7 ms·

Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles

88 points by sahaj 16y ago

prodigal_erik 16y ago
They already demonstrated their power to abuse your property with the 1984 fiasco, and that's the reason I don't own a Kindle. Fortunately it's possible to side-load ebooks from ethical vendors who don't demand an ability to steal your licenses yet keep your money. http://consumerist.com/2009/07/how-to-load-up-your-kindle-with-non-amazon-ebooks.html http://consumerist.com/2009/07/how-to-load-up-your-kindle-wi... Whether root access is readily available on a Kindle is unclear to me.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  It may have seemed like a fiasco to you, but when the dust settled I still had a copy of 1984 on my Kindle, so from a customer's POV I'm not too worried.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Don't forget they can still make your device delete your book. Most probably any content. And it's not hard to think they could brick your device if they wanted to. Conceivably, with a court order, they could compel your Kindle to tell them what books you have been reading and, given it's 3G capabilities, where you have been. It's really not your Kindle. You just paid for it.
    - Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
      Unless you review every patch and download to your PC pretty much any software vendor of a product you have installed could brick it or share your personal data. How is a Kindle any different? The thing that stops Amazon doing it is the same thing that stops them doing it - it would be commercial suicide to do so.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        > Unless you review every patch I happen not to use Windows, so I don't download software from "any software vendor" and most of what I download was peer-reviewed at the source level. Not to say nothing bad ever happened (Debian's SSH keygen comes to mind), but, most of the time, it was caught before it did any relevant damage. > How is a Kindle any different? Amazon already deleted content users purchased without their consent. That proves, without any doubt, there is at least one backdoor Amazon can use to delete content from your device. Did anyone review Amazon's code to make sure there are no other backdoors? > it would be commercial suicide to do so. Have you ever seen a WGA false-alarm?
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
        The fact it's been peer reviewed merely means that a group of people have agreed that what it does is fine. There is nothing that says you will agree with that view - it's still all trust, it's just who you trust. Personally I'm fine trusting Amazon because I believe their commercial imperative to behave reasonably is a strong enough incentive. WGA false alarms are collateral damage (and tend to get resolved very quickly in my personal experience), what you're suggesting by them bricking a device is a very different thing - willingly damaging something with the sole intent of doing so and in all probability no intention of undoing it.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        > it's just who you trust No. It's trusting someone who has no conflict of interest with you. Amazon wants as much revenue from you as they can extract without making you switch. You want as much benefit you can get with little regard to Amazon's profits. By owning content that can only be experienced through channels they control, your cost of switching is higher and so are the margins they can impose on you. > because I believe their commercial imperative to behave reasonably is a strong enough incentive Deleting content users paid for? Removing books they find questionable from a user library? Surely you are not serious. > WGA false alarms are collateral damage (and tend to get resolved very quickly Last time I saw it happen, a total of 45 minutes on the phone over about 4 hours. The sticker on the machine was for Windows 2000 and it took the user some time to find the original XP packaging. That was the last Windows that user (a then colleague of mine) ever used.
    - sliverstorm 16y ago
      Yup. All true. But I trust Amazon, and I am intelligent enough not to use my Kindle in a way that could later implicate me if Amazon was forced to turn over information.
- DannoHung 16y ago
  Does anyone know if all of Feedbooks is DRM free? It looks like they're carrying commercial publications now and I don't know of any store aside from programming ones (and Cory Doctrow) that sell DRM free commercial books.
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    Baen books (http://www.Baen.com http://www.Baen.com ) was a leader in ebooks, and sells only DRM-free, afaik. In fact, they've even got a decent library of entirely free (as in beer) books, to whet your appetite. They publish sci-fi books. This is one company that "gets it", and I recommend them enthusiastically.
    - DannoHung 16y ago
      Thanks! I knew Baen gave away some books, but I didn't know they sold them DRM free too. Only, uhh... I don't really know what's good in their selection :/ Can't have it all, I spose.
ghshephard 16y ago
To be clear, they are currently targeting "Incest" erotica. The irony, of course, is that Amazon's Television Commercial features a women on the beach reading her kindle, and the story on her kindle, is about a boy who has sex with his stepmother. Admittedly, not erotica, but still ironic. Amazon should feel free to yank whatever it wants off its bookshelves (and, in fact, should probably be a bit more discerning given some of the recent crap they've been selling) - but, I don't know if they should be sending their customers _already purchased_ books into the memory hole.
- flipbrad 16y ago
  You didn't purchase a book. You licensed an ebook. Big difference, in Amazon's mind.
  - AgentConundrum 16y ago
    And that, in a nutshell, is why I don't really want to buy an eReader. They just seem too restrictive. My girlfriend and I occasionally share books (usually she borrows mine), but my understanding is that the books you "buy" are licensed only to a single device, and you can only share a book one time, and even then only if the publisher allows it. I could be misunderstanding things, but it seems like if she wanted to borrow one of my books, she would probably need to borrow my Kindle to do it, and essentially borrow all of my books to read one. Until things get sorted out, I think I'll pass on the eReaders.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      > And that, in a nutshell, is why I don't really want to buy an eReader. They just seem too restrictive. You don't have to deprive yourself of e-readers. I am completely happy with O'Reilly's and Pragmatic's policy (no DRM, multi-format). I am a little less happy with Manning, who makes it clear my book is only available for download for the 5 days following purchase. All of them offer DRM-free PDF as a minimum. I am so far very happy with my Nook (B&W e-paper version). And there is also Feddbooks, which is conveniently linked from Stanza (I have it on my iPod) Oh. And after the 1984 episode, it would be hard to convince me to buy a Kindle.
kmfrk 16y ago
I think "Erotica" is a bit euphemistic for "incest fantasy".
- DougBTX 16y ago
  First they came for the incest....
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    I'm just waiting for the "First they came for Hitler... Then they came for the Nazis..." (Anyone familiar with the origins of the phrase should see the irony immediately) Frankly I think it's kind of ridiculous to propose you can't ever give one grimy, muddy, bloodstained inch without being overrun. Niemöller was right, but it doesn't universally apply to EVERY case...
    - DougBTX 16y ago
      I wasn't sure about posting the above comment - I wasn't sure whether it would get up-voted (for being correct) or down voted heavily (for being unoriginal). I don't mind Amazon choosing what it does and does not sell on their store. But as a Kindle owner, the remote deletion does worry me, even though I knew it was part of the deal when I bought the Kindle. Even worse that apparently when she complained, she was insulted for her choice of book. That's not so many steps away from reporting owners of banned books to some superior power.
    - chopsueyar 16y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...
    - angelbob 16y ago
      Well, in France they came for people auctioning off Nazi artifacts :-)
    - potatolicious 16y ago
      > "Frankly I think it's kind of ridiculous to propose you can't ever give one grimy, muddy, bloodstained inch without being overrun." Yet, what reason would we have to give this one, grimy, muddy, bloodstained inch? Besides, Niemoller's point (though in this case unnecessarily melodramatic) is valid here. There is no shortage of sexual kinks in this world that will shock and/or disgust many. There's also no particular rhyme nor reason why this one was targeted over any other, and as such there's no reason to expect that other suitably controversial kinks aren't at risk of having its fiction banned. The puzzling thing is why so many people are quick to judge and raise moral outrage over something that has absolutely no effect on themselves (the reading of fiction). It reeks of puritanism.
javert 16y ago
A particular bookseller choosing not to sell incest erotica does not constitute a book being "banned" or "censored", which only apply when the government forcibly prevents every bookseller from selling particular material. I wouldn't sell incest erotica either, and that doesn't mean I ban or censor books. This kind of exaggeration on the part of the blog author doesn't help her argument; it just causes people to (a) lose intellectual respect for the author and (b) give less credence to her argument.
- abhaga 16y ago
  > A particular bookseller choosing not to sell incest erotica does not constitute a book being "banned" or "censored", which only apply when the government forcibly prevents every bookseller from selling particular material. Going by that logic, to "effectively" ban the book while not "technically" banning it, the govt just needs to pursue the top few channels to stop carrying it. Book will be effectively unavailable and everyone's conscience will be clean. > I wouldn't sell incest erotica either, and that doesn't mean I ban or censor books. But you would make that clear to everyone before starting to do business with them, right? Or if you decided to change your stand one day (which is quite plausible since things do change with time), you would perhaps offer a better reason then "Because I can"?
  - m_eiman 16y ago
    Going by that logic, to "effectively" ban the book while not "technically" banning it, the govt just needs to pursue the top few channels to stop carrying it. Book will be effectively unavailable and everyone's conscience will be clean. Hey, that sounds familiar. Say, for example, that some organization releases a bunch of more or less secret stuff, and you want to prevent them from getting donations to continue releasing stuff, you could just lean a bit on VISA and Mastercard…
  - javert 16y ago
    > Going by that logic... The government didn't tell Amazon to stop carrying the book, so your point is irrelevant. > But you would... Well I haven't really thought about that, because in reading the post, I was just distracted by the exaggeration that I pointed out in my original comment.
tzs 16y ago
Is there any independent confirmation of this? Parts of it sound made up.
sliverstorm 16y ago
I actually wrote those incest books as a result of a contest where it was the most popular category on the site... Maybe you should expand your horizons. grin -- The Author Ok, I'm all for trying new things and all, but the world-wide cultural taboo against incest exists for a clearly defined reason (ref: Alexei Nikolaevich, for example), not just because we're all a buncha prudes.
- nick24862486 16y ago
  Imo it's because you are just a bunch of prudes. It's just literature which by the way is widely sold worldwide by various bookstores. Besides Amazon accepted the book for publishing, did publish it, allowed people to buy it and now is pulling it off without any compensation for clients/author. Looks like abuse from their side to me.
  - RexRollman 16y ago
    Amazon knows that few people will stand up for an unpopular form of fiction.
- Kolya 16y ago
  That isn't a reason against incest per se. It is merely an objection to certain forms of incest - specifically, those that lead to children. With freely-available contraception and abortion, it's hard to think of any good reason for the absolute cultural taboo against all incest. One of the goals of literature should be to challenge cultural taboos. Any good bookseller should realize it.
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    Though it does not thrill me to say so, you make a valid point. It is worth noting though that cultural mores don't work well with shades of grey- they are best suited to black-and-whites. (i.e. do/don't instead of do this way/don't do that way)
    - 16y ago
rmc 16y ago
When some of my readers began checking their Kindle archives for books of mine they’d purchased on Amazon, they found them missing from their archives I think Amazon (and any bookseller) should be allowed to sell or not sell any sort of book they want. However deleting already paid for books that your customers have bought from their devices is totally unethical IMO.
- araneae 16y ago
  Also unethical is not automatically given them a refund, and then verbally trying to humiliate them over their choice of reading when they request one.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    It's really easy to imagine something like "what would your kids do if they found out what you have been reading?"
    - rmc 16y ago
      Or threathen to tell the persons' children's school. "Did you know the parent of $CHILD reads about incest?"
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        Just imagine it integrated with your Facebook profile...
  - roel_v 16y ago
    There's this story, I don't know if it's true, of a business who used to sell gay sex toys (I don't know what is specifically 'gay' about it, let's gloss over this for the sake of the story) from the back of magazine covers. Except they didn't have any inventory or anything - their entire business was to collect payments, guaranteeing 'discrete packaging' etc in the ads; but then call the customer and tell them 'we're out of stock, but we can send you a letter with our logo on it, and when you fill in the form in that letter, we'll send you a cheque from Gay Sex Toys Inc made out to you to reimburse you'. Their business floated on people who didn't want those letters or didn't want to hand in that kind of cheques to their local banks and who just left it at that.
madair 16y ago
the "debate" here is simply the utter failure by so many to recognize power abusing non-power for ideas deemed unsavory just as is the inability of so many to recognize that it is exactly the same when wikileaks is refused a right to be published via server space you "debaters" should be ashamed of yourselves...but you won't be. i don't fully understand that part. is it really that hard to see the shape of the nation? the commerce infrastructure? the war, imperialism, peonage, acquiescence to abuses in the name of stability and financial growth. yet nazis DID exist, and nazis DO exists, and the more often Godwin's crock of a law is pompously imposed the more will exist. ask yourself: how did they exist? were the german middle class simply naturally evil spawn of the devil children waiting to grow up and be spawn of the devil killers? how did they rise? not some macro view, a micro view. how did the middle class of a western nation create the nazi's military machine? have you considered that they were propagandized? and how did that occur? why was information lacking? is it possible that information was suppressed? who suppressed it? you are not immune to the very same information deficit which you endorse. you are not immune to the very same fear which envelops the nation. but you say, "this is incest, i just don't like incest". well, there's lots of things you might not like. perhaps for example consider that 80-90% of you are not gay. presumably you don't read gay fiction. why are gays allowed to have a deviation from your norm while you are selectively willing to determine another deviation from your norm eligible for suppression? try to keep in mind that your cultural norm is a shockingly violent culture filled with shocking amounts of violent fantasy. "oh but i don't like violent fantasy". yeah right, i'm talking to the other 99.9% of you then. you <--- yes you, reading this, are the middle-class of a western nation with quite a track record, and one that is only getting worse and so very very quickly year upon year of this century. what questions will people ask 70 years from now to try to understand you. the middle-class "debaters" metaphors are a powerful force against natural difficulty to place events into context. i would say you're only hurting yourselves, but actually you're hurting us all. You.
- drndown2007 16y ago
  I think you take it too far. Yes, the powerful abusing the weak is not a healthy thing. But there is actually 'bad' in the world that should be suppressed. Unfortunately, there are people (you?) that are willing to say "we can't all agree on what is bad, therefore nothing is bad". That would work, except for the fact that we're human, frail and don't know nearly as much as we think we do. Since the original article is sex, and you refered to it above, let's continue with it. Try going to an SA (sex addicts) meeting sometime and hear about shattered lives because of what someone did to someone else. I'm going to put my foot down and say rape is bad because of the horrible emotional baggage it leaves in someone's life. Incest is usually in the same category (I personally know a guy who will never have normal relationships because of what his older sister and friend did with him when he was 12). I'm sure someone (you?) will try to argue there are cases where it's OK, so we shouldn't call rape 'bad'. PLEASE! Sometimes, there ARE things that should be suppressed. And this doesn't mean anything or everything should be suppressed. If people are suppressing/hiding something because they did wrong (the government) then it should be exposed. Except, whoops, we just said the government did 'wrong'. That's a value judgement! <sarcasm>Maybe some people think starting fake wars is OK and we shouldn't be so quick to call that unsavory</sarcasm> Value judgements have to be made as long as we're human. Value judgements mean there is 'good' and 'bad'. I don't think we want more 'bad' -- it's bad by definition! If we ever get to the point that we're computers and can hit a reset button, then _maybe_ right and wrong will go away... So wikileaks and exposing corruption -- good, bring it on, don't suppress it. Encouraging rape or incest, I'm calling bad -- we don't need more of that in society. (OK, bring on the down votes)
jasongullickson 16y ago
I thought that Bezos himself said deleting books from people Kindles was "stupid"; Here we go: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/24/amazon-drm http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/24/amazon...
- dhimes 16y ago
  Thank you for this. I wish I had it before I fired off my email to Amazon...
- jsolson 16y ago
  He did, and supposedly they're not actually doing that this time: http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/ http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related...
re 16y ago
Poor title ("Removing From Kindles") on the HN submission: > A discussion thread on Amazon’s Kindle Community forum notes that Amazon has begun removing some previously-published books or stories from its store, and from the Kindle archives. Readers who have previously downloaded them to their Kindles can keep them there, but cannot re-download them (and will be refunded the price of purchase assuming Amazon can still find the purchase record). http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/ http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related... (linked from the submitted story)
w1ntermute 16y ago
What happened to not deleting books that had already been purchased? > Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- jsolson 16y ago
  Supposedly they're not deleting them from devices, just from the archives (thus preventing re-downloading the titles): http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/ http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related...
SeanDav 16y ago
Looks like I will be buying a Kindle or Amazon e-book about the time when hell freezes over....
sigzero 16y ago
Why "erotica" in the title and not "incest titles"? I know why. They aren't banning ALL erotica...just a particular one that most people would agree with Amazon on.
rprasad 16y ago
This article is an exaggerated pile of crap. Pardon my language. Amazon is not taking down erotica. They still have a very large and healthy erotica/romance section. What they are doing is removing incest-erotica published by Amazon's Createspace. According to the pages the author links to in his post, incest-erotica from other publishers remains available for sale. Incest, by the way, is illegal in most of America, except possibly in the South. It's no different from Amazon removing bestiality-erotica or pedophilia-erotica published under its own label. Long story short: if you want to publish incest-erotica, don't publish through Amazon's CreateSpace.
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  Murder is illegal everywhere, but writing about it hasn't yet become crimethink.
  - rprasad 16y ago
    Writing about it isn't crimethink. But it's highly undesirable for a commercial company to be associated with incest erotica. Amazon made a business decision to stop publishing incest-erotica through its own publishing label. It did not ban other publishers from publishing that crap in its store.
ktf 16y ago
You know what's full of explicit incest? Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor. It's also one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. But it looks like it's not available on Kindle either, now that I check :) http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Ardor-Chronicle-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0679725229/ http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Ardor-Chronicle-Vladimir-Nabokov/d...

88 points by sahaj 16y ago

They already demonstrated their power to abuse your property with the 1984 fiasco, and that's the reason I don't own a Kindle. Fortunately it's possible to side-load ebooks from ethical vendors who don't demand an ability to steal your licenses yet keep your money. http://consumerist.com/2009/07/how-to-load-up-your-kindle-with-non-amazon-ebooks.html http://consumerist.com/2009/07/how-to-load-up-your-kindle-wi... Whether root access is readily available on a Kindle is unclear to me.

sliverstorm 16y ago
It may have seemed like a fiasco to you, but when the dust settled I still had a copy of 1984 on my Kindle, so from a customer's POV I'm not too worried.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Don't forget they can still make your device delete your book. Most probably any content. And it's not hard to think they could brick your device if they wanted to. Conceivably, with a court order, they could compel your Kindle to tell them what books you have been reading and, given it's 3G capabilities, where you have been. It's really not your Kindle. You just paid for it.
  - Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
    Unless you review every patch and download to your PC pretty much any software vendor of a product you have installed could brick it or share your personal data. How is a Kindle any different? The thing that stops Amazon doing it is the same thing that stops them doing it - it would be commercial suicide to do so.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      > Unless you review every patch I happen not to use Windows, so I don't download software from "any software vendor" and most of what I download was peer-reviewed at the source level. Not to say nothing bad ever happened (Debian's SSH keygen comes to mind), but, most of the time, it was caught before it did any relevant damage. > How is a Kindle any different? Amazon already deleted content users purchased without their consent. That proves, without any doubt, there is at least one backdoor Amazon can use to delete content from your device. Did anyone review Amazon's code to make sure there are no other backdoors? > it would be commercial suicide to do so. Have you ever seen a WGA false-alarm?
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
        The fact it's been peer reviewed merely means that a group of people have agreed that what it does is fine. There is nothing that says you will agree with that view - it's still all trust, it's just who you trust. Personally I'm fine trusting Amazon because I believe their commercial imperative to behave reasonably is a strong enough incentive. WGA false alarms are collateral damage (and tend to get resolved very quickly in my personal experience), what you're suggesting by them bricking a device is a very different thing - willingly damaging something with the sole intent of doing so and in all probability no intention of undoing it.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        > it's just who you trust No. It's trusting someone who has no conflict of interest with you. Amazon wants as much revenue from you as they can extract without making you switch. You want as much benefit you can get with little regard to Amazon's profits. By owning content that can only be experienced through channels they control, your cost of switching is higher and so are the margins they can impose on you. > because I believe their commercial imperative to behave reasonably is a strong enough incentive Deleting content users paid for? Removing books they find questionable from a user library? Surely you are not serious. > WGA false alarms are collateral damage (and tend to get resolved very quickly Last time I saw it happen, a total of 45 minutes on the phone over about 4 hours. The sticker on the machine was for Windows 2000 and it took the user some time to find the original XP packaging. That was the last Windows that user (a then colleague of mine) ever used.
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    Yup. All true. But I trust Amazon, and I am intelligent enough not to use my Kindle in a way that could later implicate me if Amazon was forced to turn over information.
DannoHung 16y ago
Does anyone know if all of Feedbooks is DRM free? It looks like they're carrying commercial publications now and I don't know of any store aside from programming ones (and Cory Doctrow) that sell DRM free commercial books.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  Baen books (http://www.Baen.com http://www.Baen.com ) was a leader in ebooks, and sells only DRM-free, afaik. In fact, they've even got a decent library of entirely free (as in beer) books, to whet your appetite. They publish sci-fi books. This is one company that "gets it", and I recommend them enthusiastically.
  - DannoHung 16y ago
    Thanks! I knew Baen gave away some books, but I didn't know they sold them DRM free too. Only, uhh... I don't really know what's good in their selection :/ Can't have it all, I spose.

ghshephard 16y ago

To be clear, they are currently targeting "Incest" erotica. The irony, of course, is that Amazon's Television Commercial features a women on the beach reading her kindle, and the story on her kindle, is about a boy who has sex with his stepmother. Admittedly, not erotica, but still ironic. Amazon should feel free to yank whatever it wants off its bookshelves (and, in fact, should probably be a bit more discerning given some of the recent crap they've been selling) - but, I don't know if they should be sending their customers _already purchased_ books into the memory hole.

flipbrad 16y ago
You didn't purchase a book. You licensed an ebook. Big difference, in Amazon's mind.
- AgentConundrum 16y ago
  And that, in a nutshell, is why I don't really want to buy an eReader. They just seem too restrictive. My girlfriend and I occasionally share books (usually she borrows mine), but my understanding is that the books you "buy" are licensed only to a single device, and you can only share a book one time, and even then only if the publisher allows it. I could be misunderstanding things, but it seems like if she wanted to borrow one of my books, she would probably need to borrow my Kindle to do it, and essentially borrow all of my books to read one. Until things get sorted out, I think I'll pass on the eReaders.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > And that, in a nutshell, is why I don't really want to buy an eReader. They just seem too restrictive. You don't have to deprive yourself of e-readers. I am completely happy with O'Reilly's and Pragmatic's policy (no DRM, multi-format). I am a little less happy with Manning, who makes it clear my book is only available for download for the 5 days following purchase. All of them offer DRM-free PDF as a minimum. I am so far very happy with my Nook (B&W e-paper version). And there is also Feddbooks, which is conveniently linked from Stanza (I have it on my iPod) Oh. And after the 1984 episode, it would be hard to convince me to buy a Kindle.

kmfrk 16y ago

I think "Erotica" is a bit euphemistic for "incest fantasy".

DougBTX 16y ago
First they came for the incest....
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  I'm just waiting for the "First they came for Hitler... Then they came for the Nazis..." (Anyone familiar with the origins of the phrase should see the irony immediately) Frankly I think it's kind of ridiculous to propose you can't ever give one grimy, muddy, bloodstained inch without being overrun. Niemöller was right, but it doesn't universally apply to EVERY case...
  - DougBTX 16y ago
    I wasn't sure about posting the above comment - I wasn't sure whether it would get up-voted (for being correct) or down voted heavily (for being unoriginal). I don't mind Amazon choosing what it does and does not sell on their store. But as a Kindle owner, the remote deletion does worry me, even though I knew it was part of the deal when I bought the Kindle. Even worse that apparently when she complained, she was insulted for her choice of book. That's not so many steps away from reporting owners of banned books to some superior power.
  - chopsueyar 16y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...
  - angelbob 16y ago
    Well, in France they came for people auctioning off Nazi artifacts :-)
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    > "Frankly I think it's kind of ridiculous to propose you can't ever give one grimy, muddy, bloodstained inch without being overrun." Yet, what reason would we have to give this one, grimy, muddy, bloodstained inch? Besides, Niemoller's point (though in this case unnecessarily melodramatic) is valid here. There is no shortage of sexual kinks in this world that will shock and/or disgust many. There's also no particular rhyme nor reason why this one was targeted over any other, and as such there's no reason to expect that other suitably controversial kinks aren't at risk of having its fiction banned. The puzzling thing is why so many people are quick to judge and raise moral outrage over something that has absolutely no effect on themselves (the reading of fiction). It reeks of puritanism.

javert 16y ago

A particular bookseller choosing not to sell incest erotica does not constitute a book being "banned" or "censored", which only apply when the government forcibly prevents every bookseller from selling particular material. I wouldn't sell incest erotica either, and that doesn't mean I ban or censor books. This kind of exaggeration on the part of the blog author doesn't help her argument; it just causes people to (a) lose intellectual respect for the author and (b) give less credence to her argument.

abhaga 16y ago
> A particular bookseller choosing not to sell incest erotica does not constitute a book being "banned" or "censored", which only apply when the government forcibly prevents every bookseller from selling particular material. Going by that logic, to "effectively" ban the book while not "technically" banning it, the govt just needs to pursue the top few channels to stop carrying it. Book will be effectively unavailable and everyone's conscience will be clean. > I wouldn't sell incest erotica either, and that doesn't mean I ban or censor books. But you would make that clear to everyone before starting to do business with them, right? Or if you decided to change your stand one day (which is quite plausible since things do change with time), you would perhaps offer a better reason then "Because I can"?
- m_eiman 16y ago
  Going by that logic, to "effectively" ban the book while not "technically" banning it, the govt just needs to pursue the top few channels to stop carrying it. Book will be effectively unavailable and everyone's conscience will be clean. Hey, that sounds familiar. Say, for example, that some organization releases a bunch of more or less secret stuff, and you want to prevent them from getting donations to continue releasing stuff, you could just lean a bit on VISA and Mastercard…
- javert 16y ago
  > Going by that logic... The government didn't tell Amazon to stop carrying the book, so your point is irrelevant. > But you would... Well I haven't really thought about that, because in reading the post, I was just distracted by the exaggeration that I pointed out in my original comment.

tzs 16y ago

Is there any independent confirmation of this? Parts of it sound made up.

sliverstorm 16y ago

I actually wrote those incest books as a result of a contest where it was the most popular category on the site... Maybe you should expand your horizons. grin -- The Author Ok, I'm all for trying new things and all, but the world-wide cultural taboo against incest exists for a clearly defined reason (ref: Alexei Nikolaevich, for example), not just because we're all a buncha prudes.

nick24862486 16y ago
Imo it's because you are just a bunch of prudes. It's just literature which by the way is widely sold worldwide by various bookstores. Besides Amazon accepted the book for publishing, did publish it, allowed people to buy it and now is pulling it off without any compensation for clients/author. Looks like abuse from their side to me.
- RexRollman 16y ago
  Amazon knows that few people will stand up for an unpopular form of fiction.
Kolya 16y ago
That isn't a reason against incest per se. It is merely an objection to certain forms of incest - specifically, those that lead to children. With freely-available contraception and abortion, it's hard to think of any good reason for the absolute cultural taboo against all incest. One of the goals of literature should be to challenge cultural taboos. Any good bookseller should realize it.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  Though it does not thrill me to say so, you make a valid point. It is worth noting though that cultural mores don't work well with shades of grey- they are best suited to black-and-whites. (i.e. do/don't instead of do this way/don't do that way)
  - 16y ago

rmc 16y ago

When some of my readers began checking their Kindle archives for books of mine they’d purchased on Amazon, they found them missing from their archives I think Amazon (and any bookseller) should be allowed to sell or not sell any sort of book they want. However deleting already paid for books that your customers have bought from their devices is totally unethical IMO.

araneae 16y ago
Also unethical is not automatically given them a refund, and then verbally trying to humiliate them over their choice of reading when they request one.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  It's really easy to imagine something like "what would your kids do if they found out what you have been reading?"
  - rmc 16y ago
    Or threathen to tell the persons' children's school. "Did you know the parent of $CHILD reads about incest?"
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Just imagine it integrated with your Facebook profile...
- roel_v 16y ago
  There's this story, I don't know if it's true, of a business who used to sell gay sex toys (I don't know what is specifically 'gay' about it, let's gloss over this for the sake of the story) from the back of magazine covers. Except they didn't have any inventory or anything - their entire business was to collect payments, guaranteeing 'discrete packaging' etc in the ads; but then call the customer and tell them 'we're out of stock, but we can send you a letter with our logo on it, and when you fill in the form in that letter, we'll send you a cheque from Gay Sex Toys Inc made out to you to reimburse you'. Their business floated on people who didn't want those letters or didn't want to hand in that kind of cheques to their local banks and who just left it at that.

madair 16y ago

the "debate" here is simply the utter failure by so many to recognize power abusing non-power for ideas deemed unsavory just as is the inability of so many to recognize that it is exactly the same when wikileaks is refused a right to be published via server space you "debaters" should be ashamed of yourselves...but you won't be. i don't fully understand that part. is it really that hard to see the shape of the nation? the commerce infrastructure? the war, imperialism, peonage, acquiescence to abuses in the name of stability and financial growth. yet nazis DID exist, and nazis DO exists, and the more often Godwin's crock of a law is pompously imposed the more will exist. ask yourself: how did they exist? were the german middle class simply naturally evil spawn of the devil children waiting to grow up and be spawn of the devil killers? how did they rise? not some macro view, a micro view. how did the middle class of a western nation create the nazi's military machine? have you considered that they were propagandized? and how did that occur? why was information lacking? is it possible that information was suppressed? who suppressed it? you are not immune to the very same information deficit which you endorse. you are not immune to the very same fear which envelops the nation. but you say, "this is incest, i just don't like incest". well, there's lots of things you might not like. perhaps for example consider that 80-90% of you are not gay. presumably you don't read gay fiction. why are gays allowed to have a deviation from your norm while you are selectively willing to determine another deviation from your norm eligible for suppression? try to keep in mind that your cultural norm is a shockingly violent culture filled with shocking amounts of violent fantasy. "oh but i don't like violent fantasy". yeah right, i'm talking to the other 99.9% of you then. you <--- yes you, reading this, are the middle-class of a western nation with quite a track record, and one that is only getting worse and so very very quickly year upon year of this century. what questions will people ask 70 years from now to try to understand you. the middle-class "debaters" metaphors are a powerful force against natural difficulty to place events into context. i would say you're only hurting yourselves, but actually you're hurting us all. You.

drndown2007 16y ago
I think you take it too far. Yes, the powerful abusing the weak is not a healthy thing. But there is actually 'bad' in the world that should be suppressed. Unfortunately, there are people (you?) that are willing to say "we can't all agree on what is bad, therefore nothing is bad". That would work, except for the fact that we're human, frail and don't know nearly as much as we think we do. Since the original article is sex, and you refered to it above, let's continue with it. Try going to an SA (sex addicts) meeting sometime and hear about shattered lives because of what someone did to someone else. I'm going to put my foot down and say rape is bad because of the horrible emotional baggage it leaves in someone's life. Incest is usually in the same category (I personally know a guy who will never have normal relationships because of what his older sister and friend did with him when he was 12). I'm sure someone (you?) will try to argue there are cases where it's OK, so we shouldn't call rape 'bad'. PLEASE! Sometimes, there ARE things that should be suppressed. And this doesn't mean anything or everything should be suppressed. If people are suppressing/hiding something because they did wrong (the government) then it should be exposed. Except, whoops, we just said the government did 'wrong'. That's a value judgement! <sarcasm>Maybe some people think starting fake wars is OK and we shouldn't be so quick to call that unsavory</sarcasm> Value judgements have to be made as long as we're human. Value judgements mean there is 'good' and 'bad'. I don't think we want more 'bad' -- it's bad by definition! If we ever get to the point that we're computers and can hit a reset button, then _maybe_ right and wrong will go away... So wikileaks and exposing corruption -- good, bring it on, don't suppress it. Encouraging rape or incest, I'm calling bad -- we don't need more of that in society. (OK, bring on the down votes)

jasongullickson 16y ago

I thought that Bezos himself said deleting books from people Kindles was "stupid"; Here we go: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/24/amazon-drm http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/24/amazon...

dhimes 16y ago
Thank you for this. I wish I had it before I fired off my email to Amazon...
jsolson 16y ago
He did, and supposedly they're not actually doing that this time: http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/ http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related...

re 16y ago

Poor title ("Removing From Kindles") on the HN submission: > A discussion thread on Amazon’s Kindle Community forum notes that Amazon has begun removing some previously-published books or stories from its store, and from the Kindle archives. Readers who have previously downloaded them to their Kindles can keep them there, but cannot re-download them (and will be refunded the price of purchase assuming Amazon can still find the purchase record). http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/ http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related... (linked from the submitted story)

w1ntermute 16y ago

What happened to not deleting books that had already been purchased? > Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jsolson 16y ago
Supposedly they're not deleting them from devices, just from the archives (thus preventing re-downloading the titles): http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/ http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related...

SeanDav 16y ago

Looks like I will be buying a Kindle or Amazon e-book about the time when hell freezes over....

sigzero 16y ago

Why "erotica" in the title and not "incest titles"? I know why. They aren't banning ALL erotica...just a particular one that most people would agree with Amazon on.

rprasad 16y ago

This article is an exaggerated pile of crap. Pardon my language. Amazon is not taking down erotica. They still have a very large and healthy erotica/romance section. What they are doing is removing incest-erotica published by Amazon's Createspace. According to the pages the author links to in his post, incest-erotica from other publishers remains available for sale. Incest, by the way, is illegal in most of America, except possibly in the South. It's no different from Amazon removing bestiality-erotica or pedophilia-erotica published under its own label. Long story short: if you want to publish incest-erotica, don't publish through Amazon's CreateSpace.

prodigal_erik 16y ago
Murder is illegal everywhere, but writing about it hasn't yet become crimethink.
- rprasad 16y ago
  Writing about it isn't crimethink. But it's highly undesirable for a commercial company to be associated with incest erotica. Amazon made a business decision to stop publishing incest-erotica through its own publishing label. It did not ban other publishers from publishing that crap in its store.

ktf 16y ago

You know what's full of explicit incest? Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor. It's also one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. But it looks like it's not available on Kindle either, now that I check :) http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Ardor-Chronicle-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0679725229/ http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Ardor-Chronicle-Vladimir-Nabokov/d...