Slashdot Mirror
Paypal Forces E-Book Publisher To Censor Erotic Content
hey! writes "On February 18 of this year, global giant payment processor PayPal sent eBook publisher Smashwords an ultimatum: if Smashwords didn't remove all eBooks with certain erotic content from its catalog in the next several days, PayPal would immediately stop handling payments. Smashword's TOS already precluded child pornography, but now PayPal wants them to also censor depictions of consenting, non-related adults acting out incest fantasies. Likewise, fantasy novels in which human characters transform into non-humans are affected if those characters have sex. ZDNet has a summary of the impact of these changes, which would among other things ban Vladmir Nabokov's Lolita. As outrage mounts, finger pointing is in full swing. Smashwords blames PayPal, and PayPal blames the banks it deals with. The crux seems to be that erotica buyers have a higher rate of 'chargebacks' — customers who buy stuff then demand their money back. Fair enough, but is a customer really more likely to return a book because it depicts one kind of fantasy between consenting adults vs. another? Perhaps the problem is just the quality of writing."
Note: as you can probably tell from the summary, the linked articles (while factual in nature) discuss subjects that may not be suitable for workplace reading.
It's not enough that you want unfettered access to remove funds at whim from my bank account. Now you want to decide what I read too? Yet another reason to NOT use Paypal ever...
Likewise, fantasy novels in which human characters transform into non-humans are affected if those characters have sex.
Please?
Check your premises.
PayPal wants them to also censor depictions of consenting, non-related adults acting out incest fantasies.
Someone better tell George Martin not to use Paypal.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Everybody switch to bitcoin and put these losers outta business!
Down with this sort of thing!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
And Shakespeare.
A Midsummer's Night's Dream anyone?
Check your premises.
Does anyone really doubt that if you purchased a book that fantasizes incest.. and ANYONE else finds out about it, the first words from your mouth are: "my card was stolen"
Unless it's your sister who finds out... ;)
I deleted my Paypal account six outrages ago.
Every week I read about how some small business got burned by Paypal. However I have yet to encounter any business willing to drop Paypal and use the competition.
Petitions and strongly worded blog posts will not change Paypal's behavior. Only thing that matters is lost business.
When asked to comment, Paypal representatives responded, "If you don't like it, you can yiff in Hell".
Seems like this is just the kind of break Dwolla needs to bring some much needed competition to the PayPal universe.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Have gnu, will travel.
The Song of Ice and Fire series is fine, because it's not "non-related adults acting out incest fantasies" ... it's actual incest!
Forgive my ignorance, but I'm pretty sure there was some incest in the bible somewhere, especially considering that whole "we're all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve" thing...
But such a solution would not be a GOOD solution. The proposed solution is far worse than the crime a few people have committed.
Similarly, Pay Pals' actions are far worse than the complaint of higher charge backs.
Here, I have another solution: Figure out how many charge backs are common in a single year. Add one to that number, call it "the C Limit". Pay pal simply states that any book that has reached it's C limit can not be paid for using Pay Pal.
But that means actual WORK has to be done by Pay Pal.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Did they also request removal of works with aliens who turn into humans and have sex with real humans?
It's been used in a Hollywood movie.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
There are many things you are not allowed to accept money for on PayPal. Most of them are illegal, but some, like guns and erotica, are not. But I do remember in PayPal's TOS that they did exclude sellers from taking payments for adult material.
So yeah, don't take PayPal and then complain because YOU didn't follow the rules.
However I will grant that the definition of what is, and isn't 'erotica', could be subject to wild swings of interpretation. However any merchant with enough volume has their own merchant account and doesn't need PayPal anyhow, so shouldn't need to worry about PP's interpretation.
Until PayPal is regulated by the federal government as a bank properly (which they are, de facto) only an idiot would do business with them.
Actually, it was the other way around not too long ago. With the first Humble Indie Bundle, there was still some piracy. Unlike the usual execs, the people behind it asked why? The largest response was because they inly took Paypal. Now they take Amazon and Google Checkout as well. Yep... Boycotts work.
I could mention Alabama, but I won't.
I think you forgot how not to mention Alabama...
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
No. The problem is that a company doing payment processing oversteps its authority by making conditions on what those payments may be made for. The only legitimate condition they can put is that the money transaction is not for some illegal purpose. Anything else is simple none of their matter. What's next? Streets which come with restrictions on what books people in the passenger seats may read when driving on it? Garbage collection with the condition that your garbage doesn't contain condoms? Television channels which restrict the type of food you may eat while watching?
If they think those books are illegal, they should call the police. If not, they should shut up and process the payments, because that's what they get paid for.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
There is plenty of erotic literature for free on the net in the first place. Second why not use your cc directly? I killed my Paypal-account last year because they changed their policy once again (in their advantage of course). Plus their attitude against Wikileaks reason enough to end relations with them.
I hate to defend anything PayPal does - but they're absolutely telling the truth here: their partner banks are complaining (for whatever stupid, arbitrary reason), and they risk having those accounts closed (read: kill the company) if they don't stop providing merchant services for the seller in the article. One of the things that screws you over when you're only pretending to be a bank.
Don't get me wrong - I'd love to see paypal refuse to comply with their partner banks and get shut down, but we all know that's not going to happen. There's a ton of stupid things they do that are certainly their fault, but this is (based on my own experience with bitchy partner banks) not one of them.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
People who buy porn have more chargebacks because the companies that sell porn tend to be bigger scumbags than other companies. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of porn related chargebacks are the result of either not getting an item you paid for or getting something that has been substantially misrepresented.
I left Paypal about six months ago. I'd never been screwed over by them, but I saw so many other people getting screwed, that I felt why leave myself open like that? Because I have used Paypal to purchase porn in the past.
Leaving and cancelling my account was almost alarmingly easy. Just delete a few things, clean up the history, then click on the "delete account" button. *bink* Done.
No blubbery emails, no phone calls, no nuthin, just a "Thanks" and a slamming door. And I had a merchant account from selling stuff on eBay, too.
I think this is one of those cases where Paypal is making so much money, they honestly don't need to give a shit.
[End Of Line]
Why? They've shown their true colors long ago.
Of course, if you care more about convenience than you do about their censorship and not standing up for what's right if it might cost them a buck, go ahead.
It's your choice. It always was.
They would actually have to read the book first to know what's in it.
Slashdot is not one person, there are many people with many ideas.
There's just you and one other person (who can type REALLY fast).
I'm sure this has been asked on previous /. PayPal horror posts, but...
Does anyone know of a good alternative to PayPal? As far as function goes, PayPal works really well for me. It allows me to easily buy and sell things on bricklink.com (a LEGO marketplace), it has a worldwide acceptance that pretty much ensures compatibility with the user on the other of the transaction, and it handles currency conversions.
Of course, all the moral side of things, PayPal blows. So is there an alternative? Or am I to continue bending over, taking it in the ass, and then thanking them for the privilege afterwards?
This isn't something new or arbitrary, Paypal has an Acceptable Use Policy and sexual material isn't accepted:
That of course doesn't make it any better, it shouldn't be Paypals business what people are buying over their system.
Oh Shit, My Wife Found Out
You see the same thing is hotels.
Except that *books* labeled as erotica are usually written by women and targeted at a female audience. This is just the explicit end of the romance market. I have a friend who's a published author of urban fantasies whose editors keep pushing her to be more explicit.
I have another friend who writes squarely in the insert-tab-a-into-slot-b world of erotica. She *loathes* pornography, which she regards as demeaning to women, but I am at a loss to say how what she writes is not pornography. It describes a wide variety of sex acts employing various orifices, limbs, and items, in minute detail -- far more detail than is needed to carry the plot forward -- purely for the excitement and pleasure of the reader. And this author's fans discuss her work quite openly on blogs and on Amazon, even showing up at book signing events to have their pictures taken with her.
If I had to venture an anonymous guess, "erotica" is simply pornography written by respectable, middle-class women for an audience of respectable, middle-class women.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
But for that matter, the other processors often aren't much better. I know of one that requires sites to have absolutely no references to celebrities in them whatsoever-- not just the prose (or whatever they're selling), but right down to posts on any forums they're running, and probably even the advertisements too.
Shapeshifting in the Bible? No.
Incest in the Bible? Genesis 19:30-38.
If you think that's bad, you should read about how our kind, loving god killed every first-born child in Egypt just because their leader wouldn't let go of a bunch of his slaves. Yep, killed kids right in their cribs over a political conflict they had nothing to do with. With a god like that, who needs a Satan?
Seriously, most Jews and Christians have no idea what's really in there. And what they do know is filtered through a bunch of distortions introduced by subsequent religious leaders (often codified in the Talmud and other interpretations). They can quote verse after verse, but they haven't once sat down and considered the big picture, or really took a hard look at the text as an outsider might.
So, as Penn and Teller once observed, religion is really all about picking and choosing the parts of the text you like, and ignoring or downplaying the ones you don't.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.