Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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?
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
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.
kindle-feedback@amazon.com
I'm going to go ahead and be the first commenter on this article to own up to being a Yaoi fan. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to purchase a copy of The Color of Love.
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.
"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!
Yeah, I remember when I first read that, about ten years ago, I considered it completely unrealistic. Unfortunately today it doesn't seem unrealistic any more.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
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.
Send an email get a form letter. I suppose it's a steady income for some clerk in India.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have a comic book store. I sell paper books with yaoi manga, and believe me, *ALL* my yaoi customers are girls, mostly 16-20 years old. And I see them at conventions too, and it's scary how many of them are out there.
Here are some of the Yaoi titles I have:
http://www.arcanacomics.com.ar/coleccion/319
http://www.arcanacomics.com.ar/coleccion/199
http://www.arcanacomics.com.ar/coleccion/174
I think that's about it. BTW, they are sold out.
He probably would be... and would also see the larger point that a technology so easily deployed against what you or I wouldn't read is just as easily deployed against what we would.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Do a Google Image search for 'lesbian' with safe search off, I dare you*. Just because a word can bring up porn results doesn't mean it universally refers to porn.
Yaoi can (and often does) refer to porn, and Amazon has always censored hardcore pornographic titles. While I find this problematic in light of the Kindle lockdown (Amazon has done everything they can to prevent people from buying titles from anybody but Amazon), its not the issue here. The problem is that they are declaring Yaoi erotica (erotica is basically any HBO original show, ranging from things like True Blood to whatever that documentary on fetishes is called), which is allowed under Amazon policies if it isn't incest or child related, and declaring it to be hardcore simply because its male/male, and at least one of the titles wasn't even classified as erotica but as romance prior to the Amazon declaring it adult.
*Please don't do it if the results are going to get you into trouble.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
None of the censored titles are pornographic. Many of them are erotica (which according to Amazon is fine as long as its straight) and at least one was categorized as romance before Amazon recategorized it as adult.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
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?
I guess I can still get Yuri from our Amazonian overlords?
"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.
Yeah because if you can't find what you're looking for on the Kindle, then it must not be available anywhere! (At least, in some future world where the Amazon Kindle is the only device capable of exchanging information over the internet.)
When it comes to selling you stuff on your Kindle, Amazon is not a service provider, they are a merchant.
"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).
the whole 'female audience' thing is very likely to be utter fucking bullshit.
In Japan it is.
If you go to Japan and notice a bunch of old ladies reading comics, chances are you seeing the Yaoi section. (I went holy shit and started l started laughing when I realized it was true what they said when I walked through a store in Akihabara once)
Truth be told, not all Yaoi is pornographic. I'd wager the majority of it isn't in Japan. They have a weird sense of things. Like maid cafes and host clubs, they get off on subtle things like "dead Japanese parent syndrome" (where the plot of the story is the kids parents have died releasing them from their obligations... strange how so many Anime and Manga's have that plot line)
Anyways, my point is, that the stuff English speakers google is probably pornographic because that is what they expect from Japan while in reality Japan isn't all about sex.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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.
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.
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.
And which moron modded my previous post "troll"?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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