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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."
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?
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.
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 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?
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.
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"
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...
Rape, incest, bestiality are some of the things being targeted. That isn't exactly just bare breasts. Although you raise an issue noted in this bit from the BBC story:
"We outlaw snuff films, child porn and, increasingly, revenge porn, because actual people are harmed during their production," wrote PJ Vogt on OnTheMedia.org.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
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 ----
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.
Romance is what women use to masturbate whereas erotica is what men use. That's been my experience of what the definition of the two are when it comes to policy.
When having to choose between siding with a pedophile and siding with a politician, the choice is easy: Side with the pedo.
Simple self interest. The chance that the pedo might do something that harms me is zero. I'm too old for that. No such luck with the politician, though.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"e-books" are a viable option, its ones with DRM attached that are not.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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?
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.
Yes, but as described, it's an indexing and access control problem. Yes, the merchant is free to solve that problem however he/she wishes, but let's not color the issue any more than it has been already.
have you actually READ any of the "romance" novels? romanticizing adultery? yeah that's there. lewd descriptions of sex? yeah that's there. just general descriptions about hot nights? yeah most definitely there.
ladies magazines and mens xxx mags stories are pretty much the same. what's the difference otherwise? well, the pictures of course. and that in the womens magazines half the articles are about how to get laid(the rest of the articles are just indirectly about it).
oh and they would NOT function without the smut. not by a long shot. how the fuck do you make a story about being an (american)indian in 16th century raped(romantically-consensually) by a sensuel colonist function without the smut about fondling breasts and being fucked while tied up?? turn a 4 page novellette into one paragraph??
lady of camellias is something that sort of works without the smut, by just implying the smut. the cheap stuff on womens magazines.. not so much.
oh and the only way to enjoy those stories is to get some hot chicks to read them whilst sipping wine(in university, IT guild ftw). it's better if you get some late victorian style smut though..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
After Amazon pulled the first revokation, I decided that ebooks were no longer a viable option.
Actually, ebooks are just as viable an option as paper books.
paper books are recalled too if somebody convinces the authorities or the publisher that something is wrong or illegal about the book.
The problem with ebooks are DRM and other schemes that allow ebook shops to pull ebooks from users reading devices.
But if you buy ebooks DRM-free and download them immediately to a medium that only you have control over nobody can remove or change content.
Haha. You're retarded. Erotica means whatever the person using the word wants it to mean. That's everything from straight up fapfiction to extremely well written stories that happen to have explicit sex.
Women want more (about 200 pages) foreplay than men, what else is new?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
What you do what those books were written in a culture different than ours, describing things that were normal, accepted or according with the moral values of that time or place compared with the ones of our times? what about the future with our own values? Oh, wait there is no place in the future for our current books.
Maybe most of what was banned deserved it, had no literary or any other value at all. But was all? And setting this precedent is opening the door for bad abuses of it, specially when people use their subjectivity (and political agenda, and economical interests, and so on) to decide what goes and what not.
Maybe will be for the best, it will open an opportunity for alternate/uncensored markets (and no markets as "selling" could not be the main target there), leaving the current "sell digital as if it were paper" establishment behind at last.
Example #4: Also read the well written BBC article as well.
Sure, I got sucked into the thought that this was about censorship. Then I did the opposite of /., I read the articles and discovered that instead of this being Bad Amazon, Bad B&N, it was more along the lines of Bad Authors who snuck their works in under the self-publishing loop hole.
Had a smut author walked in the front door of Amazon or B&N and said "hey, will you sell my ... works ... centered around incest, rape, and pedophilia" they would be handed a copy of those store's book offering policy and shown the door. Instead, the authors use the self-publishing (and not well policed) approach to get into Amazon's store.
In the end I did not see this a censorship. Amazon and B&N are not pulling an ebook from a reader, they are removing content that violates their business model. That is their right. As others stated, authors can find other means to promote and sell their work other then through Amazon. I am sure one can still go out there and find such literary works like "I raped my drunk little girl", download them to their Kindle/Nook and ... "enjoy them?" That is not censorship. Now if a Government makes broad sweep removals requirement for all businesses...then we can debate censorship.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
So we can't buy bibles on line anymore?
Have gnu, will travel.
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
Ah yes they do: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5ea_1381098599
Romance novels usually contain erotica.
As for government, a wise man (don't make me slap you) once said, "Poor is the man whose pleasure depends on the permission of another."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> Rape, incest ...
So... no more bibles then.
> no, yes, maybe (tagging beta)
It's not really scaremongering. Very small mistakes can cause spiralling damage if you run a nationwide chain on cashflow. We've seen that over and over again in this country; survivable situations became unsurvivable because of relatively small changes. Bad press is bad press, but bad press at the point of your business cycle when you are buying up lots of christmas stock and hoping to sell it is not bad press; it's economic uncertainty.
Check out this article:
http://www.retailgazette.co.uk/articles/23011-whsmith-profits-up-3-as-sales-continue-to-fall
WHSmith is profitable, but on falling sales. Which areas of the business keep them profitable? Railway station and airport branches. What do they sell? Newspapers. By the ton. Do you see the point I am making? The second-most-popular newspaper in the country (which doesn't really have a transferrable readership) can _seriously_ influence the financial health of WHS.
Besides, if you'd seen the WHS site beforehand, the idea that little bits of it could be closed down might possibly be unworkable; it was a mess.
At one point I wanted to self-republish the Old Testament, but with a cover which made it look like a filthy, violent hardcore porn novel, spattered with choice quotes about rape, incest, torture, etc.
I quite like the idea of being thrown in jail for sex offences for merely distributing a copy of the well-known book which can now be judged by its cover.
I think you're over playing the difference.
Erotica: Introductory paragraph -> Sex.
Romance: Introductory paragraph -> Foreplay -> Sex.
I wouldn't make much of it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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?
Before your politically correct obtusery is modded too far up, might I just draw your attention to the context we're discussing within here. "Pleasure" might frequently be a euphemism for sex, but sex is not the only pleasure, and indeed while the main subject of discussion is 'erotica' which is sexual in nature, it takes the form of inanimate objects which people relate to each in their own way. The quote then is not referring to rape, but the ability to access and consume pleasurable things, literal inanimate objects.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I am pretty sure their is no such thing as erotic literature for men, erotic novels are a synonym for romance novels, which is just a fancy way of saying lady porn.
I guess in the billions of books out their, there must be some erotic ones aimed at men, but hardly enough to be labeled a category. If erotic literature for men existed in any major form I am pretty sure I would be aware of it.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Example #1: Proliferation of beastiality content in the UK, where beastiality is illegal.
Star Trek is illegal in the UK, then? After all, there's all kinds of interspecies sex on a starship. Hell, Spock's human mom obviously had sex with a Vulcan.
Example #2: Incest, pedo-bear, and rape stories mixed in with children's books.
I guess if I visit the UK I'd better leave my bible home then.
Example #3: RTFA
I read part of the first one. It was rubbish.
Free Martian Whores!
Erotica is when you use a feather. Pornography is when you use the whole chicken.
IIRC, this is from Terry Pratchett
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.
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 :)
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
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!"
Already done.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
This is pretty close to correct, I'd say, but it's a *literary* analysis. Erotica, category romance, and romantic fiction are *marketing* categories.
Category romances are formula driven. More than any other kind of genre fiction, category romance about guaranteeing a *repeatable* reading experience. So category romance publishers have very specific parameters for each of their imprints, such as (real examples here) "features a young heroine who is sexually awakened but inexperienced," or "Strong, gorgeous, medical professional heroes at the top of their game with hearts of gold, and heroines to match." If enjoy one Harlequin® Medical Romance (no joke -- they're serious about meaningful branding), the editors go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that you'll like the next one you'll pick up. If you're the sort of reader who might purchase a Harlequin® Love Inspired (Harlequin's Christian Romance line) novel, you can be certain it doesn't contain any unpleasant surprises.
In the romance publishing business what sets apart "erotica" from category romance with an erotic elements is that all important "happily ever after" ending. Having a romantic story that ends happily isn't enough, it's got to be "happily ever after" which is something different. And the story has got to get there following the particular imprint's formula. I actually respect that. They're not my cup of tea, but category romances retell myths that people want to hear over and over again. That's really no different than endlessly rehashing the hero's journey in fantasy literature. The challenge for any writer of genre fiction is to renew the myth; to bring it to life for the people who want to experience it.
As for the erotica market, I have done book critiques for a friend who writes stuff for that market, even though her stuff makes me want to flush my eyes with bleach. I don't think the market for non-romance erotica is as elaborately segmented as for romance, but I think it will get there. My erotica-writing friend has a lot of fans, enough to put her on the NY Times best seller list, albeit briefly, but that's outstanding for a genre novel. And they clearly like reading about sexual acts in graphic detail: kinky stuff with restraints and pain and multiple simultaneous penetrations. Yet they have nothing but contempt for "50 Shades" which they consider tasteless swill. It's pretty easy to see what their beef is in that case; the heroine of 50 shades is a "bottom" in BDSM-speak, and my friend's heroines are "tops". But there are other tribal divisions in the erotica fanbase whose explanation completely eludes me.
People try to divide science fiction from fantasy or romance from erotica from pornography, but ultimately the market isn't out literary ontologies; it's about matching up authors with readers who might enjoy their work. Suppose you're an author who's written an urban fantasy novel with erotic scenes and a happy ending. You could offer that very same story to Harlequin (a romance publisher), Exotica (an erotica publisher), or TOR Books (a traditional sci-fi and fantasy imprint of Macmillan). Any one of those publishers might take the book on, but what their editors ask you to do with it before it is published will be radically different.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Someone was clearly brain damaged by high school. MOST literature contains sex. Certainly nearly all of the good stuff. This is because most humans have sex in their lives. It makes it important in narratives about humans. Joyce's Ulysses includes a guy masturbating in the bushes while perving on a cripple and a vivid description of a rimjob. Gravity's Rainbow is basically a 760 page dick joke. The Sound and the Fury is all about how women's liberation (promiscuity in Faulkner's mind) affected Southern men. McCarthy's Child of God has graphic descriptions of necrophilia. Very few major novels since the 1950s have been vague about sex. Even before then it was almost always there (what did you think the entire conflict of The Sun Also Rises was, or Dorian Gray, or Whitman's poetry?), it just wasn't as explicit or graphic.
"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."
Yeah, Kobo have pulled all their self-published books. Even my children's book has been removed until further notice.
Blog
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.
That was what happened in this case, the Syrian army executed this priest and wanted it filmed to broadcast to other resistance sympathizers.