Amazon censorship

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by rhadin

I guess your husband's book should be banned from Amazon and everywhere else because drug use and addiction among minors is a growing problem. We wouldn't want some stray sentence in his book to be seen as encouraging children to do drugs.

no persoonal attacks, please.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Please explain how a book about incest can be of any morally neutral value. Do you even understand the Godless position you are defending?

Which God am I standing against--the one whose idea of "one good man" in a city of iniquity, is one who had sex with his own daughters?

There's a big gap between "morally neutral," which I didn't claim, and "can do nothing except fuel the fantasies of sick predators," which you did. You said, by fairly direct implication, that I am a sick predator for reading these books.

If you'd like a discussion about moral values, especially as they exist in different religions (I'm fairly certain we don't share a religion, and therefore will have different ideas about what's moral), we should probably take that to the lounge.

[RW2112]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

It's hard not to fall back on analogies to physical books, but ebooks are generally not "sold", they are licensed the same way that software is. That license can sometimes be revoked for a variety of reasons. Most people coming into the world of ebooks miss this distinction and the implications of it, but it's very important, especially when something like this happens and people are told they have no right to something they believe they own.

Agreed. In today's world of digital information the concept of "owning" a piece of intellectual property of another simply by buying it is no longer valid. Ownership remains with the creator of the I.P., the buyer simply purchases a license to "use" the I.P. in question.

I generally like Amazon, which is one of the reasons I bought a Kindle, but since I don't necessarily trust "the cloud" in general I've made sure I have local accessible backup copies of anything I buy for my Kindle. (Read into that what you will.)

Smart move. The only way to ever guarantee you will have access to content is to back up locally. Never depend on stores or "Clouds" to secure your data... "clouds" blow away in the wind...

I don't see this situation as censorship, but I do think it's a crappy thing to do the way they are doing it. It seems reactionary, and I prefer companies to act with a little more stability than that. I agree that they can sell whatever they choose, but when you have a large base of customers that have bought into a seemingly closed system (the Kindle), removing access to things they've purchased without adequate communication makes Amazon look like they're pushing their weight around. Doesn't matter if it's technically accurate or not, the pitchforks will come out.

Agreed again. Amazon choose to handle this very poorly, but they are within there rights to do so. Free speech works both ways. Customers have the right to read what they wish, just as Amazon has the right to remove what they wish from their store and from their cloud servers. The equipment that the store and cloud runs on belongs to them, not to the public. Now as for removing the books in question from the Kindle devices themselves then I personally draw the line. Removal from personal devices goes beyond reasonable expectation of free speech on the part of the company and then infringes on the free speech rights of the buyer.

I don't read incest erotica, but I do read other things that some might find unseemly. If this is a case of people clicking the "report inappropriate content' link and Amazon reacting, that is indeed vile because it gives the power to the slacktivists (really, it's just a click) and takes it away from the person spending their hard earned money at Amazon. That would be less a matter of Amazon choosing to sell what it wants to and more a matter of giving in to those who would be in favor of real censorship.

In essence I agree, but Amazon choose to include such a device for whatever reason they deemed appropriate. Customers (and I use the term in the broadest sense of any that shop on Amazon) may choose their free speech right to click that link just as any of you may do so on any other book that is objectionable to your tastes. That's the beauty of our country, we may choose to disagree. Everyone irregardless may do so, that is called "freedom".

Amazon "choose" to remove the books in question. That is their right. It is your right to complain about it. Maybe you can influence them to change their position, maybe not. Personally I applaud their decision, but that is my choice and one I will not and do not force on anyone. Simply that is my exercising my free speech rights.

[bjones6416]

Originally Posted by dacattt

Not sure if this is the right place for this thread, but I think the censorship issues are important to more than just Kindle readers...

Over at the Self Publishing Revolution blog... Selena Kitt has recently had some of her books pulled from Amazon and readers are finding these same books have gone missing from their on line Kindles archive. The exact reasons are still being figured out and it gets complicated. Amazon is so far refusing to comment but and folks are not getting refunds and one phone rep, at least, has been critical about their choice of reading material. Read it here.

http://theselfpublishingrevolution.b...-business.html

(Yes, I'm leaving out the censored topic on purpose.)

Just out of curiousity, and because I probably haven't read the whole thread carefully enough, has anybody chimed in here who is one of these "readers" referrred to above? I'm asking this because we were forever having customers come in to my office claiming, "They said...," at which point we always would reply, "Who is they?"

Not even being argumentative here, because I'm not sure how I feel about it if it happened. I'd just like to hear from somebody that it happened to, you know?

[queentess]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

no persoonal attacks, please.

You're saying it's not ok to write fiction about incest, but it is ok to write fiction about drug use? I don't understand how this is a personal attack. It's a very valid point, and exactly the reason why this is such a slippery slope.

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Sure I do, and I hope you find salvation through my Lord. My argument is that each and every one of us knows right and wrong, and I appreciate a corporation that chooses to err on the side of right. Freedom of speech and freedom from providing the means to excite wrong are not the same things.

So... is drug use wrong? Many who share your religion would agree that it's wrong to encourage people to partake of drugs.

[catsittingstill]

For what it's worth, here is the e-mail I sent to kindle-feedback@amazon.com, laying out the issue as I see it.

I encourage other people to communicate directly with Amazon too, since I doubt they spend a lot of time hanging out at Mobileread (not to say it wouldn't be a good idea...)

---------begin letter--------------
Dear Amazon,

I am a Kindle owner. I love my Kindle. I bought one when they were still four hundred dollars, and am the happy owner of a Kindle 2 and have been considering upgrading to a Kindle 3. I happily demonstrate it (usually the Kindle 2) to people and tell anyone who asks about its traits.

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.

Now I discover that this isn't always the case. See here: http://theselfpublishingrevolution.b...-business.html

I agree that you have the right to sell or pull books from the store as you see fit, (though I think this is a bad idea for reasons I will explain below.) However, once a customer has paid money for your service for a particular Kindle book, that service includes storing it in their personal archives on your servers. When Amazon breeches that service, of course Amazon owes them a refund; Amazon has not delivered the service for which the customer paid. And the reported rudeness of the customer service representative--well, do I need to point out that being rude to a customer, for buying a product your company sold, is the height, or perhaps the depth, of poor customer service?

This affects me, not because I have any particular interest in incest erotica, but because, if you breech the terms of service for another customer, how can I be confident that you won't breech the terms of service for me? How can I, in good conscience, recommend the Kindle to others?

Always before, when 1984 was mentioned, I would explain that you had tried to set things right with generous refund terms and that it was such a public relations disaster for you you would obviously never do it again.

What can I say now? You *have* done it again--or very nearly--and in the process not just defrauded a few customers but also made a liar, or at least a well intentioned but obviously uninformed and naive advocate, not just out of me but out of many other people who defended you.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to point out that this move was... poorly thought out.

Additionally I am concerned that, because of the size of your market share, censoring books will have a chilling effect on what books are written at all. Authors who hope to have access to the whole market must censor themselves so they can be confident you will sell their book. And since you have released no clear guidelines, and since rewriting a "pulled" book to remove the ill-defined objectionable content would be an enormous amount of time and effort, it follows authors will err on the side of caution and censor themselves more harshly than they believe you will censor them.

When it comes to erotica I care only about the principle, but how can an author be sure, in the absence of clear rules, that it does extend only to erotica? For example, if an investigative reporter considers writing a book about the effects of the Wikileaks revelations on cleaning up bad behavior that had festered in the dark of government secrecy for decades, she is going to care about whether Amazon will carry it. If she thinks, because of some incident in Amazon's behavior toward Wikileaks, for example, that Amazon might not sell it, she is likely to direct that year and a half of effort toward investigations for some other book instead--a book about fixing horse races, perhaps--and the book about the effects of Wikileaks never sees the light of day.

Whole fields of opinion or inquiry could dry up if the public gets the idea that Amazon censors books. People who oppose censorship might also decide to take their business elsewhere, which could hurt Amazon's bottom line.

I encourage you to re-think this policy, to either stop censoring or to issue clear and unmistakeable guidelines and then stick to them (though I will note that one of the reasons the Supreme Court frequently ends up being hostile to censorship is the difficulty of writing guidelines that can be evenhandedly applied to screen out "objectionable" material while still allowing socially useful material through even when it is unpopular.) I encourage you, in addition, to refund the money of customers whose purchases you have deleted from the cloud, to refrain from deleting purchases in the future even if you decide to stop selling a book, and to make public your managers' encouragement of polite, respectful service to customers no matter what product they have bought from your company.

I realize this letter was long. I thank you for your time, if you have gotten this far. If you have not gotten this far, fear not; I intend to make it public on my blog and encourage others to send their own letters, so you are unlikely to miss out on these arguments.

Yours--(name redacted on this public bulletin board)

[jbcohen]

Yes Jason K. Chapman you are correct everyone is guilty of sensorship to some extent. Presumably in a capitalist society the is competition among providers and each provider will have a different definition of the word exceptable. So those that do not agree with Amazon's defintion of excepable should look for a different company with a defintion that is more in line with their own defintion of the word. Borders is carrying her novels so perhaps border's definition of exceptable is more in line with what you are loking for.

[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.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by RW2112

.Removal from personal devices goes beyond reasonable expectation of free speech on the part of the company and then infringes on the free speech rights of the buyer.

Agreed - which is why some people are not just keeping accessible backups, but are also making those backups digitally unrecognizable to Amazon. I have no problem with this as long as those files aren't used in the illegal supply chain.

Originally Posted by RW2112

In essence I agree, but Amazon choose to include such a device for whatever reason they deemed appropriate. Customers (and I use the term in the broadest sense of any that shop on Amazon) may choose their free speech right to click that link just as any of you may do so on any other book that is objectionable to your tastes. That's the beauty of our country, we may choose to disagree. Everyone irregardless may do so, that is called "freedom".

Amazon "choose" to remove the books in question. That is their right. It is your right to complain about it. Maybe you can influence them to change their position, maybe not. Personally I applaud their decision, but that is my choice and one I will not and do not force on anyone. Simply that is my exercising my free speech rights.

I think my issue isn't so much that the device (link) exists, but I honestly don't know how it works because I've never used it. Is it just a one-step (click) process or does it ask for a reason? Is a person required to be logged in to use it? I don't think we actually disagree here - my line of thought (though I didn't explain very well) was I have an issue with it if it's not just a matter of Amazon getting input from customers. I agree that other Amazon customers have just as much a right to give their input as I do, but outside of that it would be like someone in Memphis voting on a proposed park in my Nashville backyard.

I guess my concern is that it could be used like the "does this post add to the discussion" on the Amazon forums - unpopular posts get voted down regardless of their validity to the topic at hand. If Amazon is using this link to determine what they remove from their site, it should be more involved than just a click, but I honestly don't know what their entire process is. I've never clicked it and I never intend to because I don't care what other people read and because I think Amazon's right to sell what they want works both ways. I want them to add more books, not take books down.

Can anyone who has used the "inappropriate content" link tell me what exactly happens when you click it?

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

Customers bought books secure in Amazon's promise that Amazon would keep them in the cloud, and Amazon broke that promise.

There aren't many viable alternatives.

An automatic refund only really makes sense if the user is fully barred from access. Since Amazon no longer does that, it makes sense that refunds should be issued upon request.

Nor should they be responsible for books they pull. I assume that's buried somewhere in the TOS.

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

Amazon is not being clear about what content it, for lack of a more convenient word, censors.

Sounds to me like the author figured it out.

And the author really should not act so surprised that her content crossed a line. I'm not saying "it's wrong," only that she should be well aware of its transgressive nature, and ludicrous to cite sales of the Old Testament as a defense.

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

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.

Yeah, I don't think so. I'm much more concerned about the Air Force clumsily blocking a bunch of newspapers in a vain attempt to keep its soldiers from viewing the classified leaked documents than with Amazon yanking some really out there pr0n.

Especially since they do sell a lot of works that some people would regard as highly offensive, even in the face of strident criticism.

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

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

Are you genuinely incapable of distinguishing between a religious text and prurient material?

Boundaries like these are always going to look arbitrary and/or unfair to whoever winds up in the cold. Ultimately it's Amazon's servers, their services, and if they don't want to sell a specific book, that's their business. Let someone else offer it for sale if they so choose.

[Logseman]

Since Amazon no longer does that, it makes sense that refunds should be issued upon request.

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

[queentess]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Are you genuinely incapable of distinguishing between a religious text and prurient material?

Why should a different standard be applied to religious texts?

[JeremyR]

I don't think this was mentioned, but there recently (like this last week) was a fairly high profile case of a writer for the Huffington Post (and Columbia professor) being arrested on incest charges for having an affair with his daughter.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...tive_for_.html

As Amazon recently had to do with bad publicity for containing books about pedophilia (or at least one of them) and ended up removing it, they probably thought maybe they ought to do that with books glorifying incest.

Once they start banning books for one reason, there are always more reasons.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

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.

I'm just guessing, but I would have thought having DRM would identify the books that Amazon doesn't want people to read for certain, whereas if there is no DRM there would be a risk of deleting the wrong book?

[mr ploppy]

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. 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.

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