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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.
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....
going too far down the rabbit hole.
Watch it there, buddy!
Have gnu, will travel.
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
You are obviously male and confused. Essentially all the human-dinosaur sex fantasies are of male dinosaurs having regular (especially vaginal) sex with female people. The novels of those fantasies are hardly ever bought by men.
already being done https://www.reddit.com/r/whale...
CloudFlare blocks visits from endpoints that are common sources of malicious behaviour - unfortunately, that includes TOR endpoints for obvious reasons.
The reality is that sites don't want to get attacked.
Quick! Someone get over to Wikipedia and add a paragraph on this subject to the 'chicken' entry.
I think things like 'chicken entry' is exactly what's being banned at Amazon.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
"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...
While I personally find the stuff to be indecent at best, who am I to tell anyone what is decent.
Yeah, I think it's weird, but I don't see the harm in it. What kind of terrible things do people think will happen by allowing dino-porn?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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?