers a broadcaster has, there also exist commercial stations that opperate without a license fee support (used to be collected same as for the BBC, now it is part of normal taxes)) and failed. To small to survive this mistake it was bought and split up. A troublesome station, silenced. Veronica ONCE had a rather good news program with one of the few tv-presentors that actually followed up with though questions. Now it is the beavus and butthead station. It ALWAYS was young but with hints of rebellion and some principles, now it is just an MTV light. The young and mindless.

As time moved on, radio stations, newspapers and tv broadcasters were bought up, consolidated with any small operator being unable to afford any stumble without it being preyed upon by richer soulless companies. Meanwhile the costs of starting a new newspaper, a new radio staton a new tv station became higher and higher. Who after all is going to run an add on a local station with no known talent or must-watch-tv when for the same money he can air his add nationwide?

It has lead to the situation that right now a lot of media is controlled by just a few people who have very disturbing connections. Do you really expect Ruper Murdoch to dive into a banking scandal when he is close mated with the bankers? Of course not.

BUT the internet is free... yeah, it used to be... but now, even a widely distrubuted site like Wikileaks can be severely hampered, raising the cost to Wikileaks to remain online. And how are they going to pay for it? Maybe use a small banker with high principles... oh but all the banks consolidated. Maybe use a small ISP with high principles.... oh but all the ISP's consolidated... maybe use a DNS provide

What's up with Amazon lately?

[Jugalator]

First taking down hosting for Wikileaks despite not being charged with anything just because they feel like it'd be fun, and then this, also just because they feel like doing it. Like Wikileaks, the books are again not illegal, and I suspect many readers thought we were over book burning. This is even worse - taking the books out of the hand of their readers having purchased them, and *then* burning them. It's getting pretty hard here to not fall into that Godwin hole.

Was Amazon seeing a lot of bad press over openly offering books to read, or what?

I don't buy it

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

After the 1984 incident, Amazon was sued by a customer and settled for $150,000. They also agreed not to remove books from customer's devices - not just in a wishy-washy statement but in their court settlement:

For copies of Works purchased pursuant to TOS granting "the non-exclusive right to
keep a permanent copy" of each purchased Work and to "view, use and display [such Works] an
unlimited number of times, solely on the [Devices] . . . and solely for [the purchasers'] personal,
non-commercial use," Amazon will not remotely delete or modify such Works from Devices
purchased and being used in the United States unless (a) the user consents to such deletion or
modification; (b) the user requests a refund for the Work or otherwise fails to pay for the Work
(e.g., if a credit or debit card issuer declines to remit payment); (c) a judicial or regulatory order
requires such deletion or modification; or (d) deletion or modification is reasonably necessary to
protect the consumer or the operation of a Device or network through which the Device
communicates (e.g., to remove harmful code embedded within a copy of a Work downloaded to
a Device). This paragraph does not apply to (a) applications (whether developed or offered by
Amazon or by third parties), software or other code; (b) transient content such as blogs; or (c)
content that the publisher intends to be updated and replaced with newer content as newer
content becomes available. With respect to newspaper and magazine subscriptions, nothing in
this paragraph prohibits the current operational practice pursuant to which older issues are
automatically deleted from the Device to make room for newer issues, absent affirmative action
by the Device user to save older issues.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/amazon20091001.pdf

If Amazon did this again, then they may be in for another lawsuit. I can believe that they removed the books from their service. But it doesn't make sense for them to pull the books from devices. Until we see more evidence than a couple of random unnamed sources in a blog post, I don't buy it.

Fahrenheit 451

[Tuqui]

A step to "Fahrenheit 451". I already deleted my Amazon account.

Amazon vs. the society

[Daedalon]

This kind of move is not only against the freedom of press and speech. It's also against the society by increasing sexual abuse, especially of children. See article Porn: Good for us? and its references (emphasis added).

To examine the effect this widespread use of porn may be having on society, researchers have often exposed people to porn and measured some variable such as changes in attitude or predicted hypothetical behaviors, interviewed sex offenders about their experience with pornography, and interviewed victims of sex abuse to evaluate if pornography was involved in the assault. Surprisingly few studies have linked the availability of porn in any society with antisocial behaviors or sex crimes. Among those studies none have found a causal relationship and very few have even found one positive correlation.

Despite the widespread and increasing availability of sexually explicit materials, according to national FBI Department of Justice statistics, the incidence of rape declined markedly from 1975 to 1995. This was particularly seen in the age categories 20–24 and 25–34, the people most likely to use the Internet. The best known of these national studies are those of Berl Kutchinsky, who studied Denmark, Sweden, West Germany, and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. He showed that for the years from approximately 1964 to 1984, as the amount of pornography increasingly became available, the rate of rapes in these countries either decreased or remained relatively level. Later research has shown parallel findings in every other country examined, including Japan, Croatia, China, Poland, Finland, and the Czech Republic. In the United States there has been a consistent decline in rape over the last 2 decades, and in those countries that allowed for the possession of child pornography, child sex abuse has declined . Significantly, no community in the United States has ever voted to ban adult access to sexually explicit material. The only feature of a community standard that holds is an intolerance for materials in which minors are involved as participants or consumers.

In terms of the use of pornography by sex offenders, the police sometimes suggest that a high percentage of sex offenders are found to have used pornography. This is meaningless, since most men have at some time used pornography. Looking closer, Michael Goldstein and Harold Kant found that rapists were more likely than nonrapists in the prison population to have been punished for looking at pornography while a youngster, while other research has shown that incarcerated nonrapists had seen more pornography, and seen it at an earlier age, than rapists. What does correlate highly with sex offense is a strict, repressive religious upbringing.

Repressive, religious upbringing is exactly what porn bans are.

Re:What about murder?

[Pharmboy]

Technically, more people wanted gore, but bush was forced on them by the Supremes.