Quote:
Originally Posted by Rbneader
It's not the free market.
Letting the market decide = seeing how many people use the app and letting it rise or fall by purchasing decisions. The current controversy is a group of people exerting social and political pressure to shame people who disagree with them and limit choice.
As for authorial rights, authors do not have the right to control readers' behavior so long as no distribution is taking place.
Books were sold unedited, and the app then applied filters the reader chose. This is absolutely acceptable for personal property. Distributing edits would break copyright law, but editing things for personal use does not.
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OK, let's remove the whole "cursing," "profanity," "bad words" and "clean" phrases from the discussion, if we can. These are obviously emotionally-charged words that aren't helping with intelligent conversation. I mean, so far, it's been called "profanity" when most of what we're talking about has NOTHING to do with any religious declarations, good bad or otherwise; it's been called "cursing," when nobody is being cursed or damned or sent to the 7 Hells.
Let's see if we can all get to some type of base of concurrence on one thing, before moving forward:
Do we all agree that an author, completely and without question, has the right to agree to sell or NOT TO SELL abridged, shortened, condensed, etc., versions of his books? Or does s/he not have that right? That if the Chocolat author doesn't want anyone touching any word of her finished works, she has a right to NOT sell the rights to any version thereof? To preserve the books in a "pristine" condition, from the bookseller, at least?
Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Debatable.
All readers reading the same title with the same "Cleanness" Level selected will see the exact same altered work. The readers didn't choose what words would be substituted for others in this altered experience of that copyrighted work, the designers of Clean Reader did. In exchange for money.
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Yeah, it's a ponderment. I think my primary objection, (over all my other objections, which are indirect to the app, which are things like the power of magical thinking [why is Scat and Poop okay, but S____ isn't? Why is F---- BAD, when SEX or INTERCOURSE isn't? Why is Reading F---- not bad, when you know full well what the word is, so your eyes see it and your brain processes it, and your inner ear hears it, but you don't see three letters?) is the abandonment of the parental involvement,
DIRECTLY, with the book.
And, as I said--not really jokingly, in my last post on this (prior to my Pale Horse post), where's MY app? Where's the one that removes all the insipidity to which
I object? I find the vapidity of Bella Swan FAR more objectionable, and truthfully, dangerous to young women than seeing a curse word. Where's MY app, that makes her into a 3D person? Someone with interests, ideas, thoughts, of her own? Someone who doesn't do what a real parent would send them to Boarding School over? Where's the app that makes a real father drag her out of her bedroom, before she sits there for a year and sulks over a missing pedo boyfriend?
Where's the app where the "heroine" (ye gods) of Fifty Shades of Insipid rips off whatever bondage crap she's wearing, and beats the holy s--- out of her "boyfriend" dominator/whatever? Where's the app that puts a Scarlet Letter on all the folks who READ IT????
My point here is: anyone, anywhere, anytime, can find things that are "objectionable" in books. I truly find the whole Bella Swan "saga" FAR MORE objectionable, in many ways, than the vast bulk of
bad language seen in typical modern fiction. I think it's more dangerous. It OFFENDS my own, personal, deeply-held beliefs. I'll bet that dozens of people who read that "pshaw" that idea. But how come I don't get an app to "fix" what's wrong with that book?
You guys still aren't looking at the bigger picture, as I said. WHERE DOES IT STOP???? Who decides, what bits get changed? What if I make an app (Thank you, Ian Rankin--in your honor, I cruised over to Acorn last night on my Roku and watched Rebus) to kill off Rebus, for reality?
Sure...in a print book, you can go through and line out whatever you want. You can mark it up, tear out pages, burn it to keep you warm for 30 seconds. But what you're NOT doing, is doing that, for pay, for a third-party. You're only doing it for yourself.
To me...they're not QUITE the same. (And don't tell me that the Clean Reader "parents" weren't looking to make a buck!).
Hitch