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Books With "Questionable Content" Being Deleted From ebookstores In Sweeping Ban
Nate the greatest writes "The Kernel started an uproar last week when they 'discovered' that the Kindle Store and other ebookstores sell adult content in the erotica category. None of the content is actually illegal, but it is icky enough that the major ebookstores decided to respond by removing anything even vaguely questionable. Unfortunately, they went too far, resulting in an act of censorship the likes of which we haven't seen since Paypal went after the indie ebook distributor Smashwords. The Daily Mail reports that WH Smith went so far as to shut down their website with the promise that it won't reopen until all self-published titles have been removed, and according to BBC News, B&N is also deleting content. Numerous authors have reported on KBoards that Amazon and B&N have removed far more than just the titles that feature questionable content like pseudo-incest; they appear to be running keyword searches and removing any title that mentions innocuous words like babysitter, sister, or teenager. And they're not the only ones; there's a new report that Kobo has jumped on the ban wagon as well."
Because that's chock full of incest, and we wouldn't want to apply our arbitrary rules inconsistently, would we?
Tomorrow dissident materials, then anything that anyone doesn't like. And don't forget they know who bought these e-books, that might be grounds for a search warrant.
Now, it is their right as a business not to carry anything they don't personally approve of, but it is a bad path we are heading down.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think a semi-rational argument, more than "sex bad violence good", is that kids are more likely to see sex and want to have sex than they are to see violence and want to be violent.
I agree with that much: where I disagree is that society as a whole needs to neuter itself to make absolutely sure they don't encounter anything which might turn them into perverts.
It's an important distinction: you need to understand the mindset of people you disagree with in order to convince them. Saying to them "Hey, prudes, violence is worse than sex" will at best make then include violence in with their censorship. The point you disagree with them on is that society should bend over backwards to accommodate children rather than leaving it up to parents to explain adult things to their kids. If kids don't have decent parents, they have bigger problems than seeing tits. It's probably still unlikely that you'll convince many people with that argument unfortunately, but I think it has a better shot of getting them to reconsider.
Who decides?
The owner of the store. They don't have to have fair or consistent rules. Deal with it or start/support a new store with like minded people.
These are eBooks. Amazon has demonstrated that not only can they yank books you "bought" back, they will. And not just books with questionable moral value.
It's one of the reasons I don't deal with them anymore.
Yeah, right. Pretty much all the booksellers around me have been driven out of business by Amazon or other ebook stores. No one is going to make a living opening an indie store around here. Even B&N is dead, and if they can't make it, who can? So suggesting you start your own store in reaction to the asinine censorship is, well, asinine. If you get so big you drive all competition out, then know what? Maybe you need to come under some form of regulation. That sort of thing applied to the Bell system, and there is no reason why the same thinking should not apply to the very few reasonably accessible outlets for publications.
Ezekiel 23:19-20:
(19)Yet she increased her whorings, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt (20)and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose emission was like that of stallions.
Or alternative translation:
(19)Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.
(20)For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.