Amazon censorship

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

But part of your agreement with me is that when I buy books from you, you will store them in my archive, on your servers.

That pedophile handbook that was pulled... was it kept in the archive after it was pulled? If it wasn't, nobody seemed to be complaining about it not being archived. Was 1984 kept archived? So why is this any different?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That pedophile handbook that was pulled... was it kept in the archive after it was pulled? If it wasn't, nobody seemed to be complaining about it not being archived.

According to the author, only one person ever bought it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

qed. again: don't trust companies who said they 'll keep a copy of your files for you.
as for ahm - getting books disappear I'd ask all Amazon defenders to read Falling angels from Baens Free Library. Do not forget - fiction is fiction.

remember, Amazon had eBooks before the Kindle. They kept them online for purchasers to be able to redownload as needed (i.e., update the DRM). But what did Amazon do for those customers? They deleted them when they stopped selling eBooks. So people who needed to redownload due to moving to a new computer or updating the OS were screwed because the eBoosk DRM did not allow them to function. Amazon did not keep them then. And people lost what they payed for. This was before PDF could be so easily stripped of it's DRM. History repeats itself.

[abookreader]

Originally Posted by Catlady View Post
Judgment and context are everything, and if you can't recognize that, I guess you'd be happy with a computer program that would just willy-nilly count certain words and disallow anything over a specified number.

Judgment isn't censorship. Would you argue that a publisher MUST publish anything that comes in over the transom, because not doing so is censorship?

I agree that judgment and content are important, but also feel that it isn't unreasonable of the author to be provided with the standards the content is going to be judged upon. Selena Kitt is a well established author. She sells many, many books and some of the books in question of hers that have been pulled have been for sale at Amazon for over a year with no explanation other than "they violate our content guidelines - go away."

And yet if you search on the Amazon Store for "Incest Fantasies" you will find over 400 books still remain with around 370 Kindle books.

I'm not going to get into the censorship debate because that word always brings in Constitutional and legal arguments which clearly don't apply here.

However I maintain that Amazon is clearly being unfair to Ms. Kitt in not providing her with an answer and clarification of what is and is not acceptable to them beyond the "Our standards are about what you'd think they should be" wishy-washy language that is in their TOS. Please, I'm sure they have a lawyer or two around the Amazon building who could churn out something better than that -- don't you think?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Logseman

At least in one case not only a refund wasn't given, but the customer asking for it was lectured.

That is wrong and I do feel that the CS rep who commented should have been fired. That CS rep represents Amazon and what they CS rep said was wrong. Not incorrect, but wrong. Big difference here.

And as for the refund, I do feel Amazon should be refunding the money for any of the deleted content that has not been downloaded. If it has been downloaded, then no, a refund is not in order.

[catsittingstill]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Prurient material is written to get the reader(s) sexually aroused. The Old Testament, to put it mildly, was not.

Except, isn't the _Kama Sutra_ a manual for sex as a method of worship? So wouldn't that make it a holy book in spite of the arousing nature of the material?

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Even if we leave aside all value judgments, it's screamingly obvious that citing the Old Testament as an example of societal tolerance for incest erotica is patently absurd.

Which is why I, at least, wasn't citing it as an example of the way society tolerates erotica. I was citing it as an example of why "this book has incest in it so it deserves no protection" is not a valid argument.

The bible has an enormous amount of material in it that can reasonably be read as Deity expressing approval of all sorts of things we don't want people doing now, slavery, genocide and the gratuitous abuse of women being the least of it. If that doesn't make people do evil things, then why would a book about an incestuous relationship between consenting adults make people do evil things? The latter book, if I understand correctly, doesn't even represent this behavior as being approved by God.

When people upthread have made the claim that the latter book will encourage people to do evil things and thus should be banned, presenting the bible as a book that hasn't had that effect is a perfectly reasonable counter-argument.

And in the meantime--one standard for every book is still a fair way to do things. If the bible can't meet the standard, perhaps there's something wrong with the standard.

[DavidI]

Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews is a fairly reknowned book of fiction that deals with a major incest theme and Amazon sells the Kindle version (and the paper version). How does an author know what will be acceptable and what won't? How is a consumer to know which books Amazon will decide to delete in the future? Deleting legal content is a really bad idea.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Books about people taking drugs encourages people to take drugs, so they should be removed too

Then we'll have to have any books removed that have anything in them that mentions anything illegal even if it's as innocuous as jaywalking. That means goodbye to a heck of a lot of books.

[RW2112]

Originally Posted by abookreader

<snip> And yet if you search on the Amazon Store for "Incest Fantasies" you will find over 400 books still remain with around 370 Kindle books.

I'm not going to get into the censorship debate because that word always brings in Constitutional and legal arguments which clearly don't apply here.

However I maintain that Amazon is clearly being unfair to Ms. Kitt in not providing her with an answer and clarification of what is and is not acceptable to them beyond the "Our standards are about what you'd think they should be" wishy-washy language that is in their TOS. Please, I'm sure they have a lawyer or two around the Amazon building who could churn out something better than that -- don't you think?

I just went to Amazon and confirmed they do have "incest fantasy" results of at least 397 items there. Even allowing for some results to be based on the "Fantasy" part alone, even having one book result for the whole search term (and they do) does throw a question of discrimination into the issue. As others have said, if the offensive tag applies to Ms. Kitt's books, then it should be applied to the others as well.

[catsittingstill]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That pedophile handbook that was pulled... was it kept in the archive after it was pulled? If it wasn't, nobody seemed to be complaining about it not being archived. Was 1984 kept archived? So why is this any different?

In the case of 1984, yes it was pulled from the archives too (in fact it was also pulled from the Kindles themselves, which did not happen in this case) and customers who had purchased it were given their choice of a) a legal copy of 1984 plus two free e-books of their choice or b) three free ebooks of their choice.

If I understand correctly.

I would actually have much less problem with this if Amazon had gone that route this time.

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And you do realize that a lot of people do not believe there is a God and thus being Godless is not an issue. Also, a lot of people believe in a different God then you do. So again, your calling someone Godless based on your idea of God again, not an issue. I'm Jewish and for me, Jesus is not the son of God. So if you pray to Jesus, I think you pray to a false God. So that would make you Godless if I was to be specific. So please, don't call anyone Godless lest you find yourself Godless due to praying to a false God.

I disagree. You are my friend regardless of your religion, and I hope you feel the same toward me. That said, Christian, Jew, atheist, or miscellaneous have codes of conduct based on what is considered right or wrong by society at large. Incest never makes Santa's "nice" list.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

Actually, I would be more happy with just leaving the objectionable material available for sale. Nobody is requiring anybody buy it, or read it.

Judgment isn't censorship. Saying "other books have to meet these standards but my holy book doesn't" is censorship. Once we avoid giving "holy books" a special free pass, we can make judgments based on the quality of each book, just as a publisher does when deciding what books to publish, and a customer does when deciding which books to buy.

But as I understand it, people are not advocating the removal of the books in question because they're painfully written, boring and incoherent--the sort of thing that would make them hard to publish.

Huh? What standards are you talking about that one book must meet but what you call a "holy book" doesn't?

Sounds like you're in favor of "censoring" badly written books! How restrictive of you! What right have you to impose your ideas of grammar and common sense on others?

[ApK]

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

The bible has an enormous amount of material in it that can reasonably be read as Deity expressing approval of all sorts of things we don't want people doing now, slavery, genocide and the gratuitous abuse of women being the least of it. If that doesn't make people do evil things,

Umm...you must have meant this as irony, right? More horrible things have been done in the name of one bible or another than any single factor I can think of.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

According to the author, only one person ever bought it.

According to Amazon, that's a lie. It did manage to make it to the top 100 eBooks on Amazon. And I don't think Amazon's system for tracking sales is broken.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

The bible has an enormous amount of material in it that can reasonably be read as Deity expressing approval of all sorts of things we don't want people doing now, slavery, genocide and the gratuitous abuse of women being the least of it. If that doesn't make people do evil things, then why would a book about an incestuous relationship between consenting adults make people do evil things? The latter book, if I understand correctly, doesn't even represent this behavior as being approved by God.

More violence again mankind has been done in the name of religion. This is fact. We know this to be true. So if Amazon is removing books because they contain material that can cause people to do bad things, then religious books such as bibles should go as well. Bibles cause more death then any other type of book in existence.