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Amazon Removes Yaoi Manga Titles From Kindle Store
Repossessed writes "Amazon is now cracking down on Yaoi manga, with several titles that have been available on the Kindle since 2009 being delisted and others now being rejected, according to Digital Manga Publisher. DMP has also stated that Amazon has not given any rationale for the rejections and removals, and Amazon has not been answering emails or phone calls from journalists asking about the subject."
I am trying really hard to find the relevance in your comment, but I cannot.
Yes Bin Laden is dead and yes that has very little to do with this article.
Homophobic AND racist. I am so disappointed in you Amazon!
Can't say I'll miss porn written for schoolgirls, but in general Amazon has been adopting such a manipulative corporate mindset that I have to hold my nose to use them anymore. Where do people go when they give up Amazon?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Do you really think everyone knows what Yaoi manga is?
This was always the paradox of ebooks. By every measure, ebooks should have the first thing that easily came to the computer. Files sizes were small and text was one of the first things reasonably conquered by computers. In the early days, sound cards were necessary to play music, video files were just goddamned intensive.... and yet as a medium, books came last after everything else.
Now, we're stuck with Amazon/Apple being the central distributors, they're start going to decide more and more on content for whatever reason. At least music players, you can load it up as an mp3 file and there are several music stores online to choose from. Even Apple managed to talk RIAA out of DRM. But publishers are going to be signing their own death warrant, building up their masters for the immediate (and false) security of DRM.
I love things in a digital format. But I really, really hate how the distribution model is playing out. This is the eBay model. One central place, it's convenient in some ways, but you play by their rules or you don't play at all, and if they decide to fuck you, they really fuck you.
We need to get away from the eBay model from these greedy ass companies, or it's going to be a damned bleak and bland future. We need to move over to the google shopping model, decentralized and seperate stores/vendor offering their wares connected by an neutraol aggregator (which lets people review service) and a whitelist for the cautious type.
I'm getting really sick of the direction these gadgets are heading.
Meanwhile still availible:
"Titles currently available on Kindle include Christmas Creampie, a graphic novel in which “horny Whoreville hussies show a frustrated dildo shop owner the true meaning of Christmas,” and Little Lorna in Resort Sports (I’m not even going to link to this one), in which Little Lorna, who is spunky, sexy, but “not too bright,” goes on vacation to Mexico with her Uncle Bob; “nudity, spanking, and sexy humor” result.
So apparently a sweet love story between two men is unacceptable, but an orgy in a dildo shop is OK."
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2011/05/too-hot-for-kindle-amazon-pulls-yaoi-from-kindle-store/
They have consistently shown they're in the money biz, and don't give a fig about art or freedom of speech.
It's this weird idea that a book about something is the same as that thing. To get an idea of how stupid that is think about all the books, movies, TV shows etc about murder.
It doesn't matter what you think of yaoi, or manga, or erotica in general. Surely you can see where this is going. Stop supporting the thought police and put your money into companies that don't censor books. Amazon won't stop until they lose enough money. There's no telling when they'll start ruining classics.
Bullshit, yaoi is just gay hentai, (where as yuri is lesbian hentai). Shotacon is, usually gay, hentai with little boys, (and lolicon is hentai with little girls, if you were just dying to know).
As long as I can still buy 12" double sided dildos on Amazon, I'm good.
plop
Amazon's content requirements are very clear. Even if the material is not pornographic, it can still offend-- and Amazon is not obligated to explain why it has chosen to take offense.
You can still buy any ebook formatted kindle style and use it with the kindle via usb drag and drop. You just can't conveniently one click buy it.
Amazon has not been answering calls.. and you find this odd? WTF is wrong with todays world? Why should they give a rats ass what the caller has to say about some gay kiddie porn ? They should take the call, trace it, then send in a few ... well.. enough... Thank You Amazon. when it comes down to these derelicts wanting their rights, give me a shot gun.. no, an RPG, and we'll "discuss" it.
Yaoi is not "Gay Kiddie Porn". Get your facts straight.
I'd be curious as to whether someone has a better model in mind on how this should be done.
Given:
The Amazon Kindle Terms and Conditions: “We are entitled to determine what content we accept and distribute through the Program in our sole discretion.”
The anime.net definition of Yaoi:
An acronym standing for YAma nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi – No Climax, no point, no meaning. It’s used
to describe manga/anime focusing on male relationships, not avoiding strong, graphically portrayed homosexual
themes. Very often, yaoi story focuses only on the sex, ignoring elements like true plot, emotions or characters development.
There really is zero doubt as to why Amazon didn't want this on the Kindle. I don't know why there are any “phone calls from journalists asking about the subject.” If you live in the US, clearly the Kindle's primary market, then you know that there are a large number of people here who would spontaneously combust if the they found their tweenager reading this stuff as a “Lend Me” book on their Kindle.
Given that this content is available online (and in color) it would seem a difficult niche to make money on, which would be required to re-engineer your whole e-book system to have age-sections/age-bars. Simply rating 900,000 ebooks so you could decide their category would be a serious expense.
So my questions are:
Would such ratings be more valuable than they would be a tool for greater censorship?
What scale would you use?
Is this is project we should Open/Crowd-Source?
Where would you rate: The Canterbury Tales, Sons and Lovers, 1984?
The above are available on the Kindle store now. Would an rating system that we implemented make them available to more or fewer total humans?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/4/11/
After Amazon remotely deleted 1984 (ironic to say the least), this is no surprise. It would be akin to a book seller breaking into one's home to take back a book one had already bought; "licensed" is the loophole Amazon and other on-line book sellers uses to get around the 1st sale doctrine to restrict, or even often forbid, resale, sharing, etc.
More to the point, the 1984 incident illustrated well that Kindles, much like many mobile devices, are designed with remote deletion in mind - there was an article on here the other day about Google remotely deleting apps.
While Amazon supposedly agreed they will refrain from utilizing remote deletion in the future, the feature still exists. On a related note, even if the device out of the box doesn't support remote deletion, any device that accepts software updates with little (ie. Bluray players; inserting a disc) to no user intervention (mobile phones) can easily be programmed to remotely restrict / delete / self-destruct.
Among the best defenses against remote deletion / restrictions are widely used, non-DRM formats that can be easily copied and widely distributed, as well as, easily compared / verified to ensure the contents haven't changed...
To digress a tad, it's only a matter of time, assuming it's not already happened, before some company, such as Amazon, doesn't remotely delete a book, but rather silently modifies some of the content *after* purchase without telling the customer.
Ron
Bet you won't be so happy when they censor your right-wing gun magazines or "Good O'l Boy" red-neck books. I don't like a lot of weird books, myself, but I respect the rights of those that want to create and/or read them.
If this goes on, Amazon will do to books what Walmart has done to movies.
For years I've hoped for someone to remake Fahrenheit 451 with a script that was reasonably close to the book. I was more than a little disappointed when Gibson dropped the project on the theory that (per Wikipedia) "with the advent of computers, the concept of book-burning in a futuristic period may no longer work."
Ah, but that was before the Kindle, and the 451 test run in the form of the 1984 and Animal Farm erasures. From my POV, in the 451 universe, when books were outlawed by (presumably) an Act of Congress (excepting technical manuals and comic books, IIRC), the first thing to go would be Kindle and iBooks. It would be almost too easy. The hard part would be tracking down the contraband bound volumes, which brings us back to page 1 of our story, and Guy smelling of kerosene.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I think your Google is broken.
Need working email address for complaints. Bezos. Kindle. Feedback. Some place we can direct comments to them showing them how wrong they are.
Even if is in their guidelines, they need to explain themselves fully on this one, as it seems they started censoring with this subject matter first compared to all the other visually photographic and non-yaoi but explicit manga material as cited in the story's last link. They got caught and maybe have moved on, but if so, even two wrongs don't make a right.
I don't read yaoi, but I've invested in several Kindles, and buy a lot from Amazon, and I'm PISSED right now. Not sure why fair market, free speech, anime and manga groups, as well as GALA and related groups aren't up in arms about this. Even if they have started to crack down on heterosexual material as well, the perception is they went after homosexual material and are covering their asses, literally and figuratively.
Strange as that is wrong
"Stories focusing on sexual relationships between males, normally aimed at a female readership. May contain quite explicit sexual scenes. The more explicit titles tend to be shrink-wrapped." [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Yaoi+manga&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=9IDPTZ2-L4mjtgf7hrX6DQ&ved=0CBYQkQ4] we may not like it, but some people do and it is no child porn so next excuse?
First they came for 1984, but I don't read dystopian novels. Then they came for the pr0n, but I download that off the intertubes anyway. Finally they came for my yaoi, and now I have nothing to read.
See also: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html . RMS tends to be pretty right much of the time. There's a reason he rants the way he rants!
Proving once again that ignorance of proper terminology leads to stupidity.
- These characters were randomly selected.
If a fictional book is created, sold and read, illustrated or not, about a bank heist, no one is stealing; nothing has been stolen; it is fiction. A work of imagination. For entertainment purposes.
The same applies to interactions such as those found in Lolita, Yaoi titles, the Story of O, Exit to Eden, Belinda, and so on for quite a long list written over an impressive span of time (erotica is hardly unique to the 20th and 21st centuries.)
That said, there is no question that as a venue for selling products, the seller has the right to choose what products they will sell; all that remains is for the customers to decide if those choices make them more or less likely to shop there.
Finally, an interesting reality of our society is summed up by the phrase "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." If you wish to apply legitimate pressure encouraging Amazon to carry all titles without making content-based cullings, simply contact them, tell them so, and indicate that your future purchasing plans will vary depending on Amazon's behavior here. And then follow through.
I would suggest that this is worth doing; today, it's something you probably don't care if you ever see. Tomorrow, it may be something you do care about. Ideally, a venue for buying e-books would, as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has claimed is their goal, carry every book, no matter what content.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I am not too sure it is about indifference curve, rqather than lack of knowledge and lack of foresight. Most of the folk I know of massively don't know what DRM is, or that some stuff they buy today could stop working. They simply don't know. All they want is that it works now. It would need those folk to be massively bitten in the ass at least one time to make them AWARE of the drm problematic. After that you will tghen see that their indiference curve is not too much far away than the one of the geek. The problem is naturally to make them aware of the info to begin with.
"what amounts to comic kiddie porn", eh? I guess (according to the Digital Manga website for one of the titles) sex between a 27 year old and a 34 year old is kiddie porn, eh? I guess that makes sense!
Despite the Wiki link nobody here has mentioned that YAOI is known as "Boy Love". I don't think anybody need discuss further why Amazon pulled it, they don't want to be known as the NAMBL library of choice.
Really, Amazon doesn't give a fuck about journalists calling, if it we a massive amount of customer's call then they would listen but who will miss this crap anyway? I for one couldn't care less.
I don't think Amazon should sell any of that smut until they're made into movies and win Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Writing Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction-Set Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Music Score. Just like Prince of Tides had to go through before Amazon would start selling the VHS/DVD.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Speaking as a large shareholder, this does not please me one bit. If anything, the corporation should be expanding into more fields of this nature; one thing we floated by the board was generating our own content. Specifically, the rape and photography of orphans. Oh well, it's like they always glibly say: get over it.
Shouldn't "service providers" like Amazone oblieged to be neutral just like ISPs?
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why should they give a rats ass what the caller has to say about some gay kiddie porn ?
You have mixed up yaoi with shota. Both are predominantly targeted at the female audience.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
OK, so how weird is it that this was the phrase at the bottom of my SlashDot page this morning?
Seriously....
You might want to take some time to examine your life if a clause is your "end of story".
Amazon is not obligated to explain why
This is, legally, untrue.
Amazon are evil, greedy control freaks. I havent' spent a cent with them since they were caught remotely stealing from their Kindle users.
I complained, and such is the utter contempt they have for their paying customers, I got a lame excuse for a form letter, so I've sworn off them forever.
Screw Amazon.
Apple App Store MK-II anyone?
The right to offend is central to the right to free speech.
YAOI is known as "Boy Love". I don't think anybody need discuss further why Amazon pulled it, they don't want to be known as the NAMBL library of choice.
Yaoi is actually "Boy-Boy love". Big difference. Usually two cute teenage guys getting it on. The biggest market is young women. Same as western slash fiction, like Harry Potter + Draco Malfoy.
We know you're not really a stockholder in Amazon. We know you don't spend over a thousand per month there. Let's just get away from those bullshit lies first.
Those of us in the real world also know that there is probably going to be more lost business if they keep this stuff around than if they remove it. People outside of the manga culture don't really give a fuck about the specifics, they're going to see it as pr0n and potentially as child pr0n. That alone would get Amazon more lost business than a bunch of nerds who worry about the slippery slope thing. Sorry to be blunt but this is the truth of the matter.
BTW: The 1984 incident had nothing to do with the content of the book. Those that claim that it did or even make it sound like it did are liars who are a bigger problem than Amazon is.
And manga sucks and is for retarded shitballs anyway.
A couple of years ago Amazon changed their ratings system such that many LGBT titles were removed from their search results. When they were called on it, they claimed it was a "glitch". You'd think they'd be a bit more careful in the future....
The first time around it might be plausible that it was an accident, but this continuing incident makes it clear Amazon thinks homophobic bigotry is just good business sense.
You know something? I don't give a toss.
Maybe there's a difference between paper books or ebooks containing real pictures of kiddie porn or cartoon pictures of kiddie porn but, quite frankly, I consider both to be at least unsavoury & wonder why any normal person would be interested in looking at either.
Besides which, I don't think that's the issue here anyway. I think it's more about people with too much damn time on their hands trying to work out ways that they can push the letter of the law to its limits simply to attract attention and gain some kind of notoriety as a result.
It's attention-seeking by people who would otherwise blend into the background and never be noticed so therefore have some desire to create controversy.
Amazon no longer sell it and the majority of people would never buy the stuff - therefore nothing to see here apart from people who need to get more fulfilled lives.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The authors can get their own hosting and handle their own storefront. Kindle, Apple, B&N, Kobo, etc have *no* lock-in where you have no choice but to buy from their store. An author can gleefully put up their own and sell (though if they want DRM on Kindle, then yes Amazon is the only way, but you sad yourself you didn't want DRM).
I happen to have a Kobo, but it would be no different if I had a Kindle. I have a vast minority of books purchased through Borders or Kobo, almost everything was gotten through other sources like Baen.
So if you are into selling Yaoi, then just make it clear it can't be bought through Amazon *and* provide an alternative instead of just whining. I'm sure your customers will notice the lack of their genre being available and do a web search and come across your explanation of the issue and the way to send money *directly* to you for purchase.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I think you'd have to show that Amazon was *knowingly* selling the product afoul of your copyright (or patent if it's a machine or something) in order for Amazon to have some share of liability. Regardless of whether Amazon has any liability, you go after 'TheftCo' for wilfully violating your copyright.
This problem is hardly new as of electronic distribution, and there's zero reason to treat it any differently than if the problem happened in a brick and mortar bookstore.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
A law is supposed to protect something or someone from damage.
Please elaborate and show me the damage done to anyone by a ... cartoon. I could see it if the people depicted resemble some real person (i.e. caricature) and this person has to suffer the fallout from it, but, well, I'm no manga expert but in general the drawings don't even come close to being realistic, let alone allow any comparison with a real person.
So please show me the damage done. Just saying "it's gay kiddy porn" isn't enough for me, sorry. A law should protect someone from damage that cannot protect himself. And somehow I do not recognize the rights of imaginary characters in a comic book, sorry.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Personally, I consider the books of Stephen King kinda unsavoury and I wonder why any sane person would want to read this kind of story, but hey, if they like it... I mean it's not like anyone really has to suffer or die, it's just characters in a book and if there are some people out there who enjoy to read creepy stories, so be it. Squicks the hell out of me, but nobody (at least so far) forced me to read such a book, so why bother getting worked up about it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You're a comic book figure? Poor you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A quick check of Amazon.com shows many Yaoi Kindle and paperbacks available (please do check for yourselves). Clearly Amazon has not removed Yaoi from its store. Applying Occam's Razor perhaps there is a simpler explanation. Perhaps the quality of materials provided by the publisher are not suitable for digital publication (corrupt files, low resolution artwork etc); Perhaps they don't pay their bills or generate a lot of customer complaints? Rather than jumping to the easy-and-fun-to-be-indignant "censorship" cry, why not wait for facts (and continue buying Yaoi on Amazon, 'cos it's there).
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
Amazon is merely controlling what it sells in its online ebook store. You can still obtain you books from other sources and read it on your Kindle. Sure, it might not be as convenient; you have to convert from a different format, like .epub or .lit, but there are free tools, like Calibre, available for the purpose.
lolita was not written so people could jack off to child sexual abuse... it was written to point out the horror of it.
story of o --- has nothing to do with children
Exit to Eden -- has nothing to do with children
Belinda --- has nothing to do with children
if you asked the authors of these works how they felt about being lumped in with child pornography, they would scream bloody murder. Anne Rice would vomit and violently rebuke anyone who tried to compare her work like that. Vladimir Nabokov would stare down anyone who did this. It is completely and totally conflating two things that are not conflatable, in any way, shape, or form.
This type of propaganda has been crushed, repeatedly, over decades, by the actual, real 'sexual freedom' movement - the LGBT people do not want anything to do with this. they do not want to touch it with a ten foot pole. they dont want anything to do with it and they dont want to be lumped in with it.
This has nothing to do with 'sexual freedom' or 'free speech'. it has only to do with the 'boy love' crowd trying to legitimize child sexual abuse. It is propaganda, pure and simple.
if you go download 500 megabytes of Yaoi Manga, and then show it to feminists, social workers, people who deal with survivors of child sexual abuse, anti-rape activists, police from Special Victims Units, psychologists specializing in rape trauma, etc etc, im sure they will have interesting opinions for you.
there is actually a contingent of 'NAMBLA' types who edit wikipedia ... they have repeatedly tried to create POV articles that promote child sexual abuse as some sort of neutral activity and they repeatedly get deleted, and there are tons of edit wars on the articles that do exist because these NAMBLA people do not want anyone criticizing their viewpoint.
its propaganda, if you go download a bunch of yaoi, which i recommend not doing if you want to stay out of prison, you will find out that this stuff on wikipedia is garbage.
good question. i did a google search on yaoi manga, i can see a screenshot of a video on youtube, and i can read the summaries of the articles that are linked to. and you can tell pretty damned easily what is really going on.
the whole 'female audience' thing is very likely to be utter fucking bullshit. notice the wikipedia article doesnt even have citations.
There is one point you missed: for most people buying an ebook is very different from buying a physical book. When you buy a paper book, it is obvious that you have bought the content of the book. When you buy a Kindle, you only buy a device for reading content you buy later. Most people don't think of ebooks as "real", just as they don't make a distinction between "the computer" and the programs that run on it. So when they look at the Kindle, they see no distinction between the device and the content. The result is that any content that "appears" on the Kindle, becomes the responsibility of the creator of the Kindle, just as the content of a physical book is the responsibility of the publisher of the book. By allowing undesirable content to appear on a child's Kindle, Amazon becomes responsible for the act in the parent's mind. When a book offends the parent's sensibilities, he will throw it away and perhaps stop buying from the publisher. When an ebook offends, it is the Kindle that gets thrown away and Amazon gets blamed, not the publisher of the ebook. Remember that for normal people ebooks are not "real". They do not exist. The device IS the content, and Amazon is responsible for it.
there are a lot of arguments here about 'free speech' and all that.
freedom of speech does not mean that a bunch of NAMBLA people can force a corporation to sell child porn. that is not what freedom of speech is about.
and i can guarantee the NAMBLA people do not want any 'free speech' to occur at their conventions, in their news groups, or on their websites. it is not about free speech, it is about legitimizing child sexual abuse.
"free speech" is just something they try to co-opt , sort of like comparing themselves to LGBT activists... its nonsense. especially in this world where so much actual freedom of speech, say, critical of governments, is being attacked.. you never see a headline like "NAMBLA supports freedom of speech in Uzbekistan" .. beacuse they dont give a shit. "NAMBLA supports freedom of speech for survivors of child sexual abuse" -- another headline you will neve see.
please show me one article, any article, where the market for this stuff is 'school girls'. please just show me one legitimate article discussing this. amongst all the feminist studies of pornography and human sexuality , please just show me anything, anywhere, that backs up your statement.
If you don't give a toss and can't get your facts straight (it's drawn male gay porn, sometimes the characters happen to be underage, but that is not in any way the extent of the genre), then maybe you shouldn't comment on the issue. I don't read it, but I can use fucking wikipedia and not appear like an ignorant fool when I open my mouth on the issue.
Read the Slashdot title.
"Stuff That Matters."
A few insignificant weirdos trying to push the extent of the law by reading dubious comics and Amazon banning said comics *doesn't* matter to the majority of normal people.
That is my point.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
from wikipedia. literally, its boys getting anally raped.
the NAMBLA bear crowd on the internet, which apparently has a large contingent on slashdot (frightening), wants you to think its 'porn for women' of 'consensual homosexual relationships between men'. thats the usual fucking NAMBLA propaganda.
'pubsecent' = 11, 12 years old. the idea that 'women' are going to be the primary customers of this is naive in the extreme.
notice also the wikipedia article has magically redefined rape so that its not a big deal. its typical propaganda.
to find out that his work on censorship is being used to justify child pornography.
NAMBLA doesnt give a fuck about freedom of speech. they only care about legitimizing child sexual abuse.
they cannot force a private company to sell child porn. thats not what free speech is about.
slashdot is full of gullible people who get things mixed up real quick and are very vulnerable to propaganda.
jesus guys, dont you see whats going on here? they are straight up lying about this stuff.
everyone seems to be repeating this... and nobody seems to have any evidence.
the idea that women in japan somehow are huge fans of child sexual molestation is just bizarre.
why do people accept this idea? who knows. but they shouldnt, they should apply the same intellectual skepticism here that they would to any other claim.
this is a disgusting meme, but it seems to keep popping up over the years.
LGBT people, in general, do not believe in child sexual abuse nor do they support child pornography.
Amazon is not obligated to explain why
This is, legally, untrue.
Amazon has to explain to whom when it stops carrying a certain book? Maybe if it was found to be a monopoly, perhaps. Short of that, I'd like to see your citation for why Amazon needs to explain to anyone what it does and does not carry unless it made some sort of warranty that it would carry that sort of material.
... is not the Amazon decide to stop selling something. This happens all the time for many different products, not just books. Just think of "yearly" product release.
Not the real problem is that Amazon has decided to remove book from people who have them and already paid for them.
It is the same as if GM went to you home and took your car away... wait... they did... EV1...
Never mind. Nothing to see. Move along.
This is my take on the situation regarding Amazon and the Yaoi subgenre.
From the Wikipedia article, second paragraph:
"In Japan, the term has largely been replaced by the rubric Boys' Love ( Bizu Rabu?), which subsumes both parodies and original works, and commercial as well as djinshi works. Although the genre is called Boys' Love (commonly abbreviated as "BL"), the males featured are pubescent or older. Works featuring prepubescent boys are labeled shotacon, and seen as a distinct genre."
First thought when I read the above online as well as the previous (first) paragraph was "Wow - teen boy porn for perverts, defined for me by Wikipedia." Argue it or not, but when you read this description or definition of the term Yaoi, what pops in your head? The average person who is suddenly exposed to such materials is most likely going to form the same opinion as I did, and as many others did when they clicked the Wikipedia link. Plus, the fact that the subgenre is known in English as simply
"Boys' Love" doesn't exactly convey that one of these publications is only about two boys who become the best of friends for life and love to play football or perform in a band. Come on.
I think the main issue is that this genre MAY contain publications or works with story lines or plots where "the males featured are pubescent or older." Well, I don't know about you, but if some selected stories contain sexual relations or interactions between two males under the legal age of consent (don't argue how the phrase pubescent might mean 14 in your area or 18 in your area) wouldn't it make the most logical business sense to simply drop the titles so as to avoid prosecution / lawsuit and thereby the costs associated with the defense of any prosecution / lawsuit?
If I ran a bookstore or an online retail outlet specializing in any type of printed media or digital distribution, I wouldn't even carry this type of product. All it takes is one publication describing some type of interaction between two minors that commits an even minor infraction of the law somewhere, and then Amazon is involved with a legal issue, which we all know will probably cost a lot more to resolve than the total amount earned from profits from selling this small subsection of publications. Let's face it - if a publication MAY look like child porn, it MAY form images in your head that child porn is taking place in the plot or series, or even if it MAY contains outright situations of sex between children or with children, then I think as a business owner, I'd drop this, as this mostly likely becomes a violation of several laws in the areas where I am doing business. Even if it isn't, the fact that my business sold, or once sold something that looked like child porn, will probably cause a bad opinion to form in the majority of my customer base, which will lead to boycotting of my products, my sites, and eventually, will probably assist in putting me out of business.
So, sometimes it isn't simply about freedom of speech, or some how your rights are being tossed out the window, or DRM implementation issues, etc. Sometimes, most times actually, it's about total cost of doing business and being able to continue to do business.
Amazon's actions are clearly and undeniably sexist. There's no excuse for that kind of censorship, and I hope they change their position. Because manga is only another genre form, like literature, poetry, or film, rejecting gay manga is like rejecting homosexual themed media as a whole. If they're worried about media with heavy sexual content than they should censor straight themed media as well. There go the romance novels! Earlier this year AMAZON tried to publish a book about how to be a pedophile and get away with it. This censorship is yet another reason I do not support amazon. They definitely have they're priorities on backwards!
All the titles that were delisted were of legal age pairings and/or only implied sex (not hardcore). Sorry to burst your bubble.
The problem is that they're approaching a monopoly level of control. When a company even starts to approach that level of control, every action they take deserves increasing scrutiny and public deliberation.
In this particular case, I don't feel that censorship is too strong a term. When something was "banned in Boston" you could generally buy it at some place close to Boston. And it was still censorship. This is a "forbidding" that covers a much wider number of people than Boston ever held. The fact that (at least currently) you can still get the stuff elsewhere doesn't mean that it's not deserving of the term censorship.
N.B.: Originally the censor was an official of the Roman government. The term now has nothing to do with the Roman government. Later it was an office of the Catholic Church. I believe that that church still has such an office, but it's not what is meant when the word is commonly used. So I have no trouble with it being applied to a large powerful corporate entity, even if it's neither a government nor a religion.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Who was talking about child porn? or NAMBLA?
These are romance novels-- the majority of this material I don't even believe qualifies as "softcore".
Can someone mod this dimwit as "troll", please?
So are they just being homophobic or do they remove all sexually explicit managa?
I guess I can still get Yuri from our Amazonian overlords?
From wikipedia: "pubescent or older"
You're the most recent editor of the page but you didn't even bother to remove the stuff that didn't agree with whatever fucked up agenda you're pushing in trying to link everything gay with child rape. Your trolling throughout this article is weak, repetitive, and pointless... it is essentially yaoi of its own (it has "no climax, no point, no meaning"). People have repeatedly quoted the descriptions of the yanked titles but you have yet to respond to any of them.
Weekend Lovers:
King of Debt:
Feel free to present your exceptional evidence to support your exceptional claim that the banned titles are "kiddy porn". Or, for that matter, that they have anything to do with rape.
That's funny, coming from a furry.
"We, Amazon, choose not to stock a particular item" != "Censorship"
This is no different to walking around any shopping mall in the world and discovering that book & magazine retailers do not stock pornographic magazines or videos - or if they do then it's in a location where only adults can purchase it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
"whatever fucked up agenda you're pushing in trying to link everything gay with child rape."
if you read the wikipedia article, it basically proves that THEY are the ones trying to link 'everything gay with child rape'. that is my problem with it. these are child molestation comics, and they are trying to present it as 'homosexual comics'. gay rights people have been fighting this stereotype for years, but the child abuse people keep wanting to conflate the two, as if somehow its 'liberation' to be able to molest children. so im not the one doing the conflating, the NAMBLA people are.
as for trying to say 'oh this title and this title were banned, and they are not really about child molestation'...great! fine. maybe its not what it looks like. maybe amazon is just screwing up or something. maybe amazon messed up.
however, thats not the argument the pro- yaoi people are using - they didnt mention which specific titles are banned. they dont care. so why should i have to mention them when refuting their argument? their argument is not about specific titles, it is about the whole category of yaoi, which they portray as 'cutesy man-on-man action for women', which is clearly not true, and clearly disingenuous and clearly not accurate. yaoi, as a genre, is about children molesting each other, including anal rape, which is explicitly mentioned in the wikipedia article. these people are trying to argue that white is black and up is down. its simply not true.
these so-called freedom activists do not give a flying fuck about freedom of speech for other people (certainly, they right now wish i were banned off slashdot).
...and is it true that the word "manga" translates to "...and I have no social life"?
Solzhenitsyn? Shakespeare? Niemöller? 1984? I seen all of this and more in this discussion.
We're talking about a PRIVATE business deciding that it doesn't want to sell something that is generally smut. And I'm not even saying "smut" is bad nor am I making a moral judgement but can we PLEASE stop trying to elevate said smut to something it isn't.
There are still places to buy this stuff. This is like being up in arms because fucking Wal-Mart decides not to sell something. Who the fuck cares? Stop doing business with them or whatever if this offends you or conjures images of a dark future where a Hilter-like dictator tells you that you can't read The Gulag Archipelago.
I don't even care that Amazon is selling dildos and Danielle Steele novels or that Newt Gingrich reviews a ton of books om their site. I don't care if banning Yaoi is "hypocritical." Amazon isn't obligated in any way to be anything but arbitrary. It is a gigantic corporation interested in one thing: the bottom line. That's it. It has no agenda beyond that. It has no particular moral stance beyond that.
The SANE people around here will buy our smut elsewhere (and the intelligent of us know that paying for smut in the age of the internet is a waste of money anyway).
Talk about a bunch of self-important pricks trying to make something about a non-issue. I mean holy fuck. Solzhenitsyn? In a fucking discussion about Yaoi? Fuck you people. For real. Get a fucking life.
yaoi, as a genre, is about children molesting each other
No, it isn't. You have "yaoi" confused with "shotacon."
Yeah, because child porn which is illegal is equivalent to legal, adult porn.
Yours is no different than a "think of the children" argument.
The yaoi being pulled here isn't child porn. The publisher states all character from pulled are over 18yo. They aren't stupid either.
And maybe you missed the point where Amazon continues to sell the print version.
btw, Amazon sells Lolita in the Kindle store. I guess a written description of child porn is legal, but a graphic version of adult sex isn't.
"Newzflash: private company decides it would rather not sell a specific type of, er, literature. Gnashing of teeth and wailing of lamentations erupts on Slashdot. No film at 11 'cuz we've got way more important things to cover."
Hey, wait a minute! I can't buy Triple-D titty magazines at the magazine rack in Ralph's, either! CENSORSHIP!!1!!2!! If I can't buy Big Busty Anal Plumpers at Vons, then the terrorists have already won. Or something. And, um, oh yeah! HITLER!
thats not the argument the pro- yaoi people are using - they didnt mention which specific titles are banned.
RTFblog post instead of ranting wildly then. DMP named names, they are where I got the descriptions from. And yes, even though the titles involve 20+ year olds, they are still yaoi, because yaoi as a genre is not "about child molestation". Some yaoi titles include child molestation (of adolescents, to separate this discussion from the people pointing out that yaoi using prepubescent kids exists but is a separate genre), but guess what? The US publishers don't want to be sued any more than amazon wants to be sued, so they don't publish those titles here. The closest they'll come will be "high school" where the character is probably a senior and therefore at least possibly legal. For more information on the subject of what can get published in the US, look at the drama surrounding the license and cancellation of Kodomo no Jikan (which would have been named "Nymphet" here in the US, which can probably be made into a much safer and more on-topic search, or you can just read through the associated news entries here). The license was announced shortly after the series began in Japan, while it was still relatively tame. By the time the main character (a 3rd grade girl) pretended to give a phallic-looking water fountain a blow job, the US publisher had given up. Not even a single volume was published here, and that was loooong before the story got to the point where an older man was spreading vapor-rub on the little girl's chest, or the girl was learning how to insert tampons. (BTW, the author of Kodomo no Jikan is a woman. No clue where you've gotten your conceptions of the impeccable purity of the female kind that you demonstrate throughout your rants. Your inability to imagine them schlicking to gay porn is your own problem, not everyone else's.)
As for the portrayal of rape, Japan's view of it is no less disturbing than the American view that prison rape is funny and/or deserved. If you don't think so, think again, because kids go to prison (or "juvenile detention facilities") too.
Finally, as for the "Boy's Love" or "BL" title for the wider genre (including the non-pornographic titles, which is generally implied to be excluded from "yaoi") in Japan, they use english like we use japanese: excessively and incorrectly. "Boy" only refers to the gender, not the age. Amusingly enough, amazon.co.jp includes all manga, anime, and "BL" as a single category, which leads to rather bizarre emails from them: "You bought and liked Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. Here's some gay books from the same department that are pretty popular!" (I've mostly trained that out but recently I've been getting an onslaught of recommended radio play/drama CDs that look gay as hell)
Neither yuri nor yaoi are necessarily hentai. They refer to *anything* that's gay or lesbian in manga and anime. Amazon has only decided these titles are pornographic recently, and at least one of them was classified as romance and not erotica before.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Fair enough, I should have made the distinction.
Well allllll-right. I've got to thank you for introducing me to my new favorite word: yuri.
"The More You Know"
Yaoi removed, but not the yuri? Is it ok when it's girls, but not boys? Minor double standard from Amazon here then.
You're completely missing the point. I intended to lay out a broad swath of erotic fiction. I wasn't conflating them with child porn, because none of it is child porn. It's fiction. There is no act of any kind involving children, direct or indirect; there is no victim; there is no perpetrator, there is no harm, any more than there is a perpetrator or harm when a story describes or illustrates a beating, a murder, an explosion, a hijacking, an assassination, a mugging. These are stories. Fiction. Imaginary events.
There is absolutely no justification for you, or anyone else, to say that such fiction cannot be written, sold or read, or to prejudge these works by how much, or why, you imagine the reader(s) would enjoy the reading experience. Parents serve, as always, as the conduit of permission(s) as to what constitutes acceptable fiction for their own children; but others have no legitimate role in serving as said conduit for any adult, or for that matter, for anyone else's children. Despite the occasional misguided law to the contrary; despite your deep distaste for the subject at hand, whatever events the story might describe - eating meat, murder, sexuality, slavery, mythology, republican legislative plans, or perhaps ideas, concepts or events even more horrible than those.
Anyone who conflates fiction with reality is an idiot. Anyone who tries to enact anti-fiction legislation or actual censorship (meaning, restricts adult readers or minor readers with parental permission from said fiction) is a meddling idiot. Anyone who succeeds is an enemy of society, the arts, and freedom in general. And very much unlike issues of writing, selling and reading fiction, that is a situation where society, if it were even slightly in it's collective right mind, should exact severe punishment.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The yaoi being pulled here isn't child porn. The publisher states all character from pulled are over 18yo.
I've seen some of this stuff. The publisher is lying.
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In other words, in your imagination, the characters are 10 years younger than they claim to be.
Since Day 1 I have been an avid buyer at Amazon, and even self-published a book in Kindle. If you keep on delisting books and not even give a reason why, I may feel obliged to change to other publisher that doesn't feel it has the right to censor what I can read. Although I do love Kindle, Nook may just fit my needs too. I assume you guys at Amazone are monitoring this site, so I expect a private answer from you within a week (or a public, well publicized one would suffice).
Apparently I will be signed as Anonimous Coward because I didn't feel like signing in. Well, my name is Rafael Bernal and you Amazon guys will find me easily in your data base.