6 ms·

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 of

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.
      - rualca 6y ago
        If you're a real person and not a bot, you would be doing yourself a favour by stepping away from the keyboard, tar a break, and thing about what you're writing and how it looks.
        cema 6y ago
        It looks reasonable to me. And why ad hominem? At least you were polite; but the argument does not look compelling.
        craftinator 6y ago
        It's a normal argument for the time, but it is far from reasonable. The person who wrote the original response to me failed to respond to any of the logical arguments I was making, just spouted some outrage and moved on. So, normal yes, reasonable, no. The word "ban" in this context applies to legal or cultural actions where you make owning, acquiring, or reading a book disallowed. All that has been done is a company decided to stop selling it. You can still get the book elsewhere, still keep it if you own it, and still read it in any library that has it (which I'm sure many, many do). They are just spouting outraged nonsense.
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.

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.
    - rualca 6y ago
      If you're a real person and not a bot, you would be doing yourself a favour by stepping away from the keyboard, tar a break, and thing about what you're writing and how it looks.
      - cema 6y ago
        It looks reasonable to me. And why ad hominem? At least you were polite; but the argument does not look compelling.
        craftinator 6y ago
        It's a normal argument for the time, but it is far from reasonable. The person who wrote the original response to me failed to respond to any of the logical arguments I was making, just spouted some outrage and moved on. So, normal yes, reasonable, no. The word "ban" in this context applies to legal or cultural actions where you make owning, acquiring, or reading a book disallowed. All that has been done is a company decided to stop selling it. You can still get the book elsewhere, still keep it if you own it, and still read it in any library that has it (which I'm sure many, many do). They are just spouting outraged nonsense.

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.