Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Censorship Expands
Nom du Keyboard writes "Recently word leaked out about Amazon removing titles containing fictional incest. Surprisingly that ban didn't extend to the 10 titles of Science Fiction Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein that incorporate various themes of incest and pedophilia. Now, it seems that the censorship is expanding to m/m gay fiction if it contains the magic word 'rape' in the title. Just how far is this going to be allowed to proceed in relative silence, and who is pushing these sudden decisions on Amazon's part?"
If they think books with any one of these things in them are "bad", just wait until they find out about that "bible" thing that contains pretty much *everything*.
There isn't really much to discuss about this story, so how about we just take potshots at the summary?
Grand master? How about Grand Blowhard? Or Grand Fascist?
Also: who cares? If you don't like it, don't shop there.
It's their choice as to what they sell. It is also not censorship. They are a private company and are free to sell whatever legal products they wish, or not sell them as the case may be. The summary makes it sound like Amazon is the only place one can buy a book.
All they'll do is open the door for alternative online book sale sites catering to specific tastes.
This is exactly why libraries shouldn't die right here. A company is not beholden to freedom of speech issues the same way an institution like a library is.
I really wish the library had a online book store like Amazon.
crazy dynamite monkey
At what temperature does a kindle burn?
First off, it's their store, and it should be their decision to sell or not sell any particular book.
Secondly, if they are indeed pulling titles off people's Kindles like last time, I say: "Go Amazon, and by all means extend the scope of your ban". All the sooner, people will wake up to the fact that they don't really "own" that DRM-ridden content after all.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4861353319
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B003X0XDZI
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B000GCGM3Q/
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0007TFACM/
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0046X7RJ4/
and many other charming titles....
Religious extremists aren't limited to the muslim world, it just takes other forms and actions and a lot of the effects seen in the US of that is that anything related to sex is banned but it's OK to sell weapons, show how to abuse someone (as long as it isn't sexually) and glorify war.
So I'm just waiting for the Heinlein books to disappear too along with any books critical of religions - especially the books critical of christianity and the scientology movement.
In the final stages even books related to science will disappear and only creationism books will be permitted to remain.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I'm pretty sure it's not the atheists...
No sig today...
Seriously.. if they don't want to sell something they don't have to sell it.
We don't 'make' stores carry product do we?
If they don't sell the product you want then buy it from someone that does!
Did you know that "rape" means "grate" in french? Maybe someone should release some "m/m gay fiction" (quick aside, isn't that kind of redundant?) entitled "il râpe le fromage".
Two jaded lovers, finding happiness in their shared interest: making nachos.
He, heh, food for thought. See what I did there?
It seems that not even Slashdot is safe from censorship.
Comments seems to dissapear, and a test gives the message "This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...".
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I might want to buy an ebook fairly soon. Can anybody recommend a good ebook reader where this kind of crap isn't possible?
I'd like: no DRM, standard USB connector, possibility of uploading anything I want from USB, and open source firmware.
As Amazon is getting more and more money from the GOV, they don't really need "normal customers".
The question would then be, why doing it this way? Just shutdown everything and leave the cloud computing thing.
A fairly large part of Amazon's business practice, aside from efficient JIT inventory/shipping, is customer profiling and recommendation(an extension of the classic retail upsell, only every recommendation isn't for a magazine or service plan, and beaten over your head!). Given their fair expertise in this area, and generally commanding lead in online bookselling, it seems unlikely that this is a case of "poor, poor, Amazon, haunted by the lawsuits of angry parents whose offspring's attempt to search for sparkle-ponies dumped them into the M/M Rape BDSM section". Surely they can trivially keep team pathologically sensitive from finding anything they don't search for, and wave the free speech flag to cover the rest.
Thus, one is inclined to suspect that(since books about incest, rape, or whatever are presumably sold for a profit just like any other book) somebody inside or outside the company is being pushy for reasons ideological rather than financial, and that they are being surprisingly quiet about it(unlike say, the tremulous morons at the Parent's Television Council, who are explicitly ideological; but ontologically incapable of being quiet). Who exactly that might be is rather puzzling...
Will they be removing the Christian Bible as well for ITS fictional incest? I mean, if you want to talk about books that harm kids minds, the bible is right up there with the Koran and Torah as the most harmful books out there.
Monstar L
Which contains stories of rape and incest.
Or is that not considered fictional?
The best known example from there is the story of Lot, his stupid wife who turned into salt by looking back on the devastation, and his daughters who got him drunk and had sex with him to bring him male heirs.
Amazon has made a good call here by protecting its brand and not associating itself with illegal and immoral activities like pedophilia.
And after expunging all un-Germ^H^H^H^HAmerican art from society we can move on to getting rid of those people who we find to be untermensch.
Thank you Amazon for getting the ball rolling :-)
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
Signed,
Rape Fuckmysister
Butthole, MS
I wouldn't be surprised if these acts of censorship are not related to the close connections of Amazon and the Church of Scientology.
Titles on the subject of gay rape disappear from Amazon and we're supposed to be concerned. WTF is wrong with you?
This is not censorship. It's a simple issue of a retailer not wanting its image stained by garbage.
It's both their right and responsibility to see to this kind of stuff.
The answer should be: "until it causes a lot of people to stop buying from Amazon." But I have a feeling you really meant, "Why won't the government step in and force Amazon to sell smut?"
I think the knee-jerk reaction here is that this is some sort of censorship conspiracy, when in reality it is probably Amazon protecting its bottom-line and reacting to what it thinks its customers expect.
Well, actually first they came for George Orwell.
And lots of people spoke up, so they promised not to do it again.
I guess this time they decided to pick on an easier target.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And I was thinking about getting a kindle...
Amazon is a business, and has made a business decision to not sell certain items. They're doing nothing to prevent you from buying those items elsewhere. That's not censorship.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
As much as I hate Amazon for a variety of reasons (the price of their ebooks and the DRM they come encumbered with, their pulling books you've bought out of your Kindle without asking permission, or the bland stupid political correctness they're apparently trying to enforce), there's something important to remember here: they are a private enterprise, and they have the right to chose what they sell. They are not a private library with a duty to provide for the widest possible audience.
Also, they are not engaging in censorship, inasmuch as they don't have a complete monopoly over the book distribution industry. You (still) can vote with your wallet and buy from somebody else, although at the rate they're growing, how long you'll be able to do that is a matter of serious debate.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
They (Amazon) are not a government entity are entitled to sell what they wish. If someone wants these books to get to the public, they should setup their own store front. DNRTFA
This isn't censorship, it's a corporate policy decision. Big difference.
This is them determining what items they want in their catalogue.
They have no requirement to put everything that exists in there.
$0.02 (CDN)
I've been attempting to boycott Amazon for stuff like this but I simply can't help myself over how convenient it's become not to have to spend several hours a week shopping. I would seriously like to have input into their decisions and would like alternatives to use that are better than Amazon in terms on not censoring and offering such a wide selection of stuff available for free delivery.
It contains incest stories as well.
Reply to That ||
Honestly, it is scary, how most of the people would not react to this in any way.
Vote with your dollar my ass. Mine is one dollar in 3 billion others. =7
Don't worry, be happy!
YRO? What about Amazon's right to sell what they want?
They aren't censoring anything. If you can't buy it there i'm sure someone will sell it. That's not the definition of censorship.
Grocery supermarkets don't sell cars. Are they trying to censor the car market?
Will the Bible be next? It contains stories of incest.
Reply to That ||
I know one of the people who was on Amazon's ass to take down those books. Their "reasoning" was that it "promotes" the rape of children and that the victims of incest and pedophilia demanded that the books be taken down because it will cause it to happen to others. Saying that it's just a book just infuriated her even more - she was unable or unwilling to understand that a book doesn't lead to actions.
Typical of America. We cater to the "victims" and the people who are offended.
Here's what needs to be done. Point out that the Bible - the Holy Bible - has incest, daughters fucking their fathers, and the Song of Songs - pornography. Ban a book about incest? Well, the Bible has to go because now, a pervert can say, "Well, the BIBLE says that daughters can fuck their fathers so that gives me the right to do it - It's GOD'S command!"
While I would prefer that Amazon carry a full range of titles encompassing all speech, they are a company, not the government. They are free to carry or not carry whatever titles they choose. While I see no upside to them in not offering a full range, it is their prerogative to select their own wares.
The alternative is that we would force retailers to carry products that they do not wish to carry, which is not something that I see happening in a sane world.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
they start censoring things people can defend without sounding like perverts. People generally don't want to be known for defending these things, it hurts their chances of achieving high positions.
I can just imagine how the defenders would be described in the news - defenders of (fictional) incest and gay rapists. They won't mention the fictional part, of course.
"Cooking with Rapeseed oil"
Not much to discuss, so I will make a trip to the local bookstore.
Amazon isn't required to sell ALL books. If they don't want to sell porno, they don't have to. Same goes for any material, really.
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
Sorry, but I don't really care. It's their store, and they sell what they want to sell.
Sorry for redundancy. /. kept loading this page as having zero comments when I posted, then a second later it said 37 comments, so naturally I hadn't read any.
Reply to That ||
If you don't like it, you are free to open your own multi-billion dollar company on the internet.
Just make sure you don't hit any of their patents.
I'm no fan of censorship, but Amazon.com is a private company capable of making there own business decisions whether or not I agree with them. It's not as if these books are not available in other places, perhaps a local business that you could feel good about supporting. Calling a company's decision to stop selling a product censorship is at best an over reaction in my view. Amazon must feel that they will sell more books if they stop selling certain others. Otherwise the leadership at Amazon is making these decisions based on personal or religious views and if that is the case then I wouldn't recommend buying any Amazon stock in the near future.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
amazon is a private corporation. they are a private entity. they are allowed to do whatever they wish to do with their property. they may choose to serve whomever they want and refuse whomever they want.
even if they monopolize their field to a great extent alone, or with a few other 'competitors', and therefore their choices would basically mean what citizens will be able to do and what they can not, in that field of life, its still their right, because, well, they are 'private', its 'their' property and they are free to do whatever they wish with it. actually, any corporation has those rights, even if they are as big as a fscking country or biger.
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0718-worlds_largest.html
or, in other words, its naivete, and stupidity.
Read radical news here
A couple of generations ago, you needed a bonfire in the middle of the street to get rid of books full of unpopular ideas.
Today, that can be accomplished very quietly with a few inode updates.
The Internet and DRMed information is like Alexandria written on gunpowder-impregnated flash paper.
Information is easily linked and too rarely duplicated. Unplug a server, and it goes away.
We can stand around and shrug when some paedo gets his dirty book pulled from his tablet.
Nobody will be there - or care - when it's our turn.
Mark my words.
-Ouija- poke 53280,11:poke 53281,12
Last time I checked Amazon was a company that can choose to sell what they want to sell. They can even choose to not sell things they used to sell, especially if they've hired new people who might be opposed to such books.
Or, the most likely explanation is that the Chinese government is pressuring the Saudi Arabian government, which is pressuring the U.S. government to pressure Amazon to not sell those books.
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0718-worlds_largest.html
corporations today are bigger than governments. until fools like you wake up to this fact and become aware that a corporation can govern your life much more than a government can, we will have to take all this shit.
no. you dont have choice. economies of scale in capitalism do not allow choice. dont fool yourself.
Read radical news here
shhh...don't let amazon know.
They have basically spent the last 50 years changing the world to implement the extremely stringent and harshly punishable censorship of "racist" material on pretty much EVERY WEBSITE IN EXISTENCE.
And now they seem to care about "censorship", as some kind of principle?
The mind boggles.
Sure, it's not the library, but I don't have to purchase anything from Amazon.com if I don't want to.
Mr. Bezos may believe that he can make more money by kowtowing to special interests, but he won't get another cent from me if he unreasonably censors Amazon.com's products.
I used to purchase items from Amazon.com because of the breadth of material available in one "store". Knowing that they are intentionally censoring products makes me really want to support the smaller stores.
Did they censor V.C. Andrews "Flowers in the Attic" Series. That entire series was about incest.
I hope they try to censor William Shakespeare's "The Rape of Lucrece." I would love to hear that explanation.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/amazon-removes-pedophilia-book-store/story?id=12119035
that was november 11. to amazon's credit, it initially defended the selling of this book. but it caved under pressure and bad publicity, and now the internal politics of amazon seems to have shifted course, and amazon has proactively started cutting other books that amazon doesn't want to be associated with, for whatever reason. it's a sea change. before october 28, amazon's policy seemed to have been "publish whatever". now, it's "publish whatever doesn't make amazon a target for bad pr"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is an interesting (if not really new) phenomenon that seems to be on the rise.
The threat of censorship in liberal democracies isn't as much from governments as it is from corporations which have a monopoly on their market. In addition to Amazon, look to Apple, Google, Walmart, Comcast, Facebook and... I'm sure y'all can think of some others. These companies have a kind of power we haven't seen since the days when there were only three TV networks. Probably even more.
The one really, really bright star in all of this? I'd say: Wikipedia. It can be manipulated by these megacorps to some extent, but such manipulations usually can be rectified by singular individuals.
Well, that is until net neutrality goes away and then perhaps opens the door for traffic shaping... Then perhaps Comcast, bizarrely, will bring on the new totalitarianism.
n/t
its the mormans
Amazon is a private company. If you don't like it, shop somewhere else for your fictional incest and homosexual rape books.
If they're banning incest and gay rape fiction could it be actually a serious proposition that someone who didn't like the taste of daddy's cock has gotten themselves into a position of power over there?
It isn't censorship, it is a store owner deciding what things he/she wants to sell in their store. If I owned a store and had a magazine and book rack, you bet I'd be picky about what I put on the shelves. No censoring involved, just applying my standards of taste to what I, as a store owner, decide to display and sell in my store.
If Amazon wants to be choosy about what they sell, good for them. They shouldn't be forced to sell stuff that they're not comfortable with.
Now if it was the GOVT pulling it from the store, then yea it would be censoring. But it isn't. There is no constitutional right for a smut author to have their crappy book with a crappy title sold by any particular company... It is a marketplace and the same rules apply to books as do to any other item the store owner decides doesn't fit the store standards or image.
WTG Amazon for doing this.
...Guess my "Man's Man guide to Rape Seed oil cooking" won't get published under Amazons new rules...
It would have made me a fortune....
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Probably been said a million times before, but I'll have another go at it. Amazon is a private platform, and if the subject matter in question irks the management or board, they are well within their rights to not sell related product. It's not censorship.
Ergo, the authors of said subject matter are perfectly free to build their own sites. And anyone shopping for that kind of stuff.... I don't think we really care where you go. Just get lost, thanks.
Huh?
Does anyone else hear the sound of straw moving?
I personally think all the talk about censorship when referring to a private company is pie in the sky talk anyway. It is all about profit. When they learned that a lot of business was walking out the door because people did not want to support that crap, they pulled it. It is simple as that. Anyone trying to couple ideals like censorship with business will never understand these types of decisions.
I have a Kindle. I purchase books from Amazon, paper and e. However, I find other books from other sources. I'm leary of Amazon reaching into my Kindle to remove books I've purchased, so I regularly crack the AZW and convert them to MOBI. Calibre is one of the best tools for managing this. Yes, I have found digital copies of every Heinlein book I've ever owned. What is Amazon going to do about "Lord Foul's Bane"?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
This opens up a market for a web company selling banned books for the kindle.
Amazon certainly has the right to sell whatever they want; but if they're going to target their inventory that way, they shouldn't hold themselves out as a general-interest bookstore. In fact, they enjoy the benefits of being considered the DEFINITION of a book store, when that's apparently becoming less true. Where I live, there are two local Christian bookstores, one new and one used. The latter just removed all science fiction titles from their shelves, presumably because management disagrees with the content. That's fine; I knew their bent when I went in there, and now know not to return. The danger with such a definitive seller as Amazon dropping an entire class of titles is it implies those titles do not exist. THAT I consider a form of censorship.
Imagine poor slashdottie gets laid twice in a row, and twice "he was not aware of it"! What a sad fate.
I think the right question would be why they accepted them in the first place, and why the change now?
Particularly "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" and has confused them with the corporate policy manual.
It's only a matter of time before "Catcher in the Rye" is banned from Kindles -- after all, only serial killers/terrorists read that.
I can't wait until they expand the ban to "anything" the Christian Taliban finds objectionable.... which is pretty much everything. I predict mass kindle burnings as people rebel against it all. Which is bad news for Apple as well, as their closed system pretty much is following Amazon's model of banning anything they don't like.
Ironically, this will be good news for open-source-based tablets with real usb ports and no "app store" that limits what you can and can't load into your tablet.
Either that, or America isn't what it claims to be, and everyone is perfectly happy being oppressed. Hurrah for Big Brother, we love you! I'm moving elsewhere where there really *is* freedom, like, Chad.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Funny that it's rejected as a "straw man" to point out that when a private organisation bans depictions of and discussions containing racism it is considered the pinnacle of greatness and humanity, while when it removes any other material it is horrifying.
Is it a surprise to you that I consider you the lowest form of deceptiveness and evil?
Censorship seems to have become a bad word. Censorship can be good or bad. We use Netflix parental controls to 'censor' what our children might be exposed to ... intentionally or inadvertently. I (amongst others), see that as sound parenting practice, others may not. You could argue whether or not amazon removing a product is even 'censorship'. To some it is good, to some it is bad. If your tax money were running Amazon, then you might have a real complaint. As it is, vote with your feet and/or your money.
If you really have the need for books about incest and pedophilia, go buy them from whomever sells them. If you want Amazon ( or Borders or your library or whomever) to carry them, request it from them. I don't, so I'm fine with this [apparently evil] form of censorship.
Maybe their method for review/censor is over-simplistic or just plain inconsistent. But their choice of what they sell is just that ... their choice. As is your choice yours on where and what to buy.
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
No, it isn't banned. We the state don't ban anything. You just won't be doing business in this town.
I much rather have state censorship. The state can be voted out. Amazon can not.
So, you are free to publish a book that upsets the powers that be, you just won't be finding a publisher or bookstore to sell it. But freedom is ensured as long as you don't try to exercise it.
This guy would also defend "No jews allowed" or "Whites only" on private businesses. The dream he chases? I want none of it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Most of your discussions are missing the big picture, I think. Amazon is a private company and can sell what they want - as a consumer, I have options to procure my erotic incest fiction elsewhere, or just boycott Amazon altogether. *However*, what should be particularly disturbing is that Amazon removed ALREADY-PAID-FOR content from peoples' archives, and refused to provide refunds! How is that in the least excusable? Where is the defense of consumer rights? How is that not outright theft? Amazon should be summarily brought to court. As one previous poster noted, this type of behavior, and the de facto government protections enabling it (via DMCA and DRM), in practice means you don't own any of the DRMed stuff. It's being leased, without even any lease terms - they can just take it whenever they want. And they wonder why people want to crack their DRM b.s....
I see a lot of posts pointing out that Amazon is a privately-owned company and free to carry (or not carry) whatever books they like.
This is certainly true.
But this issue is more than just some random retailer deciding not to carry a book they don't like.
Amazon is removing these titles from Kindles. They carried a book, you bought it legally, you owned it, and now Amazon has gone and deleted it. Imagine if you bought a paper book at Barnes & Noble, and they decided to stop carrying it, so they sent somebody around to your house to collect that book and destroy it. This is troubling on a number of levels. It raises plenty of questions about ownership of digital property.
Amazon is also absolutely ginormous. They're one of the (if not the) largest on-line retailers. What they do affects more than just their own business and their own customers. Just like Wal-Mart refusing to carry AO video game titles has basically rendered them non-existant.
I'm not claiming that Amazon does not have the right to do what they did. Nor am I necessarily going to condemn it as a bad thing. But all the folks claiming it isn't a big deal because Amazon is well-within its rights are kind of missing the bigger picture.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
.. we will be longing for a past long gone were authors could write whatever they wanted and not be censored. This is serious, given how large and influential Amazon is. One may or not agree with having a rating system for certain topics, but censoring books based on its title?
>>>It's bad when the government does it, but good when corporations do it, yadda yadda.
NOT what I said.
You got an F in reading comprehension, I bet. It's bad when either of these organizations do it, but the difference is that corporations don't have the power to suck money from my wallet against my will, throw me in jail for years, send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating, or execute me on the electric chair. Only the government holds the monopoly to do that.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Nancy Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr were the first to kiss on national television. The Start Trek episode was the following year.
Alternative lifestyles (al) are fine as long as there is no impact on people who are not interested (pwani). If the gay rights movement (grm) boycotts Amazon it would cause sales to go down. If the ultra conservative right wing movement (ucrwm) boycotts Amazon it would probably cost them more money so it depends on who screams the loudest. I imagine that the pressure is being increased from the right who got involved in expelling the books of the pediophile, so the grm needs to mount a counter offensive as some point in the near future before all that is left to read is Little Women or Tom Sawyer. As in every debate the rumble of the two opposing sides, the grm & the ucrwm will drag along until the pwain get involved and force a decision.
They are not altering any text nor preventing publishing. Amazon is a private retailer and can choose to sell or not sell whatever they want.
...corporations don't have the power to suck money from my wallet against my will, throw me in jail for years, send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating, or execute me on the electric chair. Only the government holds the monopoly to do that.
When the corporations write the laws and fund the politicians to get them enacted, this distinction is meaningless.
If you need examples, just look at some of the 'IP' laws enacted across the globe in the last 20 years or so. In many cases, parts of the legal text are exactly as written by the 'IP owners' lawyers.
Corporations have the power to get governments to do on their behalf all the things they can't do themselves.
You're right. But you're also missing that Amazon, being the biggest player in the industry, has near-monopoly power. And if they are abusing that power to censor material, then they are abusing that monopoly power, which is also illegal (or at least was once illegal in the USA... who knows anymore, since Congress is up to the highest bidder?)
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
>>corporations don't have the power to suck money from my wallet against my will,
Compulsory tax on blank media, passed by the gov't at the behest of corporations
>>throw me in jail for years,
RIAA/MPAA exploiting the laws they paid politicians to write to fine/jail people "guilty" of downloading copyrighted material.
>>send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating,
Foreclosure procedures often include using police to do the dirty work of corrupt banking establishments.
>>or execute me on the electric chair
Not yet, but they can certainly have you "silenced" or "suicided" as it were.
So, while the force is directly applied by government entities, if the government is just another branch of the corporations (it's a shared resource they like to use/abuse), then the corporations are the ones actually exercising that force, even if there's a badge or a robe that indicates government affiliation.
OMG! If anybody would actually read the posts and the linked pages plus do a little research they would see that this article is highly misleading. Amazon removed another self-published book titled "How to Rape a Straight Guy." They also have removed some erotica books whose "main" theme is about incest. They are not going on a witch hunt, however.
Amazon pretty much lets you self publish anything, then if someone complains, they review the material published for compliance with their user agreement with the writer/content creator. If after review, there is a violation of said agreement, then the material is removed.
If Amazon tells you, before you ever publish the book, that you can not use their self-publishing platform for certain types of works, then it is the writer that is at fault for either a) ignoring the agreement or b) being ignorant of what they've agreed to.
Amazon's usage agreement is pretty straight forward. It's referenced on the pages from where you sign up to use their self-publishing program. Oh, by the way, did I mention that it is THEIR (Amazon's) service being provided? Surely, people on slashdot aren't suggesting that Amazon must publish and sell everything that anybody wants?
Sigh... for the millionth time, yes, it is censorship, it's just not government censorship and therefore not illegal censorship (in the US). It's still censorship. That's what the fucking word means, for Christ's sake.
Actually, I checked and was unable to find a dictionary or legal definition to support your contention. Based on what I was able to find online, definitions of 'censorhip' require active suppression of content by some sort of authority. That authority bit is important - webster, oxford, and various legal sites all seemed to use a similar word ('authority', 'official', etc). This is in keeping with the history of the word from its Roman roots.
So we have two requirements for censorship - some sort of authority, and restricted speech. You'd be hard-pressed to prove either here - Amazon has no official capacity, and they have no ability to suppress anyone's communication since there are many other avenues of selling books,
In short, Amazon doesn't 'censor' anyone by simply choosing not to sell someone's book, even if that reason is due to objectionable content. If they are, then every business on Earth is also guilty of censorship since they won't sell my goat-porn picture book.
You can't make a word mean something it doesn't simply at your own whim. If you can cite a dictionary definition that supports your much expanded definition of the word, I'd like to see it.
You assume that all geeks are automatically outraged by Amazon's decision not to distribute the books in question.
You assume a lot.
Sorry to interrupt all your Orwellian doom and gloom speculation, but Amazon.com is a private company. They can ban what they damn well please and its not an infringement of anyone's rights. Don't like it? Then don't shop there.
Someone claims that a private company might be banning certain books from its shelves and slashdotters get more hysterical than young earth creationists over teaching evolution in schools. Seriously you guys.
All you are doing is giving reasons why the US Government should only exercise the powers *specifically* enumerated by its Constitutional Law. If the constitution was enforced the US Congress would not have the power to bailout AIG. Or power to give handouts to "stimulate" General Motors. Or give special favors to Microsoft by taxing all non-windows PCs/laptops/pads.
.
>>>they can certainly have you "silenced" or "suicided" as it were.
Okay. Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law. ----- I can guarantee you the government has done it FAR more often. Over 150 million people were murdered by their OWN governments during this past century. Have corporations ever mass-exterminated that many people? ----- Even the US Congress deprived approximately 10 million of their property, homes, money, and freedom simply because they had grandparents that were born in Japan. Name one corporation that has ever committed that level of atrocity as done by that ONE building of 535 men in Washington D.C.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
You seem completely unaware of how the legal system works.
They just have to bring suit. They can bankrupt you quite easily.
Make me glad my sister bought me a Nook, instead of Kindle. I just won't be buying any more books from them. That is until I see a really good deal then I'll buy it, damn my morals.
Giosué Orefice: "No Jews or Dogs Allowed." Why do all the shops say, "No Jews Allowed"?
Guido: Oh, that. "Not Allowed" signs are the latest trend! The other day, I was in a shop with my friend the kangaroo, but their sign said, "No Kangaroos Allowed," and I said to my friend, "Well, what can I do? They don't allow kangaroos."
Giosué Orefice: Why doesn't our shop have a "Not Allowed" sign?
Guido: Well, tomorrow, we'll put one up. We won't let in anything we don't like. What don't you like?
Giosué Orefice: Spiders.
Guido: Good. I don't like Visigoths. Tomorrow, we'll get a sign: "No Spiders or Visigoths Allowed."
La vita é bella, Roberto Begnini.
If Ayn Rand books were the ones being censored, then Slashdot would have nothing to say.
If our society really did get back to book-burning, then Rand would be an early choice. I think this martyrdom is rather undeserved in her case, since there are far more dangerous authors, but being aware of the Streisand effect, we must expect any book that is widely burned to also be widely read. So, it is clearly better to burn the books that are simply believed to be dangerous, rather than the books that actually are, which should be disposed of quietly.
As to governments versus corporations, have some sense of proportion. You are trying to create a moral equivalency between despotic governments and major corporations, which suggests you have no sense of the scale at which these very different organisations operate.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
Are the titles for sale on any other online stores? If so sit down and stfu. Amazon can do what ever it wants with it's own store at any time it wants to. If they are the sole source for these books one might be able to make a censorship argument but otherwise to bad. As for the Kindle the only people who can really bitch on this are the original kindle buyers anyone who bought a kindle after amazon pulled it's first book needs to shut up it's there own fault for buying one knowing it was possible.
"Okay. Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law."
The tobacco industry has killed millions, if not billions, peddling a known chemically addictive and lethal substance with no remorse. And not only are they not punished by law, they're often protected by it.
It's simply, really, and anyone who didn't fail economics 101 and/or adheres to radical anti-societal social beliefs would realize it for what it is:
If you're selling a lot of everything, and one of your items offends more people to the point of complaining or not returning to your place of business than it brings in in lost sales, you do not sell said offensive item.
I don't care if it's a plush Barney toy or a piss and shit painting of Mohammed the Dog. Not selling said offensive item makes sense when you've got a 'universal marketplace', as Amazon does.
This is not censorship. They've just decided it isn't in their best interest to sell these specific items. (This is illustrated by actual works of fiction with merit - by Hienlien - still being sold through their store.)
In other news, I've seen other, completely innocent items (as well as several vendors) yanked from Amazon. Why? Those vendors and/or items were shit, and bad for business. Is that censorship too, or can you admit that such a practice might just be in the better interest of its customer base?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
nuff said
The relevant examples to respond to his comment would be criminal cases, not civil. Excellent straw man and subsequent generalization, however.
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
You're just making the parents argument that government power should be limited. All you've done is listed examples of governments abusing their power.
Mmmm.. Donuts
All you are doing is giving reasons why the US Government should only exercise the powers *specifically* enumerated by its Constitutional Law. If the constitution was enforced the US Congress would not have the power to bailout AIG. Or power to give handouts to "stimulate" General Motors. Or give special favors to Microsoft by taxing all non-windows PCs/laptops/pads. .
Interstate commerce clause?
Otherwise, I completely agree with you.
Zero of those people were "killed by the tobacco industry". They killed themselves.
Stop right there. You're asking about readers too soon. Have you found any ebooks themselves, which you might expect to Just Work on devices which don't implement DRM?
We need to treat the developing ebook market just like movies. Either abstain or pirate (it doesn't matter which you do) until someone decides to open for business. Until then, do not reward fraud.
This is why no one has to pirate music anymore; people Said No to DRMed music and pirated until the DRM fad died, so now you can buy a standard CD or unencrypted audio file in various formats, and the stuff Just Works with nearly anything (barring codec patent issues -- that's another debate). If you want that kind of functionality with books or movies, you need to STOP SPENDING MONEY on stuff that doesn't work. And if that means if no one has what you want, then accept it: there isn't really an ebook market yet, so it's silly to talk about devices that read these nonexistent files.
If someone starts selling the files, the plenty of manufacturers will leap forward to sell you devices, and I promise you that even the worst of those devices will run fucking rings around the primitive crippled crap that Amazon, Apple, et al sell right now.
Freedom of speech includes the right not to publish anything you don't want to publish.
Anybody else is still free to distribute the materials Amazon doesn't want.
Thre is no censorship here.
And for all of you who whine about a company trying to buy power in Washington... they need money to buy power, and that money comes from Joe Consumer who willingly gives it to them. If you don't like what some companies do politically, maybe it's time you started paying more attention to where your money goes when you buy something.
It's bad when either of these organizations do it, but the difference is that corporations don't have the power to suck money from my wallet against my will, throw me in jail for years, send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating, or execute me on the electric chair. Only the government holds the monopoly to do that.
And guess who actually controls governments or at least manipulates them?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Yes, because the government is just one body.
I bet you got an F in civics.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
You're welcome.
Here is a dew definition right off the top of a search:
Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
The use of state or group power to control freedom of expression, such as passing laws to prevent media from being published or propagated
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/censorship
censor - ban: forbid the public distribution of ( a movie or a newspaper)
censor - someone who censures or condemns
censor - subject to political, religious, or moral censorship; "This magazine is censored by the government"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
The practice of suppressing a text or part of a text that is considered objectionable according to certain standards.
www.medialit.org/reading_room/article565.html
is the removal or withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body. Typically censorship is done by governments, religious groups, or the mass media, although other forms of censorship exist
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What's the difference between "the government screwing you on its own" and "a corporation gets the government to screw you"? I say there is no difference whatsoever. The final output is: you're screwed. The government is the muscle used to enforce corporate will.
I would argue that there is no government censorship in the USA. Companies decide they want to censor, and the government is merely the implementor.
How DID the congregation react?
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Exactly. How is it that people who are so afraid of "censorship" are also the ones that want the government to control everybody else's actions?
Don't censor me but don't let anybody sell cigarettes, I might not have the restraint to not harm myself (even though there are warnings ALL OVER THEM and everybody knows they are bad for you).
Amazon has to sell books they find objectionable based on predetermined rules, but don't stop me from expressing myself.
Force somebody else to hire somebody they normally wouldn't, but don't help any company recover stolen property and remove trespassers (basically what a foreclosure is).
This mindset is amazing. Somehow they've taken the concept of the government not infringing your rights to mean the government must make everybody free from consequences of society, which is then a restraint on society.
Bayer during WW2?
I would. Much as I hate the evil little bitch and her fanclub, freedom of speech means that evil little bitches also get to say their piece, no matter how vile it might be.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If you have an Amazon account, be sure to sign out and clear your cookies (including Flash cookies) before and after looking at whatever those are. If you use Private Browsing mode you should still clear your flash cookies before and after, only recent versions of Flash handle private browsing, and only with certain browsers.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If Ayn Rand books were the ones being censored, then Slashdot would have nothing to say.
You have no basis for this statement. Slashdot would probably be one of the most vocal (for what its worth) opponents of Rand banning. Slashdot has a HUGE population of Randroids. One of the reasons I love it hear is that the strange extreme conservative Libertarians (who would be mad at censoring Rand because she is their messiah) are almost completely balanced by extreme liberal libertarians (who would be mad at censoring Rand because censorship is evil in itself, even if Rand was a nutter).
If our society really did get back to book-burning, then Rand would be an early choice.
I don't see this. A large portion of those in power have deified her, or at least her egotistical, self-serving, "philosophy". Again; you have no basis for this statement. ...but being aware of the Streisand effect, we must expect any book that is widely burned to also be widely read. So, it is clearly better to burn the books that are simply believed to be dangerous, rather than the books that actually are, which should be disposed of quietly.
This makes no sense. I think your reversing the effect of the so-called "Streisand effect" here. It would be more popular BECAUSE it is being burned, not being burned BECAUSE it is popular to be a proper case of the Streisand effect. I don't think Ayn Rand is terribly popular among the population, though perhaps more so than she actually deserves.
As to governments versus corporations, have some sense of proportion. Youre trying to create a moral equivalency between despotic governments and major corporations, which suggests you have no sense of the scale at which these very different organisations operate.
I'm not sure what your getting at here. The line between corporations and government has long been blurred. These days both are of a global scope, and some corporations are as ubiquitous in our daily lives as the government. Some corporations have operating budgets above that of many governments. Some corporations are basically standing militaries (Blackwater, or whatever they are called these days). Thanks to the modern American political climate, many corporations have far less oversight than the government. Many corporations are allowed to pass their own laws. We get all of our civic information from corporations (not governments), so they control the channels.
So who should I be more afraid of? I'm not really sure any more.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law. ----- I can guarantee you the government has done it FAR more often.
It is, of course, true by definition that government has done anything corporations have done at least as much as corporations themselves have done it, because corporations are creatures of government, and therefore every act committed by a corporation is an act commited by government.
However, the legal fiction that corporations are private persons just like natural persons rather than organs of government results in corporations being free from all the Constitutional limitations on action that are placed on other creatures of government, and the particular manner in which they are constituted by government also makes their action less accountable to the citizenry than those of other organs of government power.
And if you think the corporations will ever allow a limited government again....well...
How do you think the federal government got this way? The expansion of the corporate system in the 19th century. Homogenization of trade laws across the 50 states, the growth of the commerce clause, etc. All driven by the rise of big businesses (especially the railroads at the time).
The free market is the ultimate form of democracy where dollars are your votes
Um, if "dollars are your votes", that's a plutocracy, not a democracy.
But Amazon certainly has no 'official' capacity in any sense that doesn't render the word meaningless.
An official is someone who holds a position with defined authority (an office.) Someone in the Amazon corporate heirarchy holds an office within that heirarchy wherein they have the authority to determine, based on (among other considerations) content, what should and should not be distributed by Amazon. Insofar as such decisions are made based on content, those decisions are acts of censorship.
It's the absolute indisputable truth. The positions you state are entirely made up, therefore strawmen, therefore lies.
Other things you have stated in this thread that are also lies:
1. "The left" has been spending the last 50 years trying to censor the Web.
2. There is such a thing as a monolithic entity called "the left"
3. Anyone who contradicts you is a member of said entity.
Amazon can sell whatever product it chooses to sell. Books, ice cream, earth moving equipment, whatever. If Amazon chooses not to sell a particular product, or sub-product, or whatever, that's their right. If you want to buy a product which Amazon does not sell, I'm betting you won't have much trouble finding a vendor thereof, on the web or off. Censorship is something that government does.
The very laws the gp is talking about provide for extra criminal charges for copyright violation. Have you taken a cell phone with a camera into a theater lately? The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 deputizes movie theaters (they can detain you with legal indemnity until police arrive if they suspect you recorded a movie) and criminalizes recording movies in a theater or leaking unreleased movies. This is in addition to existing civil and criminal penalties.
Even the US Congress deprived approximately 10 million of their property, homes, money, and freedom simply because they had grandparents that were born in Japan.
You said that like it was a bad thing. I bet it was infinitely better than molesting 4yo girls and harassing blue-haired old ladies, as is par for today's course :(
Zero of those people were "killed by the tobacco industry". They killed themselves.
QFT. Just as surely as eating too much fat, or drinking too much beer, or driving your car over a cliff, is an act of suicide. The corporation didn't kill these people - they didn't force them to walk into gas chambers or stand in front of a firing squad.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The United Fruit Company(now Chiquita) has killed in millions either via bullet, poverty, starvation, crippled infrastructure, and reduced education efforts in entirecountries. They are still operating.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Amazon deciding not to carry these books is not censorship any more than Taco Bell refusing to carry Coke products is. It just means if you want it, you have to get it from somewhere else.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
Union Carbide is perhaps the most famous case of corporate killing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
Shell in the Niger Delta: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_delta
The Pfizer drug trials in Nigeria. The Nestle milk incidents.
An archaic but amazingly bloodthirsty case at the borders of libertarian economics and royal prerogative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State
send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating
Use of privately hired security forces by corporations to murder individuals they oppose is a basic fact of US history:
A bit from the referenced article:
Private corporations would contract out their security functions to firms like Baldwin-Felts and Pinkerton, with results similar to those described in the Ludlow Massacre.
This is the reality behind the libertarian fantasy of a weakened government unable to protect the citizens at large, coupled with wealthy corporations able to hire what is in effect a privatized police force.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Please stop blaming corporations for government corruption. As long as there are politicians with the power to help or ruin any business (and with their hand aggressively extended in the direction of those businesses) there will be no choice for any industry or individual company but to play ball and to spend time and money on competing for influence in Washington instead of spending it on innovating and competing in the marketplace.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Once, for an actual assignment, I tried to find some real counter arguments to Ayn Rand's philosophy and all I find is either idiotic ad hominem abuse like this or literary criticisms of her writing style/plot/characters etc which is an epic case of missing the point. If you know of any please feel free to provide them.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
You can load .mobi files on your Kindle without asking Amazon's permission. It's no more censorship than your local bookstore declining to order a box of your books is.
And really, it's just about money. Amazon doesn't want to spend money looking in to whether or not your use of rape or incest has literary worth or not. They're happy to sell works including that if someone else ponies up the cash for editorial review, as evidenced by all the Heinlein in their store, but they don't want to sift through all the slash fiction garbage on the internets.
If Amazon prevented the book from being published or anybody from selling it, that would be censorship. If Amazon could force changes to the books before any retailer could sell it,that would be censorship. None of those things have happened. Amazon is simply not selling these books. Amazon has not prevented the books from being published. It has not prevented other retailers from selling it. I
Come on. You can't be serious? Even schoolchildren know that sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Censorship is wrong because it is attacking something that fundamentally cannot cause true harm (with very few narrow exceptions like libel, which are and should continue to be disallowed). And you're comparing this to preventing people from selling dangerous products that are known to kill people?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Okay. Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law.
"Raytheon's Gun Killed Paul Wellstone in 2002"
-Phranque
No, the GP got it right. The GP's comment was that if you burn any piece of literature, the fact that it is taboo will inherently make it increase in popularity. Thus, you should only publicly burn ostensibly subversive or dangerous materials, and you should dispose of the truly subversive or dangerous materials surreptitiously so as not to draw attention to their existence.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
they didn't force them to walk into gas chambers or stand in front of a firing squad.
Ahh, so the truth comes out. You must work for Big Tobacco. Who else could say with a straight face that despite the addition of poisons and additional addictive substances, followed by deliberately misleading the consumers about the contents and safety of the cigarettes, the tobacco companies bear zero responsibility for the deaths of smokers?
I think your definition of "an entire class of titles" is different from mine. There can't have been that many gay rape fantasy books... and if there were, I don't really want to know about them.
Or is it your opinion that Barnes & Noble is not a "general interest" bookstore because they don't carry rape fantasy books in their brick and mortar stores? Is it your opinion that a bookstore must carry books from every conceivable genre before they can be considered a "general interest" bookstore?
The term "general interest" merely refers to "stuff most of the population would be interested in." I have a hard time believing gay rape fantasy falls into that category.
Also, don't forget the way those with state power in America routinely lean on the near-monopoly in the credit card industry to effectively censor ideas they don't like, as in the example of the website Insex, who's owner received a visit from the FBI when they cut off his credit card processing because "it was rumored that 'terrorists' were using violent pornography as a means of laundering money". WINK WINK, NOD NOD. That gasping is the sound of your freedom of expression being extinguished. The feds are using the same playbook with wikileaks now.
I guess the answer is to make Amazon carry every title ever written. Or maybe to let the whiners buy their stuff elsewhere if they feel so strongly about it.
It is rather amusing to hear the self-righteous, pseudo-intellectual prattling on both sides. High marks for entertainment value. I'm sure God, or the Great Pumpkin, or the holder of the Great White Handkerchief (I favor the former, but to each his or her own) is laughing out loud at our sense of self-importance.
Censorship, not censorship...who cares? Amazon is (rightly) free to decide which titles they carry. You are (rightly) free to decide where you spend your money. It is the *free* market after all. Funny how those who hate the free market really hate the 'free' part.
And the Bible? Really? Amazon decides not to carry some books and folks start trashing the Bible? I guess its naive of me to expect better but, seriously, is that the best argument you can make?
Take, for example, Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant series...brother and sister sleep together and their relationship is an important theme throughout the book. However, the basic plot is not about incest, it's about the rise of a diplomat in a Space Opera. So, is it just books that are "about incest" or those that have that element within them? Where's the dividing line?
We're talking about the products that Amazon sells, not the people who buy from Amazon. Besides, what is the alternative? The government forcing bookstores to distribute certain books, or every book? That doesn't make sense to me. There's no "right" to have your book published, sold or bought, no matter what it's about.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Well, any tobacco is "too much tobacco". Beyond that, you don't actually need tobacco but fats are needed in the body.
Yet you can readily drink beer daily without ill effect if consumed in small enough quantities. In fact, it might even be healthy for you. That's not true for tobacco.
Which is outright misuse of a car. Is smoking a cigarette outside the advertised purpose of a cigarette?
Right, in the same vein as lighting up a cigarette and using the burning edge to cause repetitive trauma to the body to induce death. That's not really what's being talked about.
No. They just lied for decades that tobacco was safe. So, if a corporation tells you those gas chambers are perfectly safe to stand in and let you turn on the valve, they're not at all at fault for killing you. Oh, and yes, once it becomes apparently they're lying, then it does move much more into the realm of suicide. But, that doesn't explain all the still extant corporations and their management which lied for years and still hasn't been punished (and taking a cut of their money doesn't count; that just really makes the government a complicit party).
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Atlas Shrugged - which Rand wrote as an introduction to her philosophy - is a silly superhero fantasy about an ubermensch engineer coming up with a magical generator and retreating from the world along with his equally superhuman businessman buddies, at which point the world collapses. This is accompanied by a rambling speech dozens of pages long, and an apparent rape fetish. Oh, and it also extolls the virtues of smoking, presumably because Rand herself smoked and couldn't keep her personal habits separate from her wrk. What the heck do you expect the responses to be, when this crap is represented as "philosophy" and evidence for the virtues of selfishness - and the evilness of altruism - the woman preached?
Objectivism isn't really a philosophy, it's a bunch of assertions about the nature of reality and human nature, and many of those assertions are flat-out wrong, those about the nature of selfishness perhaps most obviously so: selfish people don't debate whether it's in accordance to their nature as human to take something or not, they simply take and be done with it. That, alone, is sufficient to invalidate her conclusions about what the best political system might be.
None of this would really matter if objectivism was confined to academia; unfortunately, as noted above, it isn't. Objectivism has political goals which, due to the erroneous assertions at its core, tend to create truly destructive consequences when implemented. And, much as I hate to say this, calm and reasoned debate on politics is not effective for stopping said policy, while mud-slinging is.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Shell
A thought experiment for those who suggest that a private book distribution business can choose what not to serve to the public:
a. is it OK for a private business to choose not to serve customers of a certain skin color? (you can not invoke laws, but need to infer a moral argument)
b. how successful was 'market driven' competition that catered to blacks in 1950s US and to jews in 1930s Germany?
All you are doing is giving reasons why the US Government should only exercise the powers *specifically* enumerated by its Constitutional Law. If the constitution was enforced the US Congress would not have the power to bailout AIG. Or power to give handouts to "stimulate" General Motors. Or give special favors to Microsoft by taxing all non-windows PCs/laptops/pads.
You're right. They also wouldn't have any influence over the financial system or businesses, which would have turned this country into a broke, polluted, husk by now. Companies are not interested in morality or doing the right thing, as has been demonstrated repeatedly.
Okay. Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law. ----- I can guarantee you the government has done it FAR more often.
Are you talking about outright gunning people down or directing, instigating, or influencing actions that lead to loss of life? Are you talking about this country or countries where the companies do business? Are you counting immediate deaths or deaths over time? Let's get specific here. For example, the Union Carbide incident in India was pretty nasty. Arguably tobacco companies have been helping people kill themselves for a few decades now. So on and so forth.
Gunning people down is too messy. Bad press. Companies are a bit more subtle, and given their resources and connections if they wanted to "suicide" someone you can be sure it would only be reported as a suicide.
Over 150 million people were murdered by their OWN governments during this past century. Have corporations ever mass-exterminated that many people?
Over the past century? No. Governments tend to kill quickly. Companies are out for profit. There's no profit in killing your slaves^H^H^H workers quickly.
Even the US Congress deprived approximately 10 million of their property, homes, money, and freedom simply because they had grandparents that were born in Japan. Name one corporation that has ever committed that level of atrocity as done by that ONE building of 535 men in Washington D.C.
Any companies using under-developed nations to get around environmental and safety regulations.
~X~
Actually, I was asking for rational counter-arguments from someone who has actually read and understood what she wrote, which means that your response does not qualify. It simply demonstrates the continuing inability of her opponents to come up with anything other than yet more ridiculous personal attacks (an interesting question for psychologists: why does any conservative female, but not necessarily male, attracts such a high amount of vicious over the top hatred from those who disagree with her?). What does her smoking have to do with anything? What does the length of a speech have to do with anything? What rape fetish? You are responding to her alleged assertions by making your own assertion that they are wrong with nothing to back it up. By the way, not that it matters, but most of what you said is incorrect:
Atlas Shrugged - which Rand wrote as an introduction to her philosophy - is a silly superhero fantasy about an ubermensch engineer coming up with a magical generator and retreating from the world along with his equally superhuman businessman buddies, at which point the world collapses.
Totally wrong. Atlas Shrugged is really about the harm that government coercion in all its forms does, especially when it comes to the control of industry. It was written at a time when central planning and nationalization of industry were still popular themes among the left in the US and the disaster that those policies produced in the Soviet Union were not fully understood. It was exaggerated in order to make those harmful effects (which in reality happen over long time) more obvious.
Objectivism isn't really a philosophy
Yes, it is. You see, I can simply state things just as easily as you can.
it's a bunch of assertions about the nature of reality and human nature, and many of those assertions are flat-out wrong, those about the nature of selfishness perhaps most obviously so: selfish people don't debate whether it's in accordance to their nature as human to take something or not, they simply take and be done with it. That, alone, is sufficient to invalidate her conclusions about what the best political system might be.
I didn't understand that at all so I can't reply to it. Try saying something intelligible.
Objectivism has political goals which, due to the erroneous assertions at its core, tend to create truly destructive consequences when implemented.
Please provide an example of when objectivism was implemented and what destructive consequences has it produced.
And, much as I hate to say this, calm and reasoned debate on politics is not effective for stopping said policy, while mud-slinging is.
Absolutely wrong. It is ideas that matter in the long run. This is why, despite a long history of mud slinging against them, her books are among the best selling and most influential in history.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Okay. Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law.
Here you go: http://killercoke.org/
I'm sure you can find many, many examples of US-based corporations doing horrible things to people, mostly to factory workers in third world countries.
Since you're only thinking about what corporations do in the US (which has a strong government with laws to protect its citizens from corporations), you come to the incorrect conclusion that governments are violent and corporations are not.
Have corporations ever mass-exterminated that many people?
Could governments have committed the violence they did (and continue to do) without help from private industry? Weapons are manufactured by the private sector.
AFAIK, where Heinlein discusses these topics, it is in the context of philosophically interesting (and perhaps challenging) edge-cases. And he did not preach about it, except to point out (quite properly) that sometimes society's rules do not really make much sense.
OP did not exactly say so, but I got the impression he was implying that Heinlein was advocating incest or pedophilia. If so, I do not believe that is a completely honest characterization.
...twice.
"If the constitution was enforced the US Congress would not have the power to bailout AIG."
Enforced by whom? Which branch of government benefits by having its powers checked by the constitution? The congress which makes unconstitutional laws and refuses to appoint any supreme court judge unless they swear continuously for hours, days, or weeks that they won't 'legislate from the bench' aka nullify or weaken laws which infringe on the rights of the people. The executive branch who converted a collection of largely independent states with their own citizens and independent citizen militias into a federal army and federal citizens? Or perhaps its the judicial branch who decided they were better at interpreting what is just and unjust than the people and unilaterally gave themselves the authority to override the people's voice in the peoples only direct check against unjust laws and government, jury verdicts and jury nullification?
It is impossible to reform the system from within the system. To even begin to do this you would have to try to accumulate the power to effect change and it is people doing just that which resulted in our present state.
The only way anything is going to change in this country is via revolution. In this nation of weak stomached individuals who think that a few unstable children who can't handle 'cyber bullying' is a reasonable justification for eliminating free speech (aka anonymous speech) I'm not holding my breath.
I doubt it, because they're catering to the majority. Most will never notice that some incest-related books are missing from Amazon. A lot of the people who do find out about the ban will probably approve of it. Very few will make any connection whatsoever to the fundamental nature of digital restrictions management systems.
"Exactly. How is it that people who are so afraid of "censorship" are also the ones that want the government to control everybody else's actions?"
That is how the two party system is rigged. It doesn't matter which one you pick or which one is in power. Only the portions of their agenda which are bad for the people are going to happen.
What if I am opposed to censorship, support the right to bear arms and believe in it as a way to counteract the power of the police and government, am opposed to liability shelters such as corporations, believe in a return to state rights, believe in a return to jury nullification, believe in a return to the constitution including the part that says that all powers that weren't explicitly granted to government stay in the hands of the people, and don't believe in nanny laws including the audacity of government to claim it has the authority to tell citizens who aren't endangering others which medications/drugs they can have or use and when. Oh and lets not forget, believes that police and other officials should be subject to the law and have to answer to the same courts and the same charges the rest of us do when they break it.
In other words, where is the party that wants to weaken government, check the wealthy, and empower the people?
Even libel needs to be narrowed. It shouldn't matter if my opinion hurts your reputation or your business I'm entitled to have one and express it. Right now truth is usually a defense, anything short of demonstrable falsification should be proof against libel.
Governments censor. Companies have every right in the world to not carry something.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
How about the Coca Cola killings in Columbia? Thats without even trying, and then there is Halliburton...
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ROTFLMAO! I wouldn't listen to "professor hairyfeet" guys, he's only an ITT Tech student.
Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law.
How about all the people who were killed by toxic poisons produced and promoted by corporations over the years. I'm sure you could easily find hundreds of examples. Here's one to start you off: Tetraethyl lead (TEL) added to gasoline. Ethyl Corp poisoned millions of Americans (pretty much all of them) with lead and was never punished.
"Death rates from a variety of causes have been found to be higher in people with elevated blood lead levels; these include cancer, stroke, and heart disease, and general death rates from all causes." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning
A more recent example: People living on top of natural gas "fracking" sites are dropping dead of cancer at an alarming rate.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
apart from censorship? And NO I didn't read the article or even search Amazon's database. I like the new /.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Can someone explain to me why anyone would even bother buying a Kindle? So far, the only advantage to the Kindle is the ability to utilize Amazon's store, whose draconion control of their wares is getting out of hand. As some have commented, yes Amazon has a right to sell their product like this, and I have the right to sell shit in a dixie cup, but neither of us has the right to expect people to buy it and like it.
Putting aside the fact that most stuff outside of the public domain isn't worth reading anyway, it seems like a much smarter idea to invest in an off-brand e-reader which would let you do about as much as the Kindle, without the plus-hundo markup.