[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by SameOldStory

MobileRead has hosted this argument over and over - "SOMEONE wants to control what we can, or can not, read!" CENSORSHIP!!!

We get the same people stating the same arguments - "I don't read that stuff, BUT..."

I read that stuff. This change directly affects my reading and buying habits.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

To fairly judge PayPal's action, I would have to read the book(s) in question.

Since, as far as I know, none of us has done that...

I have read books in, I believe, all four of those categories from Smashwords. (Including the underage erotica that they remove when they find it.)

Among my complaints about the new policy is that the categories are not defined... at what point does shapeshifter sex become "bestiality?" If the animal shape isn't one that exists on earth, is that "never?" (Is sex with a unicorn bestiality? Sex with a demon? A kiss shared with a talking frog that used to be a prince?)

What's "incest?" Does it mean "sex between people not legal to marry in the US?" (Which varies a bit by state; we can assume it would mean California since that's where both PayPal and Smaswords are located.) Or do they have a broader definition of "incest" that has no relation to legal restrictions--do they allow cousin sex? (In CA, first cousins can marry.) Former-stepsibling sex after the parents divorce?

Rape-for-titillation... WTF is that? Whose titillation is being talked about here... one character? Both characters? The reader's? Who decides if titillation has occurred? If this gets enforced, a huge section of the romance industry is going to be censored; there are countless books based on "he forces sex on her, but she loves it so much she comes to love him, and they eventually live happily ever after." (Yes, it's skeevy. But I don't think bookstores or payment processors should be deciding what's too skeevy for people to enjoy reading about. For a lot of women, it's nice to spend some time imagining it *could* happen that way, instead of being stuck with thinking about how rape *does* happen.)

Underage erotica: this one presumably means "explicit sexual activity with at least one character under 18 years old," but as fanfic archives have discovered, it's not always that simple. Books, unlike real life, have situations that the law never has to deal with: characters with 6-year-old bodies and 100-year-old minds (Claudia from Interview With a Vampire; characters with human-adult bodies and children's minds (rescuees from Mirror Dance; characters who age much faster than humans (Kes in Star Trek: Voyager)... is erotica between two aliens who have 20-year-lifespans against PayPal's rules?

Question for those who are now boycotting PayPal. Are you also boycotting your public library, whose standards of what's acceptable are even narrower?

Libraries aren't middlemen in a business transactions; they're curators of culture, with restrictions based on local community standards. Some libraries carry copies of Fanny Hill... sites that sell with PayPal cannot.