Quote:
Originally Posted by Donnageddon
Topics like DRM, global restrictions, book banning, etc. Are inherently part of this forums reach.
But what does Health Care Reform, Global Warming, and the US's various wars have to do with ebooks?
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Opening disclaimer: While I'm not in favor of banning topics at MR, I *am* in favor of shutting down not-directly-ebook-related posts as soon as they start getting heated, instead of waiting, as we generally do with ebookish posts, to see if other commenters are going to "revive" the useful discussion part of the thread.
1) Health care reform, like *anything* that affects take-home income, affects the money one has available to spend on books. It may affect what technologies a person has access to--someone who couldn't afford a good text-to-speech program, or access to books with TTS enabled, might have access under a different insurance program. Inasmuch as it can affect privacy and government monitoring of personal activities, it's relevant to ebook purchases. A shift in insurance funding might change things like doctors' offices reading material--some offices might get ebook readers for their waiting rooms.
I'll admit all those are a stretch, but we've had more tangential discussions show up. It's much more likely that the closest "health care reform" as a topic gets to ebookery is "I used my Kindle to read the gov't website where the changes were described."
2) Global warming, as a change in environment, affects technology industries, which is *very* on-topic for MR. If the rules governing factories change, ebook readers may become more or less available. (I'd guess less. We're pretty far down the list, when the Powers That Be discuss essential technology.) People who have readers in part because of their "green" attributes may be very interested in the carbon footprint of a device, and the factories that make them, and the potential effect of those factories on global weather patterns.
3) There are "get ebooks to soldiers" programs, or attempts to create those programs. There are discussions of whether ebook readers are good gifts for soldiers. Shutting down all talk of US wars would mean shutting down any discussion of the soldiers' ebook activities, unless the mods get draconian about editing individual posts to keep the "ebook" content and remove the "political" content. Can't reasonably allow discussions about soldiers without allowing some discussion of what they're doing that makes them soldiers. (Again, unless the mods will allow "I want to get a collection of ebooks to put on an SD card to send to a soldier" but remove the part of the post that says "...because supporting our troops any way I can is my patriotic duty.")
School & education isn't directly on topic here either, but we do discuss how ebooks are of interest to students, and how some schools are experimenting with ebook readers. Military use of the same tech is more rare, but possible... how long before some charity or another decides to donate 500 iPads to "deserving soldiers?"
All of those are tangential, and not directly related, and we've had plenty of discussions of all three topics that don't touch ebooks & ebook readers at all. And those should be monitored, and shut down when & if they get heated. But banning the topics themselves would mean shutting out the *possibility* of ebook discussions that relate to them.