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How Amazon's Monster Erotica Book Ban Shaped CloudFlare's Censorship Stance (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes with news that CloudFlare chief executive Matthew Prince recently spoke about how Amazon's ban on "monster erotica" helped shape his position on censorship. ZDNet reports: "I worry about Jeff Bezos' bizarre obsession with dinosaur sex," said Prince, towards the end of a long conversation in our New York newsroom. "I don't think I've ever heard a chief executive -- hell, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything like that before," I said. Prince was referring to how the bookseller and online retail giant banned so-called "monster erotica," a genre of fan-fiction revolving around fantasy-based fictional encounters with mythical or extinct creatures (including dinosaurs), which was for a time sold on its online bookstore. Amazon, according to reports, pulled hundreds of the self-published books it sold -- as well as some content that fetishized incest and rape -- despite "vague" guidelines by the retailer. "You can make a rational argument that if you're writing books fantasizing about having sex with animals or children, maybe that promotes a certain kind of behavior. But there's no risk of someone abusing a dinosaur," he said.
It is indecent towards dinosaurs and hurts their feelings.
Weird people shouldn't have sexual fantasies. It scares boring normal people.
Birds are dinosaurs! Won't someone think of the birds?!
Is a money thing. Other sites like Smashwords spells it out more thoroughly. The claim is that they are unable to keep up with the requests for refunds due to bad porn and people who claim they didn't really buy it and risk having their merchant licenses pulled.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
Short-armed Tyrannosaurs are poorly served by erotic literature.
A dinosaur is an animal. Therefore someone fantasizes about screwing a dinosaur is going to be more open-minded toward animals that actually live today.
Funny thing about all of this chick erotica about vampires and werewolves is that it's obviously socially-approved necrophilia and beastiality. A vampire is an undead creature; basically a sexy zombie with full mental faculties. A werewolf? Changes into a wolf or a wolf-man beast. It doesn't need to get too much more analytic to realize that this is just a way to flirt with a taboo without going too far down the rabbit hole.
No, but somebody please! Think of the whales...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Where's the "rancid assholes" guy when you need him? Here's your story chance!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Uh, Amazon didn't ban monster erotica - or dino erotica: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb... http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb... The guy clearly doesn't know what he us talking about
I've seen the movies. They come back. It gets ugly.
The enemy of my enemy is quite possibly also my enemy. I've made a lot of enemies.
perverts....
no, you can't. you can only make an irrational argument for that assertion.
otherwise the videogames, movies, television, toys, the population consume day in and day out would have resulted in "promoting" that behavior. but it doesn't. Instead, society continues to think that murder and etc is a bad thing. because of course it is. as is sex with children. people who engage in that kind of shit (and I mean actually engage in it, not have sex with or photograph some willing teenager or pee on some bush or leave the curtains open and so on) are waaaay out on the end of the behavioral norms and it wouldn't matter if you showed them pictures of flowers and sand mandalas, they still want to have sex with children. because they are broken and don't understand that children are not sexual creatures. not because "i sawz it in a book derp"
as for sex with animals, I wish you'd convince my damned dog of that as the horny little bastard keeps trying to have sex with my leg.
Especially considering that the Everyday Life with Monster Girls series of manga is regularly in the best sellers list?
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
CloudFlare stands in the way between you, and more and more of the internet, and they don't like TOR: try to browse with TOR, and many, many sites suddenly become "protected" by unsolvable captchas that get served every 3 pages - practically making those sites unavailable.
CloudFlare is essentially passing judgment on who is allowed to access the site they front and how. So they sure don't have any lessons to give on free speech...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
https://www.google.com/search?...
Monster Erotica
"You can make a rational argument that if you're writing books fantasizing about having sex with animals or children, maybe that promotes a certain kind of behavior. ..."
People have said the same thing about a lot of other stuff;
racing video games: your going to speed IRL
FPS video games: Your going to start shooting people IRL (how many times have we heard that one?)
RPGs; your going to go nuts and think your a High Elf ranger fighting monsters IRL
Read adult magazines/watch porn: your going to become a rapist IRL.
And yet, to the best of my knowledge, there has never been a causal link proven despite years of studies.
Prince probably freaked out because he got an erection looking at an anthropomorphized velociraptor.
"You can make a rational argument that if you're writing books [sic] fantasizing about having sex with animals or children, maybe that promotes a certain kind of behaviour."
The same way as writing books about murder mystery or war will promote a certain kind of behaviour to kill ?
Why don't we ban such books too? Oh, and let's ban history books as they may also promote a certain kind of behaviour to repeat...
> Then they came for the dinophiles, and I did not speak out because I was not a dinophile.
I mean, it's not like you can jump straight to banning [insert] in porn, you gotta boil the frog slowly.
For extra ridicule, put "banning blacks" in.
Amazon is a market. Regardless that it is online doesn't make it any different from any other store. Prince shouldn't even be comparing it with his own service.
Should a Walmart sell porn? or a Target sell sex toys?
Amazon can sell whatever they want, as long as it is legal to sell.
And this is not an argument for or against such content. its just that demand will always produce a supplier. If Amazon doesn't supply you go to who does. You don't get mad at Amazon and cry censorship. Just as much as you don't cry censorship because a Barnes and Nobles isn't selling you the latest fashion clothing in BDSM.
Does the dinosaur have to be 18 or over?
Table-ized A.I.
"I worry about Jeff Bezos' bizarre obsession with dinosaur sex,"
I'm starting to forget when a statement like this was never even contextually apropos, much less relevant to the topic, in a semi-mainstream news story. The times, they are a-getting unidentifiable.
http://www.apex-magazine.com/i...
I know this story pissed off those guys who tried to rig the Hugo awards, but banning the whole genre seems a bit extreme.
Cloudflare is the number one place shit you dont wanna click is hosted.
He seems to be doing quite well in the monster erotica and 5th world erotica genre.
While I personally find the stuff to be indecent at best, who am I to tell anyone what is decent. This policy does not work because rigid 'moral' guidelines will never be just or effective. And the market will move somewhere else underground where it will change. For a good analogy refer to the digital 'Anna' or anorexia culture and it transformed due to censorship.
I love you
You love me
Let's hang Barney from a tree
Not-so-auto -erotic asphyxiation.
Vaginal Fantasy book club did "Taken By The T-Rex":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
CloudFlare blocks Tor in practice, by endlessly forcing Tor users to fill out captcha pages. How is that not censorship?
Please help metamoderate.
I doubt Amazon would ban a book detailing how to do a real world harm, say: A detailed manual on how to loot a corporate pension fund and defer the retirement health insurance payments until bankruptcy can be declared. All without getting prosecuted for it. (And, I'd agree that odious though it was, a book about it shouldn't be prohibited.)
But, we can get all bent out of shape and restrict things, especially sex, that meets someone's definition of "icky" or "scary", regardless that it's fiction about things that do not exist outside of human imaginations.
I'm reminded of a person who, when looking for a roommate at college was visibly overstressed by worry that I had a copy of the DnD Players Guide. He assured me that the demons could use the pictures on the cover to come into our world.
I was glad he didn't want to be a roommate, as I was convinced he was mental.
How is this getting bent out of shape over something fictional much different?
Even now, in a laboratory far away...
http://www.mobys.ws/12/24/christmas-2013/
Don't worry, all that great Dino Erotica is still available...for Christmas! That's right, if you need a last minute gift for mem, you can still get that audiobook of 'Taken by the T-Rex for mom. Unfortunately NOT read by the author.
They obviously had to make way for the censorship fetish porn, such as the above summary.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
In Japan, monster porn, in the form of black and white "manga" comic books, are sold unrestricted even to 12 year olds and they openly read those on the train or subway. Usually the stories revolve around giant squids (!!!) using their tentacles to probe mini-skirt schoolgirls in every possible orifice. Apparently the readership consists of a slight majority of girls (!), but boys also widely read that filth.
There was a proposal to cleanse such squid thingies and "chibi" pedo-manga off the bookshelves for better PR of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but apparently the business is too much yen and the fanbase is too large to suppress. It's a pity the most christian cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were nuked, since that meant the japanese people lost any little connection they had with western morality and no brakes remained versus their perversions.
>You can make a rational argument that if you're writing books fantasizing about having sex with animals or children, maybe that promotes a certain kind of behavior.
As someone who lives in the UK and masturbates to lolicon (so I admit I break the law), I've yet to go and molest a child.
Maybe because I can tell the difference between fiction and reality; you know, like any other sane person.
Besides, children are disgusting, loud, obnoxious little brats.
What the hell am I wasting my time typing this for?
TIL the CEO of CloudFlare is into Dinosaur sex stories.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Perhaps he saw something featuring Uncle Fester and thought it was parodying him?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
My sig is not a joke. Birds are dinosaurs, for all practical meanings of "birds", "are", and "dinosaurs".
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"