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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.
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....
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, 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.
"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...