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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*.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!
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"
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.
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
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.
There's nothing wrong with a company that has standards. If you don't like those standards then you are free to patronize another company or start your own.
As a publicly-traded company Amazon also needs to be profitable. It's a smart business decision to reject pedophilia - the amount of money made selling pedophile-friendly products would not make up for the sales lost by those boycotting Amazon for carrying those products.
who cares? If you don't like it, don't shop there.
It is, however, useful to be informed in the first place.
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
I don't disagree, but they already sold it, so they don't have any right to take it back from the people they sold it to.
The free market is the ultimate form of democracy where dollars are your votes
If one person can cast more votes than another person, it isn't democracy.
Free Martian Whores!
If one person can cast more votes than another person, it isn't democracy.
Sure it is. A democracy is a political system where governing power is derived from the people. Granted, it isn't a fair democracy, but as long as everyone has a voice it is a democracy.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.
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.
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
>>>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
Because when a major retailer does that it makes it much harder to get published. You can make what you like of it, but when a retailer like Amazon declares something to be banned from their bookshop, it makes it significantly harder for a writer to get published. Get several major bookshops in lock step on it, and you're more or less banned.
Sure you can self publish, but that's a lot harder if you don't have the exposure through a major chain, and you're going to have to do it without an advance to allow you to focus on it exclusively prior to publishing. You also probably won't have money for a professional editor.
Consider the BeBook Neo or Club readers. These will read many of the popular ebook formats.
Some libertarian-minded commenters here seem to think that Amazon is operating strictly within a "self-regulating" free market and ought to have the rights of private individuals and especially conservatives, who demand the freedom to ignore externalities. In fact Amazon actively engages in monopolistic practices and resists free markets. (I'll avoid the larger issue that Amazon depends deeply on government to ensure that markets it operates in function under controlled conditions, but resists acknowledging this and tries to avoid paying for the services it takes for granted, such as trademark, copyright, trade secret and patent protection--like many companies.)
I used to have an Amazon Kindle. They advertise low prices for electronic books. But those purchases are tied to an Amazon Kindle account, not to you. You cannot transfer a book you have read to someone else, as if it were a real book. The analogy between physical property and intellectual property breaks down. Amazon controls downstream copies of the electronic books you purchase from them. You pay $9.99 to Amazon for an ebook in the mistaken belief that you are saving money on the purchase of merchandise that purportedly behaves like physical property. In fact, that $9.99 helps Amazon stifle markets. If I sold you my Amazon Kindle with the books I purchased, and you re-registered the Kindle in your name, my books would vanish. It would be as if I sold you my bookshelf with books I purchased from Amazon, and Amazon removed the books once you claimed the bookshelf.
You could say that I agreed to whatever terms Amazon devised. Fine: not acknowledging that Amazon's monopolistic practices have nothing to do with free markets is ideology. And that is one reason why I am recommending the BeBook reader.
...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.
>>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.
What world are you living in? It's not because the masses have more collective monetary power (they don't), it's economics of scale. You can only sell so many $500,000 cars, and there's very little chance of repeat business in any short time frame.
It's about selling in volume. That's what made Wal-Mart.
In 2004, the top 5% of the economic bracket controlled over 58% of the wealth. That was a long time ago, now the figure is skewed even more in favor of the rich.
Sorry, but you're wrong.
Also: who cares? If you don't like it, don't shop there.
For one thing, we could discuss that rather strange rationale. Banning fictional accounts of one particular type of illicit activity? We seem to like logic and consistency here, is there a way to explain Amazon's rationale for banning fictional incest but not fictional murder, e.g?
I am not a crackpot.
the figure is skewed even more in favor of the rich
Which is especially worrisome because the wealth of the country is a fixed amount, and has been for centuries. Every time somebody gives birth, the wealth of the country is divided into smaller and smaller shares, which is why poor people today live exactly like poor people in the 1800's, with their complete lack of refridgeration, television, and antibiotics, all of which are owned by rich people.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Wow, you should probably read the comments in a thread before just replying to one. Here's a summary:
It was postulated that the free market is the ultimate form of democracy where dollars are your votes. Against that argument was that if one person can cast more votes than another person, it isn't democracy. The rebuttal was that as long as everyone has a voice it is a democracy, just not necessarily a fair one. Thus, my comment that poor and homeless people do not have a voice is within the spectrum of the idea that the free market is a democracy where dollars are votes. Obviously if you have no dollars, you have no votes and therefore no voice.
Thanks for playing though!
By the way, if you don't understand how the current political landscape is run by money and corporations rather than actual "votes" then I feel sorry for you.
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
The king gets a ten thousand votes, the lords get a thousand votes each, and the peasant gets one vote. That's feudalism, not democracy.
Free Martian Whores!
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
How DID the congregation react?
About 1/3 knowingly nodded, about 1/3 got wide-eyed & looked at each other, and the remaining 1/3 looked pissed that he would say such a thing. I think he got letters after that one.
So, yeah, about 2/3 of the people had not really read the Bible, which I expect to some extent (who knows how long they have been following this faith), but was also revealing to me.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
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
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.
Using the marker "m/m" on the internet is the same as saying gay porn, and has been for 20 years. No, I do not read every FA. But if the summarizer has it wrong, expect bad results.
Out of curiosity, does the definition matter? Suppose the article summary were correct. Are you "less free" if Amazon decides to not carry gay rape porn? The actual subject doesn't matter, as I don't think you are "less free" if Amazon decides to not carry ANY subject.
Disney has a content distribution network, the Disney Channel. They elect to not carry a wide variety of works on their channels. So goes with anyone making any decision to carry or not carry a product, consistent with their corporate branding.
In saying that Amazon "has a responsibility," you are foisting upon them an action. The action that you insist that they have (to carry inventory they don't want to carry, in order to give you the warm fuzzy feeling that if they did so your personal definition of "freedom" would increase) is a faulty sentiment.
Jump up and down, stomp your feet, pound your fists on the floor: this behavior will change nothing.
C//