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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....
"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...