[VaporPunk]

Originally Posted by Harry_Y

I can also choose to Not sell an Item that may offend a customer.
(and yes a lot of people get offended by music) So if I have 2%
of my customers that want an album but I know it will offend
60% others in just makes straight business sense to Not sell it.

I like Heavy Metal but I'm sure many others do not appreciate it.
Some is from ignorance, they see the band name and think they
are "Evil" without realizing where the name came from.

Again motivation matters. I'm not asking that CC be forced to play anything. I'm suggesting that we, as Americans, shouldn't tolerate CC banning a band from the airwaves because of their political views. Or a liberal-owned radio station banning Ted Nugent.

Instead of just defending their right to do so, what we should be saying, right, left, and center is - Yes, you have a right to play what you want on your own radio station but banning a band solely because of its political views is censorship. And that is BS and you shouldn't do it in America. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Originally Posted by RHWright

While I agree with the general position here, what would you think if the decision to sell/not sell were based on content that is about religion/race/politics and not when those factors are expressed outside that content (a la the DT's politically inoffensive music getting pulled for political views they expressed on stage)?

Should a site have to sell Mein Kampf? Or Michael Moore's books? Or books by Marx? What if they decide to carry no politically-oriented books of any persuasion?

I'm a big proponent in freedom of expression for individuals, but when you dig into it, many of these decisions have to made on a case-by-case basis.

As an extreme example, would I force a store run by the KKK to sell books by MLK? No. Are they censoring MLK and other authors that don't share their worldview? Yes, of course they are. I would just call it what it is. From Wikipedia -

Censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body. It can be done by governments and private organizations or by individuals who engage in self-censorship. It occurs in a variety of different contexts including speech, books, music, films and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of reasons including national security, to control obscenity, child pornography, and hate speech, to protect children, to promote or restrict political or religious views, to prevent slander and libel, and to protect intellectual property. It may or may not be legal. Many countries provide strong protections against censorship by law, but none of these protections are absolute and it is frequently necessary to balance conflicting rights in order to determine what can and cannot be censored.