Smashwords Succumbs to Censorship

[plib]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

You've made an incredibly moronic and highly prejudiced statement. I say, back it up or shut it up.

Just about any of the "family values" crowd, from Jerry Fallwell through to Rick Santorum. For a bonus you can throw in hypocrisy c.f. Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, plus various shenanigans with Congressional aides and secretaries. For real bonus points see Rick Santorum's answer to the question "what is the problem with contraception". Answer? "The number of babies born to unwed mothers".

I couldn't make it up if I tried.

[WT Sharpe]

A number of members are interested in this current situation between Smashwords and PayPal. It would be regrettable if this thread had to be closed because certain individuals were unable to refrain from allowing their religious and/or partisan political opinions to take over the discussion. If you must make religious or political comments on this subject, then for the sake of those who wish to follow it here, please start a separate thread in the Politics and Religion forum. Don't be the person who spoils it for everyone else.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Yet no one ever responded to my "transition post" by recommending a true crime book with relaxing but well-written episodes of brutal violence and cannibalism -- perfect to enjoy after a stressful day. (I'm only half-kidding about that; my girlfriend sometimes gets in the mood to sleep by watching episodes of Forensic Files.)

Unfortunately, nearly all of the true crime books I've ever read have been excruciatingly written, and that I find disturbing.

I say, don't censor sex or violence in literature, or indeed any subject matter whatsoever. No actual person is harmed because literary characters and conjurations are not real.

The effective banning of subject matter, like decisions about illegality, should be a question of whether literal harm is done, not a litmus test for literary quality. As we've all seen, some of our most highly regarded novels were written in styles so unfamiliar that they were initially dismissed as primitive or crude. And besides that, is it really our business to impose Ms. or Mr. Grundy's standards of literary quality on every reader?

Video pornography, on the nether hind, has always baffled me. If an act (such as prostitution) is literally illegal, and filmed illegal acts send people to jail regularly, then why is filmed prostitution a condoned and billion-dollar industry in a world in which Paypal is about to stop Smashwords from selling books by Dennis Cooper (who is published by Grove, praised regularly in literary and academic circles, and is frequently compared to Genet)?

And why are mere descriptions of bestiality under attack when literal film-documented acts of body-wounding violence against women are permissible -- for the individuals who orchestrate those acts and participate in them on camera, let alone for the person who buys the video? What does that say about Paypal's priorities: Banning subject matter in fiction versus zero concern for the health of actual human beings? It's difficult not to characterize this as a Fahrenheit 451 initiative.

[Prestidigitweeze]

One last thing:

As I mentioned earlier, I once spoke with Andrew Vachss about the prosecution of depicted as opposed to literal crimes (he's a detective writer and former legal defender of sexually abused children).

The distinction he made was clear. He felt that the distribution of graphic media evidence of a sexual crime (tapes, films and photos of the crime in process) should sometimes be illegal (the audio murder tapes of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, for example, which Vachss told me had been distributed widely in certain pedophile rings). But he also said that written descriptions of those same acts should remain legal. "We have enough real cases to prosecute," he told me. Too many of those, he said, get shelved without our wasting even more legal resources on descriptions of acts in books.

And, he added, I don't want to live in a world where fiction is illegal.

I suspect he'd feel the same way about fiction being effectively banned by a transaction company:

There are enough real issues of abuse, pedophilia and criminal deviance to consider and try to solve without Paypal's misdirecting booksellers to fix their attention on excluding depictions of it. And sometimes the careful consideration of an inhumane idea leads to the solution to a human problem.

[Prestidigitweeze]

BTW: While I'd never read a Brett Easton Ellis novel voluntarily, he had a few pertinent things to say recently about censorship, self-censorship, discretion and subject matter. The bit about that is in the video further down on the page.

He certainly loves Jonathan Franzen.

Anyway, off to meet writers in a bar.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Anyway, off to meet writers in a bar.

But! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

[ucfgrad93]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

They can buy their own damn drinks.

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

The children who grew up after the great horror film purge of the mid-80s UK were one of the most violent generations we ever had. While they weren't the first generation to carry knives and stab each other, it was never anywhere near as widespread as it was with them.

as an american child of the 80s, we grew up with some pretty violent cartoons. we had a cartoon and action figures based on rambo for gods sake. however my generation was nowhere near as violent as the one that followed the government's and 'concerned citizens' attempts to nanny it up. thundercats and gi joe have been replaced by phineas&ferb and dora, guns are harder to get than ever yet the kids are far more violent than they were when i was growing up. there weren't kids shooting up their schools after viewing a particularly boisterous episode of ghostbusters or teenage mutant ninja turtles.

i'd need a sociologists input on his but i think kids running around outside, pew pew pewing it up with gi joes and laser tag gave them an outlet for their energy and impulses. todays kids sit staring blankly, playing call of duty all day long with no socially acceptable outlet for their energy,anger or real exposure to the consequences of violence. hell, they say the wrong thing and they're up the creek without a paddle, let alone roughhouse or horseplay. tv has always been a babysitter but i think as a result of today's bland, nerfed programming parents see absolutely no problem with letting it literally babysit their kids all day. everything is so nerfed that they abandoned all parental responsibility (generally speaking). kid acting up? pop in a dvd. kid getting antsy on a car ride? pop in a dvd. kid won't sit still? hand them your ipad or phone to watch videos on.

i didn't have the greatest parents. i remember watching horror movies from a young age. but i think that exposure showed me the consequences of violence and as a result i've made it through 34 years of life without even being in a fist fight (for better or worse).

kids today don't respect death because its not 'real' to them. as a result, they don't respect life. i'm not saying plop your kids down in front of 'a serbian film' but they can't go through life thinking that the only consequence of pain and death is having to wait 30 seconds to respawn.

[sabredog]

Could not agree more. I still enjoy watching Loony Tunes cartoons and they are very violent in the main.

However one thing I was taught as I grew up was respect. If I played up, I was disciplined. Boundaries were set, though moderately flexible. When I was quite young, I was smacked if I did something dangerous or very wrong.

When I was 17, I back chatted my mother and was slapped across the face for it.

Contrary to what the left leaning hand wringers decreed, my wife and I turned out quite fine, raising our children who were imbued with the same respect for authority, society, laws and their neighbour as I and my wife were.

I see a lot of the issues we see today boil down to one major thing, a lack of respect. A lot of parents simply do not provide a decent upbringing to ensure their offspring can live within society. Instead we have younger individuals who think it is quite fine to king hit, glass or kick someone in the head while they are on the ground, thank you very much.

Hand wringer influenced laws restricting parents to how they can bring their children up are also an issue.

[Fbone]

Paypal's response to its actions regarding Smashwords:

https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2012/0...rtain-erotica/

An important factor in our decision not to allow our payments service to be used to purchase material focused on rape, incest or bestiality is that this category of eBooks often includes images.

This type of content also sometimes intentionally blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction. Both these factors are problematic from a legal and risk perspective.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Paypal's response to its actions regarding Smashwords:

https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2012/0...rtain-erotica/

If that is the real reason, then their legal department is awfully slow. After so many years they finally get around to doing this?

[Redcard]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

If that is the real reason, then their legal department is awfully slow. After so many years they finally get around to doing this?

Well, I was reading a rebuttal by Visa that said they have no such restrictions on the usage of their cards.

Visa's main comment statement, paraphrased, is that we already have laws, and those laws cover different things in different localities, and that Visa's terms of usage and merchant account rules state that if it's illegal at the point of sale (and place of sale) that it is against the Visa usage terms. Otherwise, it's not.

[Prestidigitweeze]

That's the lamest possible excuse they could have manufactured. "Blurring the line," indeed. Paypal are the ones blurring the line between legal and moral decisions.

"We're censoring words because they're the gateway drug to graphic images."

If that were the case, then the restriction would only apply to books that actually contained pornographic illustrations.

And if it isn't the case, then they're using a perceived restriction on subject matter to eliminate certain kinds of suggestive cover art and graphics (which aren't technically obscene) as the side effect.

Which is it? Will Paypal's legal department muster the courage to admit this is an imposition of personal beliefs, or will others have to expose their so-called compliance for the hypocrisy it is?

I'm glad to see Visa distancing themselves from this shell game of prudery and censorship masquerading as sensible commerce.

[TimW]

Originally Posted by Redcard

Well, I was reading a rebuttal by Visa that said they have no such restrictions on the usage of their cards.

Visa's main comment statement, paraphrased, is that we already have laws, and those laws cover different things in different localities, and that Visa's terms of usage and merchant account rules state that if it's illegal at the point of sale (and place of sale) that it is against the Visa usage terms. Otherwise, it's not.

Forbes has the story here. Has Paypal been been caught in a big ol' lie? Marvelous.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

The content restrictions only apply to works written for the purposes of titillation. Erotica. Therefore, not all depictions of incest/rape/bestiality fall afoul of this.

They claim that, but isn't always the case.

I used to work for an art site, and a disgruntled person made a complaint about nudity to Paypal (as revenge), and while we did not host any erotica, Paypal suspended the account, and refused all appeals. The stuff that the site sold was props for making art with, mostly furniture. The complaint was baseless, but Paypal didn't even do the most cursory of investigations to see that it was bogus.