Slashdot Mirror
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."
Who decides? Isn't this a Shade of Grey here? Think that book will get banned as well, as popular as it is? (never read it and never will, but am aware of its cultural significance)
Fahrenheit 451?
"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"
This is completely untrue. What WH Smith have decided to do is take down their site until they can be sure that no self-published books turn up in keyword searches, because some really un-child-friendly books have been turning up for quite innocuous searches (like 'daddy').
It's not really an overreaction in any country which has the Daily Mail.
Every time we complete some sort of cycle, discover a new tribe, a new people, new nation or continent, new media, new format, new distribution whatever, there's always this stupid witch hunt. -Oh no a person is saying/writing/portraying things I don't agree with, this must stop right now. Democracy is bad. Censor that shit right away! -burn all those books.
To make it worse there's this pseudo fanatical craze to get rid of nudity with a passion but violence? not so much. somehow nudity is worse...reminds me of the MPAA rating system. Sure you can show blood, but the naked human body? are you out of your mind?!
This is always the problem with controlled distribution, formats and media. Someone decides what's best for you.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Lots of opportunity for businesses that know you can't please everyone and that just because some people are loud doesn't mean you have to pay attention to them.
I assume. I can't actually read it, it's banned because Wiston and Julia have sex while Big Brother is watching and that's incest or something.
This November 5th, burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes on top of a pile of erotic literature.
This is what digital books are going to get you , censorship, on the fly redactions and corrections to appeal to current political climates, and a simple refusal to sell anything that in anyway displeases the power elite.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Because that's chock full of incest, and we wouldn't want to apply our arbitrary rules inconsistently, would we?
I am sick and tired of this. That is why I vote republican. And so should you. Are you a baby killer? Are you a paedophile? Do you want your daughters to become whores? These books only serve their agendas. Do the right thing and flush them out! NOW!
Store owners are free to carry whatever books they want. This is a market opportunity.
Stop bitching and open your own store for these kinds of books (e-erotica? oof...). Evidently there's some space to make money here.
They may be going too far in their deletions, but whether you like it or not, it IS their business and choice. Censorship has to do with government actions, not the decisions of private businesses.
This was one of the main functions of the now-despised middlemen, the commerical publishing houses and record labels. While everyone liked to gripe about "the junk they're coming out with these days", there is junk and then there's J-U-N-K.
I predict we'll see some startups in this space, which are really publishing houses in disguise (maybe it'll be based on some kind of +1 type model).
So are they going to refund the billion dollars they sold of 50 Shades of Gray? Or is the difference not in content but in sales?
lol captcha is "modest"
Erotica and romance novels are two completely different categories. Romance novels usually have some sort of plot or story that would function just fine without the smut. Erotica (aka plot? what plot?) would suffer as a story with the smut stripped out because it takes up the bulk of the content. So that's why erotica is being targeted, but romances are left alone. It has nothing to do with the gender of the authors or the target audience. (Romance novels are also usually 300+ pages unless you're looking at the Harlequin book of the month types, which is why they're not shrink wrapped at the store. Those seeking smut don't have the pages to sit through 250 pages of exposition.) -- Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I myself like Japanese anime and culture, and have read a few doujinshi which feature young anime characters in sexual situations, but...
>The National Crime Agency warned on Sunday that books appearing to legitimise child abuse "might feed the fantasies of paedophiles and in some cases encourage child sexual abusers to commit contact offences".
I'm sorry, but that's just bullshit.
Maybe we should ban first person shooters too because it might legitimize murder and encourage people to commit actual offences...
Anyone who can't tell the difference between an actual, human person and fictional character(s) are no different than the ones who abuse children, or murder, or rape women...
The concern isn't about erotica being sold in a bookstore. Rather, it's a proliferation of ILLEGAL erotica in LEGAL businesses.
Example #1: Proliferation of beastiality content in the UK, where beastiality is illegal.
Example #2: Incest, pedo-bear, and rape stories mixed in with children's books.
Example #3: RTFA
There's nothing wrong with some teautiful bitties, but if you ask for a book of bedtime stories to read your kid, and the store clerk points you to "Daddy Incest Volume #3," then there's a problem. That's what's going on here. And it is a problem.
Well, not that i am into erotica, but I dislike being told what I am being allowed to read by private company.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
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 ----
After Amazon pulled the first revokation, I decided that ebooks were no longer a viable option. Then Paypal decided to go after Smashwords (who's doing the censoring here? The god damn fucking Church - any god damn organized religion. Well kill em all and let god sort em out is beginning to sound more and more effective as it'll immediately reduce the worlds fucking population and it'll get rid of all of the hypocritcs and folks that think their religion is better then anyone elses. Sorry fucktards but I believe that religion is the curse of the Empire for the express purpose of keeping us Humans out of space since we're to damn dangerous for the rest of the universe to handle. "Danger!! Human!! High Explosive. Do Not Touch!!"
http://www.gutenberg.org/
Sufficient public smash-mouth suppresses pervo minorities just as they should be suppressed. NO ... you have **no** affirmative rights! Keep yo fly zipped; don't shite on my table. CRUNCH (sound of well-maintained iron bootheel ...). An unarmed man may walk from Corinth to Athens without fear of a knife & yet W/O Gub'mnt over-reach. Also leads to a slimy, vigorous underground black-market culture ... which is exactly where outre' fringe, cosmopolitan, bohemian, masterbative and cult behavior ought to be expressed. Now take yo bytch-slapping and shut-up.
In this case, it's working like The Thought Police, but hey, at least it's responding to all the "think of the children" bleating. Right?
Murder in eBook: meh ...
War crimes in eBook: meh
Domestic violence in eBook: meh
Genocide in eBook: meh
Fraud in eBook: meh
Erotica in eBook: (in the voice of Darth Vader) NOOOOO!!!111
Where exactly is far?
But I love that webcomic!
So we can't buy bibles on line anymore?
Have gnu, will travel.
In one of Anne Rice's witches novels, a 13 year old girl ("Mona" IIRC) seduces her uncle.
Has that book been deleted?
As with “barely legal” pornographic films, which seek to satisfy base urges associated with illegal and immoral acts while circumventing laws against depictions of underage sex, many of the titles listed on Amazon protest loudly that rape victims are “over 18”.
WTF!
We are talking about books and fiction - no real people were involved!
Jesus Mother Fucking Christ people! You REALLY need to get a fucking grip!
Oh wait, "The Kernel" - some dipshit little online magazine looking for hits by posting dumbass crap.
Never mind. I just wasted 5 minutes on bullshit written by a bullshitter posted by a shit site.
Please ban the following books as a threat to an Orderly Society. Also, the children. KThxBye!
* The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
* The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
* The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
* To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
* The Color Purple by Alice Walker
* Ulysses by James Joyce
* Beloved by Toni Morrison
* The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
* 1984 by George Orwell
* The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
* Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
* Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
* Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
* Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
* Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
* Animal Farm by George Orwell
* The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
* As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
* A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
* Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
* Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
* Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
* Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
* Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
* Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
* Native Son by Richard Wright
* One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
* Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
* For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
* On the Road by Jack Kerouac
* The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
* The Call of the Wild by Jack London
* To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
* Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
* Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
* The World According to Garp by John Irving
* All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
* A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
* The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Not only should they remove "50 Shades of Grey", they should also remove "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by DH Lawrence, Nabokov's "Lolita" and Erica Yong's "Fear of Flying", as well as the pictures of all those pornographic statues like Michelangelo's "David", Myron's "Discobolus" or Rodin's "Thinker". The breast of Justitia, the Roman Goddess of justice so frequently depicted in courts as a crazy topless chick with some hardware her hands, should also be decently covered. Sex is bad because the lack of parking lots here in the NYC is a straightforward result of sex. Congestion on the highways, too. I know that Bible says "be fruitful and multiply", but this is ridiculous! Has any of those "be fruitful and multiply" proponents actually tried driving on the LIE on Monday morning? Sex should be banned, period!
Smashwords? No way! So the IRE I felt about that should automatically apply here?!? Get the pitchforks out.
Should we storm the castle or the "journalist" that writes crappy summaries like that?
Good news!
I just checked. The Diamond Club is still available.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Diamond-Club-Patricia-Harkins-Bradley-ebook/dp/B008PUNSW4
this why only having one app / content store is bad.
And why we should stop MS and apple from adding more lock in to the desktop like there phones have.
Has Amazon deleted any of these questionable books from people's Kindles?
-- hendrik
O'Reily and Pragmatic Bookshelf and Baen all publish in major formats (pdf, epub, mobi, etc), all DRM-free.
The problem is when you can only get books from one location you are screwed.
Also, the fact that Amazon can retroactively wipe books off the Kindle means even after the sale, they can Take It Back, like if you buy a book from a brick and mortar and they follow you out to your car, throw you up against the side, rifle through your bag, take your book and then drop some coin on the ground (your "refund").
In real life, they'd get shot. Online, they get more money.
That is ripe with incest and preteen sex, child brides and sex slaves as well as rape. Also, any medieval based works, most post-apocalyptic or fantasy settings that involve royalty since they always seem to bang their sisters or aunts or mothers, oh and Shakespeare too in that case. Seriously, they just eliminated pretty much every major work in the last 2000 years...oh and the Bible and other religious works. It was nice reading (most) of you.
For those that have watched the cult classic Rollerball with James Caan, they will understand where this all leads. To a world with virtually no physical books, all of which are on computer where those in charge can remove whatever they want.
For those younger readers of slashdot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451
We don't need firemen to burn books now, we just need Amazon and all the big corps that control the various e-readers to send 'censor with extreme prejudice' packets [I've made that up, but it'll come] to those naughty people who read naughty books. We must think of the children, mustn't we?
And of course the next thing is radicalism [people really need protecting from Karl Marx don't they] and unpalatable material [people need protecting from Mein Kampf too]. Let's not forget cult movies etc. which we can dump in the constant change of format from VHS to DVD to Blueray to next-profitable thing.
The world will be really lovely when we've finished all this, just Disney, idiot talent competitions and gameshows. Personally, I can't wait, can you? Meanwhile, I'm stocking up on physical books whilst they're still available, that way they have, at least, come around and break the door down to get them.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
The same author on the same site spent quite an article in defense of sexual abuse.
http://www.kernelmag.com/comment/column/6000/in-defence-of-revenge-porn/
So I guess to him, sexual abuse is bad, except when he does it, then it's his right to do so.
Amazing, the only way to read psychoanalysis is from the library.....
I wonder what Sigmund Freud would say about the hidden message here.
Of course, it's in the name of good taste, so it's all good and above the bedsheets. Trust the British to rekindle Victorian times on the intarwebz. Not that others won't do (or aren't doing) similar things, mind. It isn't at all difficult either. Just kick up enough of a stink that notoriously puritan Capitalist American companies will quickly chasten their offerings. People's frail sensibilities always have trumped other people's freedom of expression.
Way back in 2011, Amazon already started censoring what they choose to sell - it was reported right here on SlashDot.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/05/15/0254250/amazon-removes-yaoi-manga-titles-from-kindle-store
Since then, I boycotted them. Looks like another bunch of companies just made the list.
QuestionableBooks.com could be a real money maker.
Who cares? Anybody who wants can still peddle their porn on the internet.
really.
Books don't need to be banned.
If you don't like what is written in a book, don't read it.
"It'll be our little secret, whispered daddy."
A good old fashioned Book Burning! Yea... That's the ticket!
I'll start the fire, you all go get your bad books to burn... Anybody know how to burn an E-Book?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Amazon has always had a hypocritical "do as we say, not as we do" attitude toward adult content on affiliates' websites. I once had a site delisted because there was a link to some of Seth Warshevky's strippers on it. Reading between the lines here, it seems it's ok as long as you're selling through them. Less a "morals" issue than a dollars one. So, Amazon busted? Oh, my heart is just breaking.
Ban them all! I don't want to read this kind of xxxx anyway, because it differs from my xxxxx view. Censor everyxxxxx, it's all xxxx xxxxxxx. And furthermore, xxxx xx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxx. Censorship is xxxx!
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
So at what temperature does an e-book burn?
Montag, you're a fireman!
So, lemme get this straight, they are going to ban all erotica, but "50 Shades of Grey" is still a top seller, right?
Only books from relatively unknown authors, eh? Yeah, that's not showing any favoritism... Why not shut down the entire Amazon self-publishing arm?
There's this book I'd like to ban... It's called the Bible, and more people have been murdered via this book than all the guns, videogames, territorial wars, and other sources combined. It is truly evil and needs to be abolished.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
If Amazon etc aren't willing to host this content then we need a distributors that are willing.
Some sort of self publishing publisher where anyone can host a book for almost nothing. It has to be kindle compatible etc.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
For nearly sixty years, even as a child, pornography never once attacked me or did me any harm. If pornography is harmful, wouldn't breast feeding cause irreparable damage to a child?
Every major body in the UK (political, social, business, media etc) is headed by Tony Blair loyalists. The situation mirrors Russia, where Putin loyalists control every key aspect of that nation. Blair and Putin are like blood-brothers, and it was Blair who personally protected Putin from the wrath of the EU at a time when Putin was waging his own genocidal wars. Putin, of course, first came to power on the back of another 9/11-style false flag, the Moscow Apartment Block Bombings.
Tony Blair, when he took his warmongering to a whole new level (leading to the holocausts we are seeing play out in Libya and Syria), appeared to leave official office, and using his new status as a Roman Catholic, created a 'multi-faith' organisation which he heads. This organisation was used as the trojan horse to recruit traitors within both Syria and Libya, who would then oversee (with the promise of billions of dollars placed in their collective Swiss bank accounts) 'revolutions' against the popular (and previously extremely stable) regimes. In both these cases, Islamic extremists of the most depraved category were promised absolute control of these 'Muslim' nations that actually had effectively secular governments.
When you use religion, as Blair does, you MUST work the pseudo-moral angle. You tell people, via the mainstream media you control, that they MUST have constant concern about what their neighbours read, think, watch, and do in their bedrooms. We all know that prurient interest in the lives of others is a form of sexual fetish in itself. Seeing people 'crucified' for their sexuality has been the main form of titillation in the tabloid press forever.
All normal Humans indulge in sexual fantasy. For females, so-called 'rape' fantasies rank no.1 in all accurate surveys. Fantasy is just that- fantasy- and DOES NOT represent any desire to bring real world atrocities into the lives of the people enjoying the fantasy. Therefore the fantasy of 'rape' is NOT the same class of thing as the real-life crime of rape, and more than computer game 'violence' is in any sense analogous to real violence.
Tony Blair knows this distinction is vulnerable to media attack campaigns, targeting the guilt mechanisms found in most Humans. "You are a pervert" is a VERY powerful attack phrase against most ordinary people. Activate guilt, fear, self-loathing, and witch-hunting, and you create a 'mob' of people ripe for every form of manipulation.
Blair wants the West to GO TO WAR. A global war. A new world war. For this to happen, he needs to activate mob mentality all across the West. In Britain, Blair is creating a Taliban 'morality' using the combined power of the Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Church of England hierarchy. Blair's manipulation of the Muslims is particularly vile, as he has the support of the Islamic extremists who wish to be the enforcers on the 'streets', and the senior Muslims that Blair has placed into positions of power. Ordinary British Muslims, who are almost entirely moderate and liberal, are being squeezed hard between these two Muslim power-bases that Blair controls.
Blair's 'moral panics' ensure almost EVERY male with some power or influence in the UK has aspects of their private life that Blair can use to blackmail them, via GCHQ full surveillance intelligence gathering. The example Blair sets in the UK is used by Blair as an ideal model of control that Blair sells to every world leader he meets (and Blair is on a constant round of political manipulation of the planet's most powerful people on a weekly basis- Obama does nothing without explicit guidance from Tony Blair, for instance).
The most interesting aspect about Blair's war against the BDSM lifestyle is that BDSM (and related sexual behaviour and thought) has long been considered the sexual 'deviancy' of the rich and powerful, the educated and the ambitious. In the UK, since the 60s, it has been a long-standing 'joke' that the most influential 'straight' British politicians all love to visit their "Miss Whiplash" whenever they have
What the fuck is The Kernel?
I'll just add this to the list on why I don't like eBooks. See, it's not book burning it's book deleting.
asstr.org
Be seeing you...
Where do I download my dinosaur porn after this:
http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/10/qa-the-women-who-write-dinosaur-erotica.html
http://www.thefrisky.com/2013-10-03/if-youre-into-dinosaur-porn-have-we-got-something-for-you/
(slightly NSFW)
OK so eons ago, there were erotica or hard core sexual books on shelves. And the righteous said ban them, burn them. People fought back, we create an adults only bookstore. Note the ADULTS ONLY part. And then the righteous said, "not in my neighborhood" and got those shut down. This happened around the same time as ADULTS ONLY entertainment places were being told, coverup or get out, until ADULTS ONLY is now only R rated entertainment.
Then comes the internet, now people can, FROM THE PRIVACY OF THEIR OWN HOME, download and watch / read any smut they want to. Sadly, the industry didn't protect it self and would allow itself to be associated to shady internet "in your face" practices, so the industry has received too much unwanted attention. It's a double edged sword, publicity = sales, but publicity = criticism. The industry has seemly caught on, make it private people will find it if they really want to, it' not that hard.... no pun intended.
Here some writers have some stories to sell, for most of us, sick and deranged, but stories none the less. Now people have paid for copies of these stories to read in the PRIVACY OF THEIR OWN HOME on their OWN devices and some pompous person says "not on my ebook provider".
I am not a proponent for censorship, never have been. I don't like what some people write so I choose NOT TO BUY, READ, OR WATCH it, but I'm certainly not going to stop someone else. What someone else is into is none of my freaking business, no matter how offended by it I may be.
Sadly I'm sure that if one eBook provider becomes the sole provider of everything smut someone will sue the provide or the author for what some other nutjob does wrong in society. I only wish we would enact the same logic with other things we think are bad. Do we punish the bullet manufacturer for the bullets or the store that sold them that are used in a crime? No? We still sell weapons and ammo.
Why then must we censor someone else's work?
I know I know you'll say, because it glorifies incest and rape.... It's sick and disgusting, but have you read books like "Fifty Shades of Gray"?
That story line is about ADULTS choosing to be CONSENTING ADULTS and doing things that are considered illegal in society (domestic abuse), tortured, etc... but they are about consenting adults doing these things.
Incest is disgusting, but shit we read about that in history books.
Rape is atrocious, but again we read about that in history books.
Time to ban everything bad or disgusting that ever happened that's ever been written about, whether it's based on fact or someone's fantasy.
Even Disney movies show kids or animal being abducted that's wrong, why aren't we banning those books and stories?
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
I'm laughing at all you who got rid of your printed books because you thought e-books were so damned cool. How are you enjoying your e-book that got deleted right off your e-book reader? Did that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, knowing that they can reach right into a device you legally own, in the privacy of your own home, and delete something you paid cash money for? Which, by the way, never really existed because it's just data? Or better yet: the fact that they can alter the contents of works you bought digitally, and you will never know the difference?
I'll continue sticking to my nice, old-fashioned printed-on-paper books, and likewise continue to be immune to the revisionism that you e-book whippersnappers are being plagued by now.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
They are "private" companies: it is not censorship, and they are free to run their business as they see fit. If you disagree with how they do it, then start your own business selling the stuff they won't. After all, if its legal and there's a market for it, all they did by walking away is open the door for a start-up. If there's no market, or you don't wish to tar yourself by association, then don't complain that they feel the same way.
Here's how I think it will go down: At least some of this stuff is worth too much money to just ignore. The big guys like Amazon will de-list stuff to satisfy the outrage, then quietly add most of it back. They'll put a new policy in place to limit the most extreme/gross stuff (which is fine with me), and then send notices to all the affected authors/publishers that they can re-submit their titles. 99% will be quietly reinstated, we won't miss or even notice the remaining 1%, and it will be as if nothing happened. If the outrage blows back up, they'll point to their new policy, pat themselves on the back and ignore it.
to the pleasure dome of reborn christians, and their war on words.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
They're just looking to kill self published books. Follow the money and I can bet that you'll find the major publishers behind this, either with outright bribes or astroturfing.
Censorship is WRONG. There isn't any way to satisfy everyone on what is and is not acceptable. Put a warning, make it difficult to get to, make it safe for the children.. but you CANNOT censor content 'correctly'. This is one of the greatest dangers of electronic cloud based media; everything is up for possible sanitzation at any time.
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
The owner of the store doesn't want my money, Thanks for the freebie.
I was wondering when this would happen. Ebook vendors tend to see the content as a part of their overall company profile, and dont want material sold through them which violates that profile. Most (real) bookstores, while of course making buying decisions, tend to be more lenient about content, and will have sections for books they may not approve of, IF the books sell. bookstores will also be more likely to stand up to any form of social censorship, let alone attempts at govt censorship. Ebook vendors are too afraid of their brand to allow such content. I think its inherent in the business model: when i find an ebook at B&N that has explicit content, im shocked myself-i expect their NOOK display units to be squeaky clean for some reason. If i find a racy paper book, im not shocked at all. The danger then is if this business model for ebook vending remains too self censoring, AND they eat away at the ability of paper book stores (both brick mortar and online) to move product. thats defacto censorship by the marketplace, and is nearly as dangerous as flat out govt censorship. PS in the brick mortar world, self published books are usually not accepted unless of local interest, or if the public demands it. self publishing creates this illusion that writing is democratic: if steven king can write and make money, so can i. it may be true that someone can make a buck from self publishing, and some works are of some quality, but most is abysmally poor quality. editors actually matter, and the demise of the editor is double plus ungood.
The argument that if people see something they might imitate it is just insane.
But if they are going to ban things for this reason, they should go all out 100.000000% Ban serious discussions (like this article) on the topics. Ban newscasts that discuss rape. Or better yet, let's ban Law and Order SVU because some people likely fap to the portrayed crimes. :P (people that watch enough of that crap learn to believe that every male on every street corner is keeping a kidnapped child hostage in their basement or something)
As a Christian, and I have mixed feelings. First, it's wrong to arbitrarily tell people "X is wrong" without justification. As humans we don't have true moral authority, we have to justify our actions. Only God has absolute moral authority.
That said, I can't tell you to ban a book about rape. Why? What if it's about the horrible Rape of Nanking or the history of a concentration camp? Shouldn't people know what happened so we learn from the mistakes of the past? Just because material of some kind is offensive doesn't mean it should be banned.
As far as explicit materials go, well, that's up to the reader to decide if he wants to put his book down. Laws and rules and human authorities never regulate censorship well. It always comes down to who is in power at the time and their feelings. If a material is going to be put aside into a special section or marked with a Scarlet Letter, there needs to be a good reason. That reasoning needs to be reviewed carefully and judiciously. Does X promote harming others? Could the information in Y be used by foreign entities to harm us? Those are sensible reasons for short-to-medium term censorship, but those rules are already in place. Further censorship is not needed.
I personally believe that chasing after explicit materials for personal arousal is wrong, but I can't and won't try to force you to stop. I can tell you that I believe it's wrong and give you reasons why, but it's your choice.
After all, this novel by Vladimir Nabokov explicitly depicts child rape.
when might becomes right.
You didn't REALLY think you were going to get publishing without censorshit, did you?
Publishers exist to profit off the creative works Period. Controversy is to be avoided at all costs.
Everyone wants to be Disney.
Thus, profit to the Capitalist is now the sword of propriety.
they appear to be running keyword searches and removing any title that mentions innocuous words like babysitter, sister, or teenager.
That statement is pure speculation. None of the linked articles has any evidence of this. The only mention of it is in the last link, to the-digital-reader.com, which says:
There is also The Nun’s Lover, which appears to have been removed simply because the description mentions the word sister.
But there is nothing to back up that assumption.
I just did a quick search for "erotica ebook store" and came up with:
www.ellorascave.com
www.ebook-eros.com
www.sirenpublishing.com
and of course, literotica.com is still free.
If Amazon, B&N and friends don't want that business, I'm sure these folks and others will be happy to have the extra customers. The nice thing about shopping on the internet is that all the stores are equally close.
The Dinosaur Erotica is safe. Apparently, Jeff Bezos understands that the love a woman feels for her diplodocus is high art, not smut.
A bunch of major semi-monopolies just voluntarily abandoned a cash-rich piece of their market and left it to smaller alternative distributors. I think this should be applauded. I won't believe even for a second that in the long term (6+ months) the authors of the targeted works will just starve and die, or that their readers will turn to something which Amazon&co. believe they should read. Just look at tpb - it's been hunted for 7+ years, and it's still here. And since the targeted books are not even illegal, there's no chance they will actually get killed. The whole market will just move to different distributors, strengthening the global e-book market in the long term. This time around, human stupidity is actually doing some good to the cause of liberty and free speech, since after today even politically oblivious housewives will have some pretty strong opinions about it :)
Maybe this is the straw that will break the camel's back of ebook DRM, as writers will then be forced to "truly" self-publish and people can then load the content themselves. (Or will force people to, you know, use their imaginations instead. Also a not undesirable outcome.)
Censorship based on the use of common words is something that happens all over these days. I have a few websites with Google Adsense on them. Google sends spam e-mails about "adult content" on a poetry site I have regularly. It's mostly poetry from the 16th, 17th and 18th century on that site. Words like "lover" trigger their malfunctioning bot. Webmasters have the choice between censoring perfectly normal content, and in my case poems, that no human in their right mind would have a problem with. I'm not shocked or amazed that this is happening with ebooks, Google has been doing this for a long time now. It reminds me of the book 1984. I'm glad this is getting some attention here today - because this is far more common than most people realize.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
While I find my Kindle a great device to read books on, it's important to separate the Kindle marketplace from the hardware. If your family members have to buy DRM laden books, show them how to strip it off. Show them where to get non-DRM'ed books as well. They can manage / upload their collection with Calibre or just copy the books to their Kindle's Documents folder. Show them how to archive off a copy (sans DRM) with their pictures and music.
If you can show them how to take control of what they've paid for, they can decide weather they want Amazon making this call for them. Unfortunately, you can't make them make the "right" decision.
Isn't all this just opening a new opportunity for players like Playboy to start e-publishing books that are refused by other publishers?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I remember Barnes & Noble making a big thing about how it supported banned books like Huckleberry Finn and The Lorax. They had signs and buttons reading "I read banned books!" all over the store.
I guess now its "I only read the books I'm allowed to read!"
There goes Game of Thrones then. There's incest in that book so we all know that just can't stand.
This is about the control of money. Self-publishers are not filling publishing corporations pockets. And e-pub could be even more profitable if the publishing corporations, faced with declining print sales, could control all self publishing and e-publishing. Starting with erotic and pornographic literature, you will see control, probably through legislation expand to all e-books, until no one will be able to self publish on the large sites like Amazon, Barnes And Noble, or the others. I expect that within five to ten years, you won't be able to put any of the e-book formats on a website without approval of a publisher and government.
I always let the censorship crowd find me new books to buy. too bad i'll have to get a e-reader for them.
Why is everyone blaming women for these books being removed from Amazon, etc.? If you think that only feminists oppose books about rape, incest, etc., you've been hiding in your parent's basement for too long. Believe it or not, the real world isn't 4chan. If Amazon doesn't want to be associated with that type of content, it's totally within their rights to refuse to carry it. This is a private business. They can carry or not carry whatever they want. If the bookstore down the street from you decided not to carry rape "erotica", would you call that censorship? I wouldn't. I would call it smart business sense.
ebookstores sell adult content in the erotica category
Who would even think to look for it there?
The poster used a semicolon but misspelled "too"... does that bother anyone else?
"Conservative" does not mean "favoring smaller government and more liberty"; that's "libertarian".
"Conservative" means "favoring things as they once were; opposing change".*
It's a mere historical coincidence that in recent history, change has been away from smaller government, and so libertarianism became conservative.
In older eras, change was toward smaller government, and conservatives were in favor of preserving the authority of the church and state. The Christian nutjobs still pine for those "good old days", and that makes them even more conservative than the libertarian type of conservative.
*(Strictly speaking "conservative" should be distinguished from "reactionary" in that the former favors preserving things as they are now, and the latter favors bringing back things that used to be, in which case all of the aforementioned "conservatives" are really "reactionaries" since society has already changed away from the way they wish it still was).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Free speech, censorship, and being able to sell something in someone else's store are not the same.
If an author feels censored, they can self publish or distribute freely. If they want a third party to help, they subject themselves to how that party wishes to be seen, and hamstring themselves by wanting to participate.
Walmart won't sell your book? Not censorship.
PayPal won't process your payment? Not censorship.
Yeah, Kobo have pulled all their self-published books. Even my children's book has been removed until further notice.
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Sign the anti-censorship petition at change.org. Currently it is accumulating signatures at the rate of 1 signature every four seconds. Today, Fifty Shades of Grey (virgin enslaved by a billionaire); tomorrow, Ender's Game (children enslaved by the military).
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Whom did Seth marry?
On the other hand, prior to a significant population bottleneck in the 17th century after creation of humankind, there weren't enough built-up deleterious mutations in the human genome to cause noticeable inbreeding depression. I guess that's why the commandment against incest didn't come until Leviticus nearly a millennium after the flood.
Too bad they also didn't filter any titles that begin with Twilight.
The Kernel is a yellow journalist paper in my view. There style and coverage is nothing else, they are not to inform. They are just out there to gain publicity and clearly some income, they don't run any advertisement and have no income from the looks of it and don't seem to be an subscription magazine either.
I wrote a longer article here on this, http://www.jonfr.com/?p=8058
Disclaimer: That is my website.
Begattin'
How long until we begin to question the innocence of people who still insist on having paper books as too many of us do when someone dares to invoke the 5th amendment? Bomb making materials no doubt. That Dr. Seuss cover is simply code, what the hell is in that hat?
Also: Admittedly I haven't seen Apple ever try to mess around with an "iBook" after release. Has anyone else? I'm sure they've got content restrictions that make the Chinese government seem lenient in some areas, but let's give the devil his due.
Adding an affiliate ID to the link. Classy.
Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
sell adult content in the erotica category. None of the content is actually illegal
Removing them is the wrong reaction. A better reaction would be to make a setting "Include erotica cateory in search results" (default off). And put the bible in that category, where it belongs.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Type "erotica" in the search for Nook ebooks, and there are 3441 hits. The first page has titles like Busting Cheerleader's Cherry, Banging the Babysitter, Busting Sister's Cherry, Raped and Loved, Mommy Tales,and Daddy's Little Playmate! (exclamation part of the title). It's the same at Amazon. The big players know "smut" could be spelled "$mut."
Interestingly, my own favorite author is still available --
http://www.amazon.com/True-Confessions-Male-Addict-ebook/dp/B00BQS9HYA
What noise is this about books being banned when they are clearly not?
I want to report a book that is full of sex, lust, rape, incest, homosexual relationships, etc., etc. Why don't they ban this book? Its' title is the Bible!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
It's not just questionable content, but directly aimed at "Amateur Authors" . Yes some have snuck in what would be called pornography, but the response is to ban all self published authors which is not only censorship, but discrimination. It's sad that cleaning up things is being done by painting all Amateur Authors with such a wide brush. I find the actions of these firms as disgusting as the books mentioned. The Kernel "appears to be some old guy with an over developed sense of propriety" or an old maid masquerading as one. But anyone can be anyone on the internet
censorship
deleting (parts of) publications or correspondence or theatrical performances
a publisher suddenly deleting books that where in their catalog (and 2 of those publishers are deleting virtually all of the selfpublished stuff not just erotica) definately falls into censorship.
as it's a private party doing it it's not illegal, but that does not make it any better a practice
I already took down my non-fiction books from B&N and Kobo in protest. Sales sucked on these two platforms anyway.