8 ms·

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 po

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.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    It's designed to promote science and the useful arts by giving artists control over their art. If I decide to create art, but I lose control over it once I decide I don't want to show it to anyone anymore, then that's not really control, is it? My opinion is that copyright should be limited to the lifetime of the author, at which point it goes into public domain. In this particular case, that would mean the books would have been in the public domain for a long time now and there wouldn't be a controversy over this particular issue. But the issue could still arise if the author were alive. Imagine Dr. Seuss were alive today and made this decision himself. It's the same controversy: person/entity with control over IP makes a decision on distribution of IP, people get upset. But that's the deal - you want to promote the useful arts by granting limited monopoly rights over art, then you better actually grant limited monopoly rights over art. That means the right to not publish the art.
  - rualca 6y ago
    >>That's an artificial construct designed to promote science and the useful arts, but in this situation it's being used to suppress art. Do you honestly believe you're "suppressing art" if you fail to force the rightful owners if said art to go against their own will and instead follow your orders and desires on what others should do with what's rightfully theirs? It sounds an awful lot like your are not as much interested in anyone's freedom as you're interested in imposing your personal will into everyone around you.
    - lenkite 6y ago
      So any big company that acquires copyright to any work can successfully ban the same and you would cheer their "right" to do so.
      - efreak 6y ago
        I will absolutely cheer your right to stop selling your IP. I may not cheer your _decision_ to do so, but that decision remains yours.
whynaut 6y ago
> 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. That's just not true. This was Random House Books' decision, not eBay or Amazon. The marketplaces are just following orders. > The decision won’t affect Dr. Seuss’s best-known works, which publisher Random House Books for Young Readers and several booksellers on Tuesday said would remain available to customers. > The review of the six books at issue was conducted last year by Dr. Seuss Enterprises LP, which oversees Dr. Seuss’s publishing interests and ancillary areas. https://www.wsj.com/articles/six-dr-seuss-books-are-dropped-after-review-finds-imagery-offensive-11614711623?mod=article_inline https://www.wsj.com/articles/six-dr-seuss-books-are-dropped-...
- NeverFade 6y ago
  > The marketplaces are just following orders. First of all, hat-tip for using that chilling phrase in this unintentionally appropriate context. Furthermore, eBay is a secondary market bookseller. As such, they facilitate legal sales of privately-owned books between individuals. They have absolutely no duty to "follow orders" by a publisher. In fact, publishers would shut down all secondary markets if they could - it would help their sales of new books. Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that a publisher "ordered" eBay to stop selling the books, and such "order" would be invalid and ridiculous. This is a decision by eBay to flex their corporate muscles to ban books they find politically disagreeable.
- sebmellen 6y ago
  I am so comforted to hear that the marketplaces are “just following orders.” I know that no one following orders should ever be held accountable for the actions of their superiors. Really, things are good when people just follow orders.
  - NeverFade 6y ago
    Nothing bad has ever happened as long as everyone "just follows orders"!
TheCondor 6y ago
In your world view, what rights does the copyright holder have and not have? Did google “ban” reader when they discontinued it?
- jjk166 6y ago
  The entire purpose of copyright is to encourage people to publish their works. It may be reasonable for a rights-holder to restrict access to a work under certain circumstances - for example refusing to let neo-nazis play your music at a rally - because people might refuse to publish their works if they believed they couldn't stop that. Even a hiatus to distribution may be permissible if the rights-holder needs to be confident they can walk away from a distributor if they don't like the current distribution situation. However permanently and completely stopping distribution of a work breaks the social contract - society no longer gets what it payed for. The Seuss estate could put a big label on the front cover saying not for children, and a forward in every copy explaining why the content of the books is potentially problematic, but if they refuse to make the work available their right to exclusively control the work's availability should be rescinded.
  - rualca 6y ago
    > The entire purpose of copyright is to encourage people to publish their works. ...and the people with the copyright to the book thought about it and decided they do not want to distribute their book. Are they not entitled to decide for themselves what to do with what's theirs?
    - bdw5204 6y ago
      The purpose of copyright in the US is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This is from the provision of the US Constitution that authorizes Congress to pass intellectual property legislation. Allowing for copyrighted works to be withdrawn from the public and made effectively unavailable to anybody for the remainder of a 95 year term does not promote scientific progress or useful arts as that effectively erases the work for the remainder of a lifetime. Nobody is entitled to use copyright laws against the constitutional purpose of copyright laws. If somebody were to publish the 6 banned Seuss books and get sued by the estate, they'd be able to make a compelling legal argument that the copyright laws that allow the estate to effectively ban books for 95 years are unconstitutional though they'd probably need a different Supreme Court to have a chance of winning and actually making the "science and useful arts" clause mean something again. It would probably be ill-advised to even attempt a challenge to copyright law on these grounds with the current court as it could lead to another bad precedent like Eldred v. Ashcroft (the "perpetual copyright is constitutional if Congress extends the terms every 20 years via Mickey Mouse Protection Acts" case where the FSF filed a brief in support of the plaintiff). I think a more productive course of action would be to use the right wing outrage over this to push for an "abandonware" exception to copyright law (basically a "keep it in print or lose your copyright" requirement) and possibly copyright term reduction. Given that the political party that is traditionally more supportive of corporate interests is now furious about corporate censorship, there is now a golden opportunity to roll back corporate power and those on both sides who share that goal (albeit for different reasons) should work together for the greater good.
ChrisLomont 6y ago
>The result is that these massive copyright holders can decide which ideas are allowed, and which ideas will be banned. They're not deciding which ideas are allowed or banned. They're not stopping anyone else from creating, espousing, publishing any other ideas at all. There's thousands of publishers, and even the very biggest only hold a tiny fraction of the publishing market, so this complaint seems quite overblown. Should a publisher be forced to publish things they choose not to? I'd prefer not. There's plenty of others. And the internet makes it easy to post any ideas you choose, vastly easier than at any point in history for individuals to make their ideas available to billions of people.

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.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  It's designed to promote science and the useful arts by giving artists control over their art. If I decide to create art, but I lose control over it once I decide I don't want to show it to anyone anymore, then that's not really control, is it? My opinion is that copyright should be limited to the lifetime of the author, at which point it goes into public domain. In this particular case, that would mean the books would have been in the public domain for a long time now and there wouldn't be a controversy over this particular issue. But the issue could still arise if the author were alive. Imagine Dr. Seuss were alive today and made this decision himself. It's the same controversy: person/entity with control over IP makes a decision on distribution of IP, people get upset. But that's the deal - you want to promote the useful arts by granting limited monopoly rights over art, then you better actually grant limited monopoly rights over art. That means the right to not publish the art.
- rualca 6y ago
  >>That's an artificial construct designed to promote science and the useful arts, but in this situation it's being used to suppress art. Do you honestly believe you're "suppressing art" if you fail to force the rightful owners if said art to go against their own will and instead follow your orders and desires on what others should do with what's rightfully theirs? It sounds an awful lot like your are not as much interested in anyone's freedom as you're interested in imposing your personal will into everyone around you.
  - lenkite 6y ago
    So any big company that acquires copyright to any work can successfully ban the same and you would cheer their "right" to do so.
    - efreak 6y ago
      I will absolutely cheer your right to stop selling your IP. I may not cheer your _decision_ to do so, but that decision remains yours.

whynaut 6y ago

> 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. That's just not true. This was Random House Books' decision, not eBay or Amazon. The marketplaces are just following orders. > The decision won’t affect Dr. Seuss’s best-known works, which publisher Random House Books for Young Readers and several booksellers on Tuesday said would remain available to customers. > The review of the six books at issue was conducted last year by Dr. Seuss Enterprises LP, which oversees Dr. Seuss’s publishing interests and ancillary areas. https://www.wsj.com/articles/six-dr-seuss-books-are-dropped-after-review-finds-imagery-offensive-11614711623?mod=article_inline https://www.wsj.com/articles/six-dr-seuss-books-are-dropped-...

NeverFade 6y ago
> The marketplaces are just following orders. First of all, hat-tip for using that chilling phrase in this unintentionally appropriate context. Furthermore, eBay is a secondary market bookseller. As such, they facilitate legal sales of privately-owned books between individuals. They have absolutely no duty to "follow orders" by a publisher. In fact, publishers would shut down all secondary markets if they could - it would help their sales of new books. Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that a publisher "ordered" eBay to stop selling the books, and such "order" would be invalid and ridiculous. This is a decision by eBay to flex their corporate muscles to ban books they find politically disagreeable.
sebmellen 6y ago
I am so comforted to hear that the marketplaces are “just following orders.” I know that no one following orders should ever be held accountable for the actions of their superiors. Really, things are good when people just follow orders.
- NeverFade 6y ago
  Nothing bad has ever happened as long as everyone "just follows orders"!

TheCondor 6y ago

In your world view, what rights does the copyright holder have and not have? Did google “ban” reader when they discontinued it?

jjk166 6y ago
The entire purpose of copyright is to encourage people to publish their works. It may be reasonable for a rights-holder to restrict access to a work under certain circumstances - for example refusing to let neo-nazis play your music at a rally - because people might refuse to publish their works if they believed they couldn't stop that. Even a hiatus to distribution may be permissible if the rights-holder needs to be confident they can walk away from a distributor if they don't like the current distribution situation. However permanently and completely stopping distribution of a work breaks the social contract - society no longer gets what it payed for. The Seuss estate could put a big label on the front cover saying not for children, and a forward in every copy explaining why the content of the books is potentially problematic, but if they refuse to make the work available their right to exclusively control the work's availability should be rescinded.
- rualca 6y ago
  > The entire purpose of copyright is to encourage people to publish their works. ...and the people with the copyright to the book thought about it and decided they do not want to distribute their book. Are they not entitled to decide for themselves what to do with what's theirs?
  - bdw5204 6y ago
    The purpose of copyright in the US is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This is from the provision of the US Constitution that authorizes Congress to pass intellectual property legislation. Allowing for copyrighted works to be withdrawn from the public and made effectively unavailable to anybody for the remainder of a 95 year term does not promote scientific progress or useful arts as that effectively erases the work for the remainder of a lifetime. Nobody is entitled to use copyright laws against the constitutional purpose of copyright laws. If somebody were to publish the 6 banned Seuss books and get sued by the estate, they'd be able to make a compelling legal argument that the copyright laws that allow the estate to effectively ban books for 95 years are unconstitutional though they'd probably need a different Supreme Court to have a chance of winning and actually making the "science and useful arts" clause mean something again. It would probably be ill-advised to even attempt a challenge to copyright law on these grounds with the current court as it could lead to another bad precedent like Eldred v. Ashcroft (the "perpetual copyright is constitutional if Congress extends the terms every 20 years via Mickey Mouse Protection Acts" case where the FSF filed a brief in support of the plaintiff). I think a more productive course of action would be to use the right wing outrage over this to push for an "abandonware" exception to copyright law (basically a "keep it in print or lose your copyright" requirement) and possibly copyright term reduction. Given that the political party that is traditionally more supportive of corporate interests is now furious about corporate censorship, there is now a golden opportunity to roll back corporate power and those on both sides who share that goal (albeit for different reasons) should work together for the greater good.

ChrisLomont 6y ago

>The result is that these massive copyright holders can decide which ideas are allowed, and which ideas will be banned. They're not deciding which ideas are allowed or banned. They're not stopping anyone else from creating, espousing, publishing any other ideas at all. There's thousands of publishers, and even the very biggest only hold a tiny fraction of the publishing market, so this complaint seems quite overblown. Should a publisher be forced to publish things they choose not to? I'd prefer not. There's plenty of others. And the internet makes it easy to post any ideas you choose, vastly easier than at any point in history for individuals to make their ideas available to billions of people.