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Amazon has started to remove books on political grounds as well: https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal The Dr. Se

Amazon has started to remove books on political grounds as well: https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal The Dr. Seuss books were banned not just by eBay but also by their publisher, which holds the copyright, so you can still buy them used on Amazon... for $1,500+ per copy: https://www.wane.com/news/prices-skyrocket-for-dr-seuss-books-on-amazon/ https://www.wane.com/news/prices-skyrocket-for-dr-seuss-book... The reality is that these books will not be accessible to the vast majority of future American readers. This is just a fact at this point. It doesn't even matter if Amazon keeps selling them, as the publisher banned them, so the number of (legal) copies will dwindle to zero. Also, with Amazon starting to ban books on similar political grounds, saying "but Amazon didn't ban this specific book (yet)" or "you can still get a copy at some obscure second-hand stores" is burying our heads in the sand and ignoring the reality of what is happening.

dr_dshiv 6y ago
Isn't this more of a matter of copyright and, specifically, the moral rights of authors and copyright holders to control their work? It's not that ebay is so offended—it's that Dr Seuss Enterprises doesn't want to lose billions due to a tarnished legacy. (Oops!) To me, this is just like a mature author that wants to stop the sale of an embarrassing early book because it was poorly written. In this case, the rightsholder thinks the early books are in poor taste and no longer wants them associated with the brand. For the record, the same whitewashing (wokewashing?) happened to the Richard Scarry books which are all "abridged" because they were so offensively conservative about the role of women. https://www.upworthy.com/8-changes-that-were-made-to-a-classic-richard-scarry-book-to-keep-up-with-the-times-progress https://www.upworthy.com/8-changes-that-were-made-to-a-class...
- helsinkiandrew 6y ago
  > the same whitewashing (wokewashing?) happened to the Richard Scarry books which are all "abridged" Do you really have issues with the changes they made? They weren't abridged but just edited to show both sexes and different races doing jobs other than being maids and housewives. I'm not sure replacing milkman, fireman and cowboys with firefighters, gardeners and scientists is 'woke'
  - mc32 6y ago
    I don’t see an issue with an author updating their books with new editions. I do have a problem if they ban the older editions.
    - citizenkeen 6y ago
      Nobody has banned the older ones. The owner of them just wishes not to sell them, which the free market totally allows for.
      - mc32 6y ago
        The publisher and IP owner I understand. I don’t understand the used book market eBay and Amazon taking them off the real and virtual shelves.
    - craftinator 6y ago
      > I do have a problem if they ban the older editions. I don't see how they are "banned". Banning means "forbidden, disallowed, illegal". The older editions do not fall under any of the definitions. They are harder to get, because the author stopped selling them. You can still find them somewhere, and if you already have them you can keep them, they are just less convenient to acquire than they used to be.
      - mc32 6y ago
        Banned books of the week were also not banned. They actually often remained in print. The bs Ning was being done by busybodies who knew what was right for young children. You’re trying too hard to defend the indefensible. eBay and Amazon stopped the used book market for these not just the publisher and rights holder. According to your take no book has ever been banned in the US and people who complained about book banning were clutching pearls.
        craftinator 6y ago
        I have no idea what you're talking about. Your sentences literally don't make sense.
- timw4mail 6y ago
  I don't see why used sales should be controlled in the same matter as new sales. Discontinuing the printing is different than preventing sales of used copies.
  - neltnerb 6y ago
    You're approximately the first comment I've seen on this entire thread that actually noted the difference without hyperbole about banning books and censorship, thank you. I'm with you; I don't think ebay should be forced to sell anything, but I think it was a bad decision to knee jerk ban auctions for the books in the news this week when they sell literal nazi medals. I'm not angry with ebay, but I think they made a stupid choice and that they have highlighted how few alternative ways there are to purchase used books. Upside is that it's good they are highlighting it now, finally. It's a very peculiar flex for them to decide to do, reselling books has a very long history of court cases saying the publisher cannot control the sale of an original purchased copy.
- NeverFade 6y ago
  The bottom line is that books are being banned. Sometimes it's because the copyright holders (which are not the authors) decided to stop publishing them for political reasons. This decision is all too easy to make when you are a massive copyright holder like Disney. The result is that these massive copyright holders can decide which ideas are allowed, and which ideas will be banned. In other cases, these book bans are executed by large book distributors, like Amazon: https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal. These are done very much against the wishes of the author, publisher, and copyright holder. In still other cases, the book ban is enacted by a secondary market distributor, forcibly preventing one private legal owner of the work from selling it to another reader. This is what's happening here with eBay and the Dr. Seuss books. This is a multi-pronged attack on the freedom to express and distribute ideas. And yes, it's all legal, much like the commissar control of all book publications under the Soviet regime.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    Your use of the word “banned” here is telling, especially with your reference to the Soviets. The actual bottom line here is that this was a decision by capitalists under a capitalist system. This is the free market at work. People who own the intellectual rights to these books decided for themselves using their own free will to stop selling them. That’s just capitalism. You say that eBay is preventing one private owner from selling to another private buyer, but what’s the alternative? To force eBay to facilitate the transaction? How is that freedom? The owner and buyer are still free to sell and buy this book, just not thorough eBay. If there is enough demand for this kind of transaction then the market will find a way to facilitate it. That’s capitalism.
    - rpdillon 6y ago
      I see your point, but the confounding factor for me is that the government granted a monopoly on these books through copyright. That's an artificial construct designed to promote science and the useful arts, but in this situation it's being used to suppress art. In this case, I would advocate for terminating the copyright and letting it be distributed by whoever is willing to.
- hertzrat 6y ago
  > To me, this is just like a mature author that wants to stop the sale of an embarrassing early book because it was poorly written. Dr Seuss passed away in 1991, about 30 years ago, so he isn’t capable of being embarrassed any more.
- haberman 6y ago
  > In this case, the rightsholder thinks the early books are in poor taste and no longer wants them associated with the brand. This is an incomplete story. The company convened a panel of outside "experts" to make these determinations: > Dr. Seuss Enterprises said that it had consulted a panel of experts including educators in reviewing its catalog of titles and made the decision last year to cease publication of the six titles. > In a statement to the Associated Press, Seuss Enterprises said it is “committed to listening and learning and will continue to review our entire portfolio.” https://deadline.com/2021/03/dr-seuss-books-canceled-no-longer-published-hurtful-wrong-imagery-1234704658/ https://deadline.com/2021/03/dr-seuss-books-canceled-no-long... Unlike other so-called "cancel culture" stories, the pressure campaign didn't play out publicly. But the language is the same and strongly suggests that the publisher is deferring to the judgment of outside "experts", hoping this will keep them in the good graces of the increasingly woke publishing and education worlds.
- finneganscat 6y ago
  So you’re saying it’s acceptable for them to whitewash their history? What about people that want to study this type of racism and write books or make documentaries about it? They want to hide their past, but the right thing is for society is for them to be forced to confront it.
XorNot 6y ago
If the publisher shutdown and the IP on the books went into legal limbo, then the exact same thing would happen - has happened - to numerous works. For example try to get the Sid Meier Alpha Centauri novelizations - they're almost impossible to find, they're out of print (they're expensive as hell on ebay). It's been a problem for years that there's been so redress available when a publisher either owns an IP and refuses to sell or license it freely, or when an IP falls into unclear ownership and the same basic thing results. This all has nothing to do with anything political (because these are not being suppressed by a government, and citizens and organizations are free to choose their own speech and associations) and everything to do with just how garbage copyright law is.
- NeverFade 6y ago
  > If the publisher shutdown and the IP on the books went into legal limbo, then the exact same thing would happen - has happened - to numerous works. You are talking about works that became incidentally unavailable for commercial reasons (not that many people are interested in 22 year-old strategy video games). The Dr. Seuss books are an example of intentional book banning on political grounds. Their publisher also didn't "shut down": they delibrately decided to stop publishing these books because they deemed them Politically Incorrect: https://apnews.com/article/dr-seuss-books-racist-images-d8ed18335c03319d72f443594c174513 https://apnews.com/article/dr-seuss-books-racist-images-d8ed... > “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator’s birthday. And now eBay has decided that if you legally own a copy, you can't sell it to another reader, because it contains Dangerous Ideas from which the American mind must be protected.
  - mcv 6y ago
    > (not that many people are interested in 22 year-old strategy video games) I recently started a game of Alpha Centauri again. Good times.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    > The Dr. Seuss books are an example of intentional book banning on political grounds. As always, the only dynamic considered here by the publisher is money. They have made a calculation that doing this will benefit their bottom line in the long run. That's the free market and the way the system is designed to work. You may not like their decision, but it's their decision to make. That's the freedom they enjoy under our system. You have the freedom to complain about it and no one will stop you, but everyone is free to act however they best they see fit. > And now eBay has decided that if you legally own a copy, you can't sell it to another reader, because it contains Dangerous Ideas from which the American mind must be protected. eBay has not decided this. They have no power to decide this for you in our free market capitalist system. They have decided they don't want to facilitate the transaction, which is their right as a free enterprise. If you own the book you are still free to sell it to anyone you want. eBay is not going to help you though, and forcing them to do so would be against free market principles.
helsinkiandrew 6y ago
But what actually is happening? Thousands of books go out of print every week. There are over 50 or so Dr Zeus books. If the heirs of the author and publisher no longer want to sell a handful of them will the vast majority of future American readers care? I would guess that eventually (if these books are popular enough) they will be edited and brought up to date like Richard Scary books: https://www.upworthy.com/8-changes-that-were-made-to-a-classic-richard-scarry-book-to-keep-up-with-the-times-progress https://www.upworthy.com/8-changes-that-were-made-to-a-class...
- mc32 6y ago
  The rights holders can do what they want while they are not in the public domain. What is wrong is pulling it from stock as well as secondary marketplaces. What if the Christian or Muslim clerics get to say what books should be pulled too?
  - rayiner 6y ago
    > What if the Christian or Muslim clerics get to say what books should be pulled too As an immigrant from a Muslim country I’m super excited about this. I’m going to ban sex scenes on TV so I don’t have to skip past them.
- NeverFade 6y ago
  These are all arguments that would support book banning in the Soviet union and all similar totalitarian regimes. "Thousands of books go out of print every year, so what's the problem with us banning these specific books for political reasons?" "Does it really matter that we banned these dozens of books? Thousands others were not banned, and are available to the Soviet reader at the nearest bookstores!" This is a slipper slope, and we're already sliding quite deeply into it. Amazon just banned a book about transgenderism that it considered "offensive": https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal This is clearly the Soviet case: it's not banning a single book, it's banning the ideas that it presents, for being Politically Incorrect. Once the book is unavailable, American readers will not have access to these ideas anywhere. Any other book presenting these same ideas will also be banned on the same grounds. This is precisely what was happening in the Soviet Union and similar totalitarian regimes that banned "forbidden / politically-incorrect" ideas.
kingaillas 6y ago
>The Dr. Seuss books were banned not just by eBay but also by their publisher I don't see the problem here. The copyright owner's no longer wish to distribute certain items in their intellectual property collection? So? I don't see people concerned that Disney isn't pulling "Song of the South" out of their vault, or isn't streaming it on Disney+. What's the alternative you want? The government to FORCE artists to publish? FORCE Ebay to list these particular Dr. Seuss books? What the hell?? Isn't that worse?
- NeverFade 6y ago
  Disney is a great example. It's a huge copyright owners which owns the rights to numerous important cultural works. They can, very effectively, decide what ideas the American public will have access to. Yes, this is all legal. However, legally, the commissars of the Soviet Union also had the right and the power to ban ideas, books, works of art, and every form of expression. The problem is the result: a small elite group of cultural commissars controlling the flow of ideas, and shutting undesirable ideas out of the public discourse and the public mind. That is how totalitarian regimes are created and maintained. Incidentally, the "government force" in copyright protection is the protection of copyright. That was done for the explicit purpose of fostering the publication of works, since the American lawmakers could never imagine that there will come a time in which huge corporations will ban books on political grounds. All the government has to do is to stop enforcing copyright protection for copyright-owners who no longer publish the copyrighted works. Guaranteed other publishers will pick up these Dr. Seuss books, since he is by far the most popular children's books author of our time. As things stand, bid these books adieu. Your children will not be able to read them.
  - CabSauce 6y ago
    Except this isn't the government 'banning' anything. And there's never been more access to information. You're just whining.
  - hbrav 6y ago
    This is not how totalitarian regimes are created at all. Commissars in the USSR having the power to ban books meant repercussions from the state for reading or distributing those books, and was a clear signal that similar works would meet a similar fate. The publisher deciding to no longer sell some part of their work is entirely different. It makes no difference to your ability to enjoy a copy you own or to sell it to someone else. Nor does it affect your ability to create a similar illustrated children's book including whatever stereotypes you desire. No one is 'banning' you from doing this, although it might diminish their opinion of you.
vineyardmike 6y ago
> The reality is that these books will not be accessible to the vast majority of future American readers. Considering they were not that popular to begin with, it seems like only a few thousand Americans would really be without access.

dr_dshiv 6y ago

Isn't this more of a matter of copyright and, specifically, the moral rights of authors and copyright holders to control their work? It's not that ebay is so offended—it's that Dr Seuss Enterprises doesn't want to lose billions due to a tarnished legacy. (Oops!) To me, this is just like a mature author that wants to stop the sale of an embarrassing early book because it was poorly written. In this case, the rightsholder thinks the early books are in poor taste and no longer wants them associated with the brand. For the record, the same whitewashing (wokewashing?) happened to the Richard Scarry books which are all "abridged" because they were so offensively conservative about the role of women. https://www.upworthy.com/8-changes-that-were-made-to-a-classic-richard-scarry-book-to-keep-up-with-the-times-progress https://www.upworthy.com/8-changes-that-were-made-to-a-class...

helsinkiandrew 6y ago
> the same whitewashing (wokewashing?) happened to the Richard Scarry books which are all "abridged" Do you really have issues with the changes they made? They weren't abridged but just edited to show both sexes and different races doing jobs other than being maids and housewives. I'm not sure replacing milkman, fireman and cowboys with firefighters, gardeners and scientists is 'woke'
- mc32 6y ago
  I don’t see an issue with an author updating their books with new editions. I do have a problem if they ban the older editions.
  - citizenkeen 6y ago
    Nobody has banned the older ones. The owner of them just wishes not to sell them, which the free market totally allows for.
    - mc32 6y ago
      The publisher and IP owner I understand. I don’t understand the used book market eBay and Amazon taking them off the real and virtual shelves.
  - craftinator 6y ago
    > I do have a problem if they ban the older editions. I don't see how they are "banned". Banning means "forbidden, disallowed, illegal". The older editions do not fall under any of the definitions. They are harder to get, because the author stopped selling them. You can still find them somewhere, and if you already have them you can keep them, they are just less convenient to acquire than they used to be.
    - mc32 6y ago
      Banned books of the week were also not banned. They actually often remained in print. The bs Ning was being done by busybodies who knew what was right for young children. You’re trying too hard to defend the indefensible. eBay and Amazon stopped the used book market for these not just the publisher and rights holder. According to your take no book has ever been banned in the US and people who complained about book banning were clutching pearls.
      - craftinator 6y ago
        I have no idea what you're talking about. Your sentences literally don't make sense.
timw4mail 6y ago
I don't see why used sales should be controlled in the same matter as new sales. Discontinuing the printing is different than preventing sales of used copies.
- neltnerb 6y ago
  You're approximately the first comment I've seen on this entire thread that actually noted the difference without hyperbole about banning books and censorship, thank you. I'm with you; I don't think ebay should be forced to sell anything, but I think it was a bad decision to knee jerk ban auctions for the books in the news this week when they sell literal nazi medals. I'm not angry with ebay, but I think they made a stupid choice and that they have highlighted how few alternative ways there are to purchase used books. Upside is that it's good they are highlighting it now, finally. It's a very peculiar flex for them to decide to do, reselling books has a very long history of court cases saying the publisher cannot control the sale of an original purchased copy.
NeverFade 6y ago
The bottom line is that books are being banned. Sometimes it's because the copyright holders (which are not the authors) decided to stop publishing them for political reasons. This decision is all too easy to make when you are a massive copyright holder like Disney. The result is that these massive copyright holders can decide which ideas are allowed, and which ideas will be banned. In other cases, these book bans are executed by large book distributors, like Amazon: https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal. These are done very much against the wishes of the author, publisher, and copyright holder. In still other cases, the book ban is enacted by a secondary market distributor, forcibly preventing one private legal owner of the work from selling it to another reader. This is what's happening here with eBay and the Dr. Seuss books. This is a multi-pronged attack on the freedom to express and distribute ideas. And yes, it's all legal, much like the commissar control of all book publications under the Soviet regime.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  Your use of the word “banned” here is telling, especially with your reference to the Soviets. The actual bottom line here is that this was a decision by capitalists under a capitalist system. This is the free market at work. People who own the intellectual rights to these books decided for themselves using their own free will to stop selling them. That’s just capitalism. You say that eBay is preventing one private owner from selling to another private buyer, but what’s the alternative? To force eBay to facilitate the transaction? How is that freedom? The owner and buyer are still free to sell and buy this book, just not thorough eBay. If there is enough demand for this kind of transaction then the market will find a way to facilitate it. That’s capitalism.
  - rpdillon 6y ago
    I see your point, but the confounding factor for me is that the government granted a monopoly on these books through copyright. That's an artificial construct designed to promote science and the useful arts, but in this situation it's being used to suppress art. In this case, I would advocate for terminating the copyright and letting it be distributed by whoever is willing to.
hertzrat 6y ago
> To me, this is just like a mature author that wants to stop the sale of an embarrassing early book because it was poorly written. Dr Seuss passed away in 1991, about 30 years ago, so he isn’t capable of being embarrassed any more.
haberman 6y ago
> In this case, the rightsholder thinks the early books are in poor taste and no longer wants them associated with the brand. This is an incomplete story. The company convened a panel of outside "experts" to make these determinations: > Dr. Seuss Enterprises said that it had consulted a panel of experts including educators in reviewing its catalog of titles and made the decision last year to cease publication of the six titles. > In a statement to the Associated Press, Seuss Enterprises said it is “committed to listening and learning and will continue to review our entire portfolio.” https://deadline.com/2021/03/dr-seuss-books-canceled-no-longer-published-hurtful-wrong-imagery-1234704658/ https://deadline.com/2021/03/dr-seuss-books-canceled-no-long... Unlike other so-called "cancel culture" stories, the pressure campaign didn't play out publicly. But the language is the same and strongly suggests that the publisher is deferring to the judgment of outside "experts", hoping this will keep them in the good graces of the increasingly woke publishing and education worlds.
finneganscat 6y ago
So you’re saying it’s acceptable for them to whitewash their history? What about people that want to study this type of racism and write books or make documentaries about it? They want to hide their past, but the right thing is for society is for them to be forced to confront it.

XorNot 6y ago

If the publisher shutdown and the IP on the books went into legal limbo, then the exact same thing would happen - has happened - to numerous works. For example try to get the Sid Meier Alpha Centauri novelizations - they're almost impossible to find, they're out of print (they're expensive as hell on ebay). It's been a problem for years that there's been so redress available when a publisher either owns an IP and refuses to sell or license it freely, or when an IP falls into unclear ownership and the same basic thing results. This all has nothing to do with anything political (because these are not being suppressed by a government, and citizens and organizations are free to choose their own speech and associations) and everything to do with just how garbage copyright law is.

NeverFade 6y ago
> If the publisher shutdown and the IP on the books went into legal limbo, then the exact same thing would happen - has happened - to numerous works. You are talking about works that became incidentally unavailable for commercial reasons (not that many people are interested in 22 year-old strategy video games). The Dr. Seuss books are an example of intentional book banning on political grounds. Their publisher also didn't "shut down": they delibrately decided to stop publishing these books because they deemed them Politically Incorrect: https://apnews.com/article/dr-seuss-books-racist-images-d8ed18335c03319d72f443594c174513 https://apnews.com/article/dr-seuss-books-racist-images-d8ed... > “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator’s birthday. And now eBay has decided that if you legally own a copy, you can't sell it to another reader, because it contains Dangerous Ideas from which the American mind must be protected.
- mcv 6y ago
  > (not that many people are interested in 22 year-old strategy video games) I recently started a game of Alpha Centauri again. Good times.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  > The Dr. Seuss books are an example of intentional book banning on political grounds. As always, the only dynamic considered here by the publisher is money. They have made a calculation that doing this will benefit their bottom line in the long run. That's the free market and the way the system is designed to work. You may not like their decision, but it's their decision to make. That's the freedom they enjoy under our system. You have the freedom to complain about it and no one will stop you, but everyone is free to act however they best they see fit. > And now eBay has decided that if you legally own a copy, you can't sell it to another reader, because it contains Dangerous Ideas from which the American mind must be protected. eBay has not decided this. They have no power to decide this for you in our free market capitalist system. They have decided they don't want to facilitate the transaction, which is their right as a free enterprise. If you own the book you are still free to sell it to anyone you want. eBay is not going to help you though, and forcing them to do so would be against free market principles.

helsinkiandrew 6y ago

But what actually is happening? Thousands of books go out of print every week. There are over 50 or so Dr Zeus books. If the heirs of the author and publisher no longer want to sell a handful of them will the vast majority of future American readers care? I would guess that eventually (if these books are popular enough) they will be edited and brought up to date like Richard Scary books: https://www.upworthy.com/8-changes-that-were-made-to-a-classic-richard-scarry-book-to-keep-up-with-the-times-progress https://www.upworthy.com/8-changes-that-were-made-to-a-class...

mc32 6y ago
The rights holders can do what they want while they are not in the public domain. What is wrong is pulling it from stock as well as secondary marketplaces. What if the Christian or Muslim clerics get to say what books should be pulled too?
- rayiner 6y ago
  > What if the Christian or Muslim clerics get to say what books should be pulled too As an immigrant from a Muslim country I’m super excited about this. I’m going to ban sex scenes on TV so I don’t have to skip past them.
NeverFade 6y ago
These are all arguments that would support book banning in the Soviet union and all similar totalitarian regimes. "Thousands of books go out of print every year, so what's the problem with us banning these specific books for political reasons?" "Does it really matter that we banned these dozens of books? Thousands others were not banned, and are available to the Soviet reader at the nearest bookstores!" This is a slipper slope, and we're already sliding quite deeply into it. Amazon just banned a book about transgenderism that it considered "offensive": https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal https://ncac.org/news/amazon-book-removal This is clearly the Soviet case: it's not banning a single book, it's banning the ideas that it presents, for being Politically Incorrect. Once the book is unavailable, American readers will not have access to these ideas anywhere. Any other book presenting these same ideas will also be banned on the same grounds. This is precisely what was happening in the Soviet Union and similar totalitarian regimes that banned "forbidden / politically-incorrect" ideas.

kingaillas 6y ago

>The Dr. Seuss books were banned not just by eBay but also by their publisher I don't see the problem here. The copyright owner's no longer wish to distribute certain items in their intellectual property collection? So? I don't see people concerned that Disney isn't pulling "Song of the South" out of their vault, or isn't streaming it on Disney+. What's the alternative you want? The government to FORCE artists to publish? FORCE Ebay to list these particular Dr. Seuss books? What the hell?? Isn't that worse?

NeverFade 6y ago
Disney is a great example. It's a huge copyright owners which owns the rights to numerous important cultural works. They can, very effectively, decide what ideas the American public will have access to. Yes, this is all legal. However, legally, the commissars of the Soviet Union also had the right and the power to ban ideas, books, works of art, and every form of expression. The problem is the result: a small elite group of cultural commissars controlling the flow of ideas, and shutting undesirable ideas out of the public discourse and the public mind. That is how totalitarian regimes are created and maintained. Incidentally, the "government force" in copyright protection is the protection of copyright. That was done for the explicit purpose of fostering the publication of works, since the American lawmakers could never imagine that there will come a time in which huge corporations will ban books on political grounds. All the government has to do is to stop enforcing copyright protection for copyright-owners who no longer publish the copyrighted works. Guaranteed other publishers will pick up these Dr. Seuss books, since he is by far the most popular children's books author of our time. As things stand, bid these books adieu. Your children will not be able to read them.
- CabSauce 6y ago
  Except this isn't the government 'banning' anything. And there's never been more access to information. You're just whining.
- hbrav 6y ago
  This is not how totalitarian regimes are created at all. Commissars in the USSR having the power to ban books meant repercussions from the state for reading or distributing those books, and was a clear signal that similar works would meet a similar fate. The publisher deciding to no longer sell some part of their work is entirely different. It makes no difference to your ability to enjoy a copy you own or to sell it to someone else. Nor does it affect your ability to create a similar illustrated children's book including whatever stereotypes you desire. No one is 'banning' you from doing this, although it might diminish their opinion of you.

vineyardmike 6y ago

> The reality is that these books will not be accessible to the vast majority of future American readers. Considering they were not that popular to begin with, it seems like only a few thousand Americans would really be without access.