Amazon Censorship Expands 764
Nom du Keyboard writes "Recently word leaked out about Amazon removing titles containing fictional incest. Surprisingly that ban didn't extend to the 10 titles of Science Fiction Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein that incorporate various themes of incest and pedophilia. Now, it seems that the censorship is expanding to m/m gay fiction if it contains the magic word 'rape' in the title. Just how far is this going to be allowed to proceed in relative silence, and who is pushing these sudden decisions on Amazon's part?"
Just wait. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they think books with any one of these things in them are "bad", just wait until they find out about that "bible" thing that contains pretty much *everything*.
Re:Just wait. (Score:5, Insightful)
Great point. I remember the congregation's reaction when our pastor pointed out that the Bible would be rated NC-17 if accurately portrayed in a movie, and no movie studio would dare produce it not on religious grounds, but because the content would be so explicit.
Incest, rape, murder, mutilation of corpses, etc...it is all there. Even King David, a man after God's heart, had a man murdered so he could add that man's wife to his harem.
So, I'm curious if the same people calling for these books to be banned will support a Bible ban?
Re:Just wait. (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, yes the Bible does contain a lot of stuff in it.
Re:Just wait. (Score:5, Insightful)
So you have gay erotica, and the title has rape in it. Magic word? Please calm down. It's a keyword. If you're trying to keep a clean selection, you aren't going to want to promote rape. And if your book is entitled something about rape and is in the erotica section, chances are that it's promoting rape even if fictionally.
It seems you empathize with Amazon because you have something in common - neither of you can be bothered to actually read things before making judgement calls. Observe:
"How To Rape A Straight Guy" has a very provocative title, yes, and its narrator, Curt, is a very in-your-face sort of guy who thinks he can get even with the world by assaulting men. But it winds up hurting innocent people and destroying him. I even have a moment of foreshadowing in it, where Curt as a 6-year-old boy watches a cousin of his torture a dog until it bites him, then the boy's father kills the dog and goes off to buy another one. The moral of the whole book being, if you treat a man like a dog his whole life, you shouldn't be surprised if he bites you. And the sad reality is, when he finally does bite back, he's the one who's punished. Does that sound like porn?
"Rape In Holding Cell 6", both volumes, is about corruption in the judicial system, and its main character, Antony, is investigating the brutal rape and murder of his lover in the county jail. He finds a legal and political system that thinks it can get away with anything and nearly drives himself insane in his quest for revenge, a quest that threatens to harm the innocent as well as the guilty as he becomes exactly what he hates. Does that sound like porn?
So the first case is a cautionary/morality tale and the second case is the investigation of a rape.
Ignorance is powerful. Moreso than knowledge. That being the case, 'chances are' you, and Amazon, are in the wrong here.
Re:Just wait. (Score:5, Funny)
"the Bible would be rated NC-17 "
Thats nothing, during the late 60's there was a show on TV that had the first interracial kiss. It was rated NCC-1701
Re:Just wait. (Score:5, Interesting)
When the Uhura-Kirk kiss came on, CBS waited for a firestorm of protest calls. They received just one. A redneck-ish man who called and said something like "I don't approve of white folks and black folks kissing, but if it's Kirk, then it's OK."
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When the Uhura-Kirk kiss came on, CBS waited for a firestorm of protest calls. They received just one.
And no wonder—Star Trek was an NBC program. [wikipedia.org]
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No, in fact they tend to dislike aliens.
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It's all arbitrary. In common American parlance, "Hispanic" (or in large parts of the US, "Mexican," regardless of actual country of origin) is a "race" just as much as "white" or "black" or, God help us all, "Asian," which last category of course includes almost 2/3 of the population of the Earth. None of it means anything real.
But it means a great deal to individual societies at particular moments -- which is why Ricky and Lucy's marriage wasn't considered interracial in the 1950s, while Kirk and Uhura'
Re:I'm Curious (Score:4, Interesting)
How DID the congregation react?
About 1/3 knowingly nodded, about 1/3 got wide-eyed & looked at each other, and the remaining 1/3 looked pissed that he would say such a thing. I think he got letters after that one.
So, yeah, about 2/3 of the people had not really read the Bible, which I expect to some extent (who knows how long they have been following this faith), but was also revealing to me.
Re:Just wait. (Score:5, Informative)
30 Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31 One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. 32 Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”
33 That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
34 The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” 35 So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
36 So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. 37 The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab[g]; he is the father of the Moabites of today. 38 The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi[h]; he is the father of the Ammonites[i] of today.
-- Genesis 19:30-36
Re:Just wait. (Score:5, Funny)
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It was pretty common in Ancient cultures for relatives to not just have sex, but also marry. Even amongst the Romans who were advanced enough to know the negative consequences.
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Maybe, but even the ancient Hebrews didn't think much of incest - remember, Leviticus 18:6 strictly prohibited the practice: "6 “‘No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD. "
Then, it goes on to list about a dozen different specific examples of incest that's prohibited.
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Really, they were nasty enough to get vaporized, but end up as a footnote. You never hear about anyone getting "Gomorrahized" or anything, it's just not fair...
It's the new censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an interesting (if not really new) phenomenon that seems to be on the rise.
The threat of censorship in liberal democracies isn't as much from governments as it is from corporations which have a monopoly on their market. In addition to Amazon, look to Apple, Google, Walmart, Comcast, Facebook and... I'm sure y'all can think of some others. These companies have a kind of power we haven't seen since the days when there were only three TV networks. Probably even more.
The one really, really bright star in all of this? I'd say: Wikipedia. It can be manipulated by these megacorps to some extent, but such manipulations usually can be rectified by singular individuals.
Well, that is until net neutrality goes away and then perhaps opens the door for traffic shaping... Then perhaps Comcast, bizarrely, will bring on the new totalitarianism.
Re:It's the new censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>The threat of censorship in liberal democracies isn't as much from governments as it is from corporations which have a monopoly on their market.
What cave have you been living in? Almost every day slashdot posts a new story about the Australian or French or British or US or EU trying to censor the internet. And they have the power to enforce that censorship by throwing your body into jail, or sucking money out of your wallet (fines). Neither amazon nor any other corporation has that kind of power.
Also to claim amazon or google or whoever has some kind of monopoly is ridiculous. There are tons of other bookstores where I can shop, and during this last month I gradually excised google from my browsers to use other search engines (like bing, yahoo, hotbot, lycos, etc). Even the mighty Microsoft which was sued for its monopolistic practices has seen its share of the webbrowser dwindle from ~90% downto ~50% as other competitors steal away market share.
Bottom Line: Corporations have power but it must be shared with other competitors. Consumers hold the power of choice to make a corporation succeed or go bankrupt (Circuit city, wards, GM). In contrast the government holds the monopoly on the power to jail, take, or kill. That is far, far, far more dangerous than pissant little amazon.
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Also to claim amazon or google or whoever has some kind of monopoly is ridiculous.
Amazon has an estimated international 90% market share of e-books and google has over 86% of search market share. Although you are right this is not 'exclusive control' as the word monopoly implies, the fact that a company has the power to censor 90% of any market is troubling. The good news is that both companies hold on the market are declining, sometimes fast as seen in both links below.
http://chitika.com/research/2010/search-market-share-microhoo-making-headway/
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-2
Re:Warning: libertardian prattle above (Score:5, Informative)
>>>It's bad when the government does it, but good when corporations do it, yadda yadda.
NOT what I said.
You got an F in reading comprehension, I bet. It's bad when either of these organizations do it, but the difference is that corporations don't have the power to suck money from my wallet against my will, throw me in jail for years, send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating, or execute me on the electric chair. Only the government holds the monopoly to do that.
Re:Warning: libertardian prattle above (Score:5, Insightful)
...corporations don't have the power to suck money from my wallet against my will, throw me in jail for years, send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating, or execute me on the electric chair. Only the government holds the monopoly to do that.
When the corporations write the laws and fund the politicians to get them enacted, this distinction is meaningless.
If you need examples, just look at some of the 'IP' laws enacted across the globe in the last 20 years or so. In many cases, parts of the legal text are exactly as written by the 'IP owners' lawyers.
Corporations have the power to get governments to do on their behalf all the things they can't do themselves.
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You're just making the parents argument that government power should be limited. All you've done is listed examples of governments abusing their power.
Re:Warning: libertardian prattle above (Score:4, Insightful)
>>corporations don't have the power to suck money from my wallet against my will,
Compulsory tax on blank media, passed by the gov't at the behest of corporations
>>throw me in jail for years,
RIAA/MPAA exploiting the laws they paid politicians to write to fine/jail people "guilty" of downloading copyrighted material.
>>send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating,
Foreclosure procedures often include using police to do the dirty work of corrupt banking establishments.
>>or execute me on the electric chair
Not yet, but they can certainly have you "silenced" or "suicided" as it were.
So, while the force is directly applied by government entities, if the government is just another branch of the corporations (it's a shared resource they like to use/abuse), then the corporations are the ones actually exercising that force, even if there's a badge or a robe that indicates government affiliation.
Re:Warning: libertardian prattle above (Score:5, Insightful)
All you are doing is giving reasons why the US Government should only exercise the powers *specifically* enumerated by its Constitutional Law. If the constitution was enforced the US Congress would not have the power to bailout AIG. Or power to give handouts to "stimulate" General Motors. Or give special favors to Microsoft by taxing all non-windows PCs/laptops/pads.
.
>>>they can certainly have you "silenced" or "suicided" as it were.
Okay. Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law. ----- I can guarantee you the government has done it FAR more often. Over 150 million people were murdered by their OWN governments during this past century. Have corporations ever mass-exterminated that many people? ----- Even the US Congress deprived approximately 10 million of their property, homes, money, and freedom simply because they had grandparents that were born in Japan. Name one corporation that has ever committed that level of atrocity as done by that ONE building of 535 men in Washington D.C.
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Re:It's the new censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
You forgot a few key questions:
- Can amazon suck money out of my wallet? Nope.
- Can amazon send cops to raid my house or give me a Rodney King-style beating? Nope.
- Can amazon arrest me and put me in jail? Nope.
- Can amazon do fuck-all to me? Nope. Amazon is a powerless entity and I give my middle finger to them. If we ALL did that then amazon would soon be like Wards (dead) or Commodore (dead) or Tucker Motors (dead). They are a "90% eBook monopoly" only because we made them that way, and we can destroy them just as easily.
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- Will your peers ignore your warnings while continuing to drive Amazon to such levels of success as to make it impossible for you to purchase books from anywhere else?
If you cannot imagine a 'yes' answer to this question, then I can only assume there's not a Walmart in your neighborhood.
Look, I concede that Amazon is not the government, but again it is really, really simplistic thinking to refute that claim (which I genuinely went out of my way to illustrate that I was NOT making.)
It is possible, my frien
Their choice (Score:2, Insightful)
It's their choice as to what they sell. It is also not censorship. They are a private company and are free to sell whatever legal products they wish, or not sell them as the case may be. The summary makes it sound like Amazon is the only place one can buy a book.
All they'll do is open the door for alternative online book sale sites catering to specific tastes.
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I'm going to ask you to look up the word censorship again. While they may choose to sell what they want. They can in fact censor things from their channel. Just because its not a government doing it does not make its not censorship.
Re:Their choice (Score:5, Insightful)
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Is Borders guilty of censorship because they don't carry the "Big Busted Shemales" magazine holiday edition?
It's censorship, but they're not guilty. HTH.
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And yes, removing it from the store (in addition but without regards to the Kindle) for reasons other than economic (product not selling would be
Re:Their choice (Score:5, Insightful)
It is also not censorship.
Why do corporate apologists keep saying this crap? Censorship does not mean "action by the government," it just means that materials deemed inappropriate are not allowed to be published.
All they'll do is open the door for alternative online book sale sites catering to specific tastes.
You are assuming that such a website would make economic sense; this is not necessarily true. Part of what makes Amazon so successful is that they can cater to a lot of unusual interests -- the economics of catering to a single interest are entirely different. It may very well be the case that there are just not enough people interested in these books for a store that caters to their interests to remain in business; it may take a business that can compete with Amazon, but does not censor its store, to cater to those interests.
Re:Their choice (Score:5, Informative)
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What you are implying is there is no difference between censorship and any other sort of discrimination or selection.
You see, discrimination isn't necessarily a bad word. Calling the action censorship certainly makes it into one. A person discriminates when they choose between McDonalds and a deli for lunch. A company discriminates when they remove something from being sold when it doesn't sell well.
Calling either action censorship is an offensive notion.
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Yeah, but in this case Amazon was removing titles people bought from their customers online backup.
Re:Their choice (Score:5, Informative)
Check out the second paragraph http://www.pbs.org/itvs/storewars/stores3_2.html [pbs.org]
Ah, the eternal excuse of the true right winger (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it isn't banned. We the state don't ban anything. You just won't be doing business in this town.
I much rather have state censorship. The state can be voted out. Amazon can not.
So, you are free to publish a book that upsets the powers that be, you just won't be finding a publisher or bookstore to sell it. But freedom is ensured as long as you don't try to exercise it.
This guy would also defend "No jews allowed" or "Whites only" on private businesses. The dream he chases? I want none of it.
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Because that's the word's connotation.
Amazon is not the Library (Score:3)
This is exactly why libraries shouldn't die right here. A company is not beholden to freedom of speech issues the same way an institution like a library is.
I really wish the library had a online book store like Amazon.
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fahrenheit ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are we to also assume that all self-help books that help rape victims * [amazon.com] will be pulled because it has the word "rape" in the title?
* Just an example not an endorsement.
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Are we to also assume that all self-help books that help rape victims * will be pulled because it has the word "rape" in the title?
Maybe the title scoring script assigns -1 for "rape" and +1 for "help" and for "victim", making the title's score positive, and thus okay.
I wonder if the title "help rape- rape- rape- rape victims stop stammering" would be pulled out...
Re:fahrenheit ??? (Score:4, Funny)
actually the combustion temperature of paper is no-where near 451F. It is closer to 840F (source [google.com]), which is 450C. It was gonna be "Celcius 450" but "Fahrenheit 451" sounds cooler.
Re:fahrenheit ??? (Score:5, Funny)
It was gonna be "Celcius 450" but "Fahrenheit 451" sounds cooler
I see what you did there.
Go Amazon! (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, if they are indeed pulling titles off people's Kindles like last time, I say: "Go Amazon, and by all means extend the scope of your ban". All the sooner, people will wake up to the fact that they don't really "own" that DRM-ridden content after all.
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Re:Go Amazon! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm just baffled that Slashdot users would still have such a difficult time distinguishing censorship from private business action. It cheapens the very seriousness of the term "censorship" to use it in such an improper, and frivolous way.
Maybe you should actually read the definition of a censor before you go proclaiming everyone on /. is using the word incorrectly.
Amazon is acting as a censor in this case, therefore it is censorship. You may agree with the morals of the censor but that doesn't mean it's not censorship.
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First off, it's their store, and it should be their decision to sell or not sell any particular book.
Well, by this logic I could say that Pre WW2 Nazi-affiliated Libraries in Germany were entirely in their right to burn every book they didn't like. Their nation (their leaders were legally elected by their country) ,their rules. The same happened in Spain during Franco's regime, or with Mussolini in Italy.
You could say that there's a distinction between a Library and a bookstore, but from a social and cultural standpoint Amazon is the modern equivalent of Library of Alexandria. It could be fine from a an ec
Meanwhile, on amazon: (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4861353319 [amazon.co.jp]
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B003X0XDZI [amazon.co.jp]
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B000GCGM3Q/ [amazon.co.jp]
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0007TFACM/ [amazon.co.jp]
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0046X7RJ4/ [amazon.co.jp]
and many other charming titles....
Re:Meanwhile, on amazon: (Score:5, Insightful)
In control of religious extremists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Religious extremists aren't limited to the muslim world, it just takes other forms and actions and a lot of the effects seen in the US of that is that anything related to sex is banned but it's OK to sell weapons, show how to abuse someone (as long as it isn't sexually) and glorify war.
So I'm just waiting for the Heinlein books to disappear too along with any books critical of religions - especially the books critical of christianity and the scientology movement.
In the final stages even books related to science will disappear and only creationism books will be permitted to remain.
"Who?" (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure it's not the atheists...
Don't buy from them? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously.. if they don't want to sell something they don't have to sell it.
We don't 'make' stores carry product do we?
If they don't sell the product you want then buy it from someone that does!
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Amazon is not the only book vendor, and nothing prevents a competing company from also selling books.
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I don't care if they stop selling titles because they don't sell well. I do care if they stop carrying titles because the corporation objects to them on moral grounds, for two reasons:
1) A corporation doesn't have morals. The morals it objects to are therefore the morals of a particular group of customers, which can be anything. I'd rather a corporation have exactly no morals in all situations, rather than espouse them on a case by case basis.
2) When corporations become large enough, their censorship is jus
Slashdot is censored! (Score:3)
It seems that not even Slashdot is safe from censorship.
Comments seems to dissapear, and a test gives the message "This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...".
What's a good alternative? (Score:2)
I might want to buy an ebook fairly soon. Can anybody recommend a good ebook reader where this kind of crap isn't possible?
I'd like: no DRM, standard USB connector, possibility of uploading anything I want from USB, and open source firmware.
It is curious... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus, one is inclined to suspect that(since books about incest, rape, or whatever are presumably sold for a profit just like any other book) somebody inside or outside the company is being pushy for reasons ideological rather than financial, and that they are being surprisingly quiet about it(unlike say, the tremulous morons at the Parent's Television Council, who are explicitly ideological; but ontologically incapable of being quiet). Who exactly that might be is rather puzzling...
Bible (Score:3, Insightful)
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Why do you assume the incest in The Bible is fictional? Most modern scholars who do not seem bugshit crazy seem to regard the bible as a mixture of history, parable, propaganda, and back-edited, politically motivated bullshit.
Let's not forget the Bible (Score:2, Insightful)
Which contains stories of rape and incest.
Amazon: Remember to remove the Bible too! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is that not considered fictional?
The best known example from there is the story of Lot, his stupid wife who turned into salt by looking back on the devastation, and his daughters who got him drunk and had sex with him to bring him male heirs.
Re:Amazon: Remember to remove the Bible too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Heck, not only that, but a good portion of the classical Greek literature goes away too. Homer and Hesiod? Gone, because of the sibling incest between Zeus and Hera. Sophocles and Aeschelus? Gone, because of the 2 most famous instances of parent-child incest (Oedipus and Electra) in all of literature.
Re:Amazon: Remember to remove the Bible too! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm always amazed that people worship the loving God who would send his Angel of Death to slaughter innocent babies in their cribs, just because their leader was a jerk to Moses. That's supposed to be the *good* guy?
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That sounds like some of the real world "good guys" vs "bad guys" battles of today too.
Amazon makes a good call (Score:2, Funny)
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There's nothing wrong with a company that has standards. If you don't like those standards then you are free to patronize another company or start your own.
As a publicly-traded company Amazon also needs to be profitable. It's a smart business decision to reject pedophilia - the amount of money made selling pedophile-friendly products would not make up for the sales lost by those boycotting Amazon for carrying those products.
Well I'm all for eliminating degerate art (Score:4, Insightful)
And after expunging all un-Germ^H^H^H^HAmerican art from society we can move on to getting rid of those people who we find to be untermensch.
Thank you Amazon for getting the ball rolling :-)
They came first for the perverts... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, actually first they came for George Orwell. [rightpundits.com]
And lots of people spoke up, so they promised not to do it again.
I guess this time they decided to pick on an easier target.
Bad Amazon (Score:2)
Honestly, it is scary, how most of the people would not react to this in any way.
Vote with your dollar my ass. Mine is one dollar in 3 billion others. =7
Capitalism To the Rescue! (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't like it, you are free to open your own multi-billion dollar company on the internet.
Just make sure you don't hit any of their patents.
Will the Bible be next? (Score:2, Insightful)
Apologies for redundancy (Score:2)
It will continue in silence until (Score:3)
they start censoring things people can defend without sounding like perverts. People generally don't want to be known for defending these things, it hurts their chances of achieving high positions.
I can just imagine how the defenders would be described in the news - defenders of (fictional) incest and gay rapists. They won't mention the fictional part, of course.
Re:It will continue in silence until (Score:5, Insightful)
How about this one? (Score:5, Funny)
"Cooking with Rapeseed oil"
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They have obsoleted the rapeseed name. It is now Canola oil.
From Snopes:
"The Canadian seed oil industry rechristened the product "canola oil" (Canadian oil) in 1978 in an attempt to distance the product from negative associations with the word "rape." Canola was introduced to American consumers in 1986"
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Rapeseed and canola are not the same thing. Canola is a specific type of rapeseed which was bred to contain less erucic acid and glucosinolates.
Is this a case for voting with your wallet? (Score:2)
You don't need a bonfire, anymore. (Score:2)
A couple of generations ago, you needed a bonfire in the middle of the street to get rid of books full of unpopular ideas.
Today, that can be accomplished very quietly with a few inode updates.
The Internet and DRMed information is like Alexandria written on gunpowder-impregnated flash paper.
Information is easily linked and too rarely duplicated. Unplug a server, and it goes away.
We can stand around and shrug when some paedo gets his dirty book pulled from his tablet.
Nobody will be there - or care - when it'
Just a conspiracy theory... (Score:2)
Or, the most likely explanation is that the Chinese government is pressuring the Saudi Arabian government, which is pressuring the U.S. government to pressure Amazon to not sell those books.
it started with this guy (Score:3)
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/amazon-removes-pedophilia-book-store/story?id=12119035 [go.com]
that was november 11. to amazon's credit, it initially defended the selling of this book. but it caved under pressure and bad publicity, and now the internal politics of amazon seems to have shifted course, and amazon has proactively started cutting other books that amazon doesn't want to be associated with, for whatever reason. it's a sea change. before october 28, amazon's policy seemed to have been "publish whatever". now, it's "publish whatever doesn't make amazon a target for bad pr"
Sounds like Amazon has read some books (Score:3)
Particularly "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" and has confused them with the corporate policy manual.
It's only a matter of time before "Catcher in the Rye" is banned from Kindles -- after all, only serial killers/terrorists read that.
I can't wait until they expand the ban to "anything" the Christian Taliban finds objectionable.... which is pretty much everything. I predict mass kindle burnings as people rebel against it all. Which is bad news for Apple as well, as their closed system pretty much is following Amazon's model of banning anything they don't like.
Ironically, this will be good news for open-source-based tablets with real usb ports and no "app store" that limits what you can and can't load into your tablet.
Either that, or America isn't what it claims to be, and everyone is perfectly happy being oppressed. Hurrah for Big Brother, we love you! I'm moving elsewhere where there really *is* freedom, like, Chad.
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Really? And do I have to develop my own e-book reader so that Amazon isn't quietly deleting anything that might be on the kindle?
I suppose you're all for Sony removing the "Other OS" feature THAT THEY SOLD AS A FEATURE on the Playstation 3? After all, if you don't like it, develop your own gaming box. Huh, nice solution that.
You don't seem to understand. When our liberties are threatened, we're all damaged. It always starts with the weakest links in society, the ones that are "OK" to oppress, like the Jews
freedom! (Score:3)
I see a lot of posts pointing out that Amazon is a privately-owned company and free to carry (or not carry) whatever books they like.
This is certainly true.
But this issue is more than just some random retailer deciding not to carry a book they don't like.
Amazon is removing these titles from Kindles. They carried a book, you bought it legally, you owned it, and now Amazon has gone and deleted it. Imagine if you bought a paper book at Barnes & Noble, and they decided to stop carrying it, so they sent somebody around to your house to collect that book and destroy it. This is troubling on a number of levels. It raises plenty of questions about ownership of digital property.
Amazon is also absolutely ginormous. They're one of the (if not the) largest on-line retailers. What they do affects more than just their own business and their own customers. Just like Wal-Mart refusing to carry AO video game titles has basically rendered them non-existant.
I'm not claiming that Amazon does not have the right to do what they did. Nor am I necessarily going to condemn it as a bad thing. But all the folks claiming it isn't a big deal because Amazon is well-within its rights are kind of missing the bigger picture.
Re:What are we supposed to discuss? (Score:5, Insightful)
who cares? If you don't like it, don't shop there.
It is, however, useful to be informed in the first place.
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Sure you can self publish, but that's a lot harder if you don't have the exposure through a major chain, and you're going to have to do it without an advance to allo
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Also: who cares? If you don't like it, don't shop there.
For one thing, we could discuss that rather strange rationale. Banning fictional accounts of one particular type of illicit activity? We seem to like logic and consistency here, is there a way to explain Amazon's rationale for banning fictional incest but not fictional murder, e.g?
Re:What are we supposed to discuss? (Score:5, Insightful)
The free market is the ultimate form of democracy where dollars are your votes
If one person can cast more votes than another person, it isn't democracy.
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If one person can cast more votes than another person, it isn't democracy.
Sure it is. A democracy is a political system where governing power is derived from the people. Granted, it isn't a fair democracy, but as long as everyone has a voice it is a democracy.
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The king gets a ten thousand votes, the lords get a thousand votes each, and the peasant gets one vote. That's feudalism, not democracy.
Re:What are we supposed to discuss? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, you should probably read the comments in a thread before just replying to one. Here's a summary:
It was postulated that the free market is the ultimate form of democracy where dollars are your votes. Against that argument was that if one person can cast more votes than another person, it isn't democracy. The rebuttal was that as long as everyone has a voice it is a democracy, just not necessarily a fair one. Thus, my comment that poor and homeless people do not have a voice is within the spectrum of the idea that the free market is a democracy where dollars are votes. Obviously if you have no dollars, you have no votes and therefore no voice.
Thanks for playing though!
By the way, if you don't understand how the current political landscape is run by money and corporations rather than actual "votes" then I feel sorry for you.
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What world are you living in? It's not because the masses have more collective monetary power (they don't), it's economics of scale. You can only sell so many $500,000 cars, and there's very little chance of repeat business in any short time frame.
It's about selling in volume. That's what made Wal-Mart.
In 2004, the top 5% of the economic bracket controlled over 58% of the wealth. That was a long time ago, now the figure is skewed even more in favor of the rich.
Sorry, but you're wrong.
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Which is especially worrisome because the wealth of the country is a fixed amount, and has been for centuries. Every time somebody gives birth, the wealth of the country is divided into smaller and smaller shares, which is why poor people today live exactly like poor people in the 1800's, with their complete lack of refridgeration, television, and antibiotics, all of which are owned by rich people.
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Using the marker "m/m" on the internet is the same as saying gay porn, and has been for 20 years. No, I do not read every FA. But if the summarizer has it wrong, expect bad results.
Out of curiosity, does the definition matter? Suppose the article summary were correct. Are you "less free" if Amazon decides to not carry gay rape porn? The actual subject doesn't matter, as I don't think you are "less free" if Amazon decides to not carry ANY subject.
Disney has a content distribution network, the Disney Channel.