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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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
What about gods that merely look human having sex with humans? There goes half of the ancient mythologies.
Or gods as animals having sex with humans. (Looking at you Zeus)
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?
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).
On the plus side, it would at least take care of the entire Twilight franchise in one fell swoop. Vampires and werewolves are clearly not human. At best, it'd fall into necrophilia and bestiality.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune