Amazon censorship

[catsittingstill]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Where I went to graduate school I took a few classes in retoric or the art of argument. One of the things that we learned is to base arguments around definitions and Miriam and Webster Dictionary is generally the arbiter of defintions, in other words what ever Miriam and Webster says a word means thats what it means.

Now for this word sensorship, its the removal of materiel of any sort becuase of the fact that it is objectionable to that person.

(snip)

You might want to go in and edit that post. It's normally spelled "censorship." Note the "c" at the front. This is particularly important because "sensor" actually means something different from "censor."

Your classes in rhetoric probably included the concept of "ethical appeal" or possibly "ethos" (different classes use different terms) --the idea that your argument is bolstered by the appearance that a) you are fair, and b) you know what you are talking about.

There are plenty of reasons (dyslexia, etc) that a person might misspell a word and still know what they are talking about, but misspelling the principal word in the argument bruises your ethos. It might, for example, make a reasonable reader wonder if you actually looked the word up in the dictionary.

Word to the wise, and all that. You have a reasonable point of view to contribute to the discussion, it's a pity to see its ethical appeal damaged.

[haiyeekayakee]

I'll add a little bit more. Amazon are not like, for example, the local Christian bookstore. I wouldn't necessarily expect to find the Kama Sutra or the Quran stocked there. But Amazon are one of, if not the actual largest booksellers in the world. And, as the saying goes, with that comes great power, and thus great responsibility.

I believe it should be incumbent upon them to lay out with full clarity whether they decide not to sell certain authors and books because of content, and provide valid reasons as to why.
They should also outline the code and standards by which they choose to disallow those books, and also how this is applied to their international business given the many varied countries and laws across the world.

Many people use Amazon as their sole means of researching and purchasing books and they should be entitled to know how Amazon judges what content it stocks, and Amazon should also provide a list of those authors and books it circumscribes, so that people are aware of what they might be missing and have a chance to look for it elsewhere if they are so inclined.

I see no reason why Amazon should not be transparent about this - if it is a decision they are proud to make then they should announce it so that customers should know upfront just what to expect (or not to, as the case would appear to be), just as I would expect not to find Scientology books (random choice) in a Christian bookstore.

[Kali Yuga]

I'm not really seeing an issue here, other than a minor customer service snafu.

Amazon is perfectly within its rights and ethical obligations to pull a book without explanation. Nor are they required to apply a standard based on the most crude interpretation possible. I'd hope it is fairly clear that there is a difference between the Old Testament and erotica that involves incest. (Making such comparisons is flat-out disingenuous.)

It also seems fairly clear that Amazon is not supervising content at the time of self-publication; instead they are responding to customer complaints. A pre-publication review would increase costs and slow down the process, and automated systems will likely produce "false positives" and not catch a lot of potentially offensive material. Plus I don't see much of a distinction between blocking content before or after it's released. You'd just have a story about Amazon refusing to sell the book in the first place.

Or: Let's say I start up a Jewish bookstore. Is it "immoral" or "censorious" of me to intentionally choose not to sell copies of the New Testament or St. Augustine's Confessions? If my customers complain about a certain book on the shelves for having too much Christian content, is it wrong to pull the book? Should I willfully offend my customers?


Meanwhile, taking a cue from past outrages over deleting books off of devices altogether -- a situation that would automatically require the issuance of a refund, as all access to the book is theoretically blocked -- Amazon has basically pulled the content from their servers. In this case the purchasers still have their own copies, they've just lost the ability to re-download it. If the customer still chooses to own it, their request for a refund should be honored. But automatically issued? That's a bit murkier.

[Ken Irving]

Amazon can sell (or not sell) what it wants, and in fact if they want to sell everything in the known universe but books about poodles, or decide that they will only sell political books by people who affiliate with a certain party, they can do that. Either choice (no poodles or one party) would be stupid and would lose them business, but they're not obligated to sell absolutely everything someone loads onto their servers. But what they cannot and should not be allowed to do is to sell something and then take it back, as they did with the Orwell book, or as they effectively did here, without either notice to the buyers or the offer of a refund. They obviously made a mistake by accepting books from a genre that is probably offensive to most people, and certainly would make Amazon the center of controversy. So fine, but what they did is not the way to fix it. Censorship? Only in the very narrow sense that they have eliminated access to ebooks already bought, because Amazon itself can neither control nor suppress access to this kind of literature in general. If you Google something like "incest erotica," you'll find that there are plenty of outlets for this stuff, and probably just about any other erotic variation you can think of. Understandably, most of it is free, but there's a business opening here for an epub Larry Flynt (entrepreneurial spirit, strong stomach, elastic morals) who can come up with the bucks to run a DRM server and charge for admission. "O brave new world! That has such people in it!"

Not.

[catsittingstill]

I ...tentatively.... agree that Amazon has the right to sell what they want and pull what they want from their store.

The problem I see here is twofold. 1) Customers bought books secure in Amazon's promise that Amazon would keep them in the cloud, and Amazon broke that promise.

I would be, kind of, okay with this if Amazon refunded the money for the books, but they didn't. And a customer service rep being rude to a customer for buying a book that the company sold is, at the very least, lousy customer relations. Hopefully the manager is having a quick chat with the customer service reps even as we speak... but it would be nice to know that.

2) Amazon is not being clear about what content it, for lack of a more convenient word, censors. The upshot of this is that authors who want to sell at Amazon must censor themselves. And not knowing exactly where the line is drawn, and given the amount of effort required to re-write a book to make it more acceptable, they will generally err on the side of caution, so they must censor themselves more harshly than Amazon itself would censor them.

Now I don't care about incest erotica one way or another, but it's the principle of the thing. Will an investigative reporter three years from now write a book about how Wikileaks release of information led to public outcry that cleaned up behavior that had festered in the dark for decades? If she thinks Amazon won't sell it, and as I recall, Amazon recently quit working with Wikileaks, so I can see why she would be worried, maybe she'll put that year and a half of effort into something she knows Amazon will sell, like oh, fixing horse races or something.

Amazon is a major market. When authors have reason to worry that a major market might refuse their book, thus depriving them of a big chunk of possible revenues, whole fields of inquiry could potentially dry up to a trickle.

Now hopefully this won't be an issue--but putting the pressure on Amazon to sell even stuff that might not be widely popular can help keep it that way.

[catsittingstill]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

I'd hope it is fairly clear that there is a difference between the Old Testament and erotica that involves incest. (Making such comparisons is flat-out disingenuous.)

Actually, I think the comparison is reasonable. A standard is applied to everyone, or it is discrimination. A standard is applied to every book, or it is discrimination.

No special rights that some books get and others don't. That's not fair.

[abookreader]

It also seems fairly clear that Amazon is not supervising content at the time of self-publication; instead they are responding to customer complaints.

Well if that's true, then any store that would act that way is totally not going to work for me.

I get these visions of (Fill in the blank with name of your favorite over zealous organization here) organizing mass call in complaint campaigns to Amazon to get their most hated topics pulled from the Amazon shelves.

[Logseman]

instead they are responding to customer complaints.

Mm... I'd say they respond to NON-customer complaints. It isn't hinted that it was taken down at the request of people who bought the book.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

It's clear from the ToS that Amazon had every right to pull the book, and probably also clear that they had the right to go into peoples' archives and delete it there. (Probably from their Kindles, too; but I think they're justifiably scared of doing that.)

I think the reason they haven't also stolen the books from people's Kindles might be down to the lack of DRM on the titles in question rather than anything else. With no layer of control over the files it wouldn't be as straightforward as it was with other ebooks they did this with.

[ardeegee]

"First Amazon came for the pedophiles, but I was not a pedophile so I did not speak out.
Then Amazon came for the incest fetishists, but I wasn't an incest fetishist, so I did not speak out....

You all know the rest.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

"First Amazon came for the pedophiles, but I was not a pedophile so I did not speak out.
Then Amazon came for the incest fetishists, but I wasn't an incest fetishist, so I did not speak out....

You all know the rest.

Then Amazon came for the Kindles and I didn't speak out, because I'm a Nook owner.

[catsittingstill]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I think the reason they haven't also stolen the books from people's Kindles might be down to the lack of DRM on the titles in question rather than anything else. With no layer of control over the files it wouldn't be as straightforward as it was with other ebooks they did this with.

I doubt the DRM has anything to do with it. I don't see why deleting an encrypted file remotely would be any easier than deleting a non-encrypted file remotely, unless Amazon made a specific effort to set it up that way.

I mean, I hate DRM as much as anybody but I don't think lack of it has been protecting some Kindle books from remote deletion. I think Amazon decided not to delete books from Kindles themselves.

I just wish they had had the good sense to decide not to delete them from archives either.

[DixieGal]

I applaud Amazon, if this report is true, for removing material that can do nothing except fuel the fantasies of sick predators. Too many women and children are harmed by family members every day. Removing an offensive book is, in my opinion, a very responsible action by a company.

And if I understand it correctly, we only "lease" ebooks and do not own them.

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

"First Amazon came for the pedophiles, but I was not a pedophile so I did not speak out.
Then Amazon came for the incest fetishists, but I wasn't an incest fetishist, so I did not speak out....

You all know the rest.

The Nazi card? Really?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

I applaud Amazon, if this report is true, for removing material that can do nothing except fuel the fantasies of sick predators.

I am not a "sick predator," and I resent the slanderous implication that my choices in reading material make me one.

I've read and enjoyed Selena Kitt's works. Are you saying that means I'm a criminal, or a morally-reprehensible person who needs to be stopped? (If so, what actions do you think removing my access to books will prevent?)

Amazon can make any choice they want about what books they can carry, but (1) removing them from download is breach of contract; the info-page for Kindles states "All Kindle purchases from the Kindle Store are automatically backed up online at Amazon and available through your Archived Items on your Kindle or online at the Manage Your Kindle page. You can redownload content wirelessly for free, anytime."

and (2) refusing to tell authors & publishers what content they refuse to carry is a vile business practice, far more dangerous to society than providing kinky content to people who want to read it.