Censorship or public responsibility?
Another day, another internet controversy right? Today (and I’ll admit I was apart of it) someone tweeted a link to an incredibly disgusting book that Amazon was selling for download on the Kindle 
The book was a “how-to” guide for pedophiles.
“A child lovers code of conduct”
Teaching them how to make the situations that children are involved in with pedophiles safer (whatever that means) and hopefully appeal to the pedophiles better nature and prevent all the hatred (paraphrasing, but from the book’s description) towards them.
Immediately when I saw it I signed in and wrote a quick review on Amazon asking them to remove the book. Declaring a boycott if it was not removed and RT’ing a gazzillion tweets designed to bombard Amazon to get them to take action. I also went as far as picking up the phone and calling Amazon’s customer service alerting them to the book, the twitter frenzy and pending boycott.
I was told it would be removed.
When I was done I was pretty proud of myself. I didn’t (and still don’t) understand how this book passed any type of quality assurance test and made available to the public.
But like the good ol’ internet has me doing sometimes. I am now rethinking my position. No. I’m not some shaky tree willing to side with whatever cause seems to be getting the most RT’s or traffic. But what I like about the internet & reading blogs is that you can come across so many opinions that open your eyes to totally different sides/points.
Jill over at Scary Mommy RT’d a link from @adampknave where he posted about the hypocrisy of the internet calling for a banning of the book.
So it got me wondering about freedom of speech and where one persons opinion crosses from freedom of speech to something that needs to be censored.
I’ve always been on the side of freedom of speech. I hate, absolutely hate it when news anchors/tv & radio personalities get fired for things they say. It bothers me. I don’t care who took offense to Don Imus and his “nappy headed ho’s” comment, the fact of the matter is. He has a right to his opinion. And he has a right to say it publicly. Whether we like it or not.
So wouldn’t the same be allowed for the author of this book? Should his opinion, regardless of how vile or offensive it is, be allowed to be shared with the public?
Is there a difference here because his thought process is illegal?
If we ban his book, there might be people who call for a banning of Modern Family (Oh no you don’t!) because of the homosexual couple.
If we ban this book do we also need to make it so porn is not sold on Amazon, because there are people who find it highly offensive?
Do you see how blurry the lines can get? I’m not sure exactly how I feel. I know that I feel its deplorable, but just because me and 100,000 other people find it deplorable should we ban it?
How do you feel?
* I will not be posting the link back to this book. The reason being is because at 11 AM when I started hearing about this, the author ranked at like 158,221 in the bestsellers list in the Kindle store. When I started this post Tuesday at 4:45 PM he ranked at 5,000 and some change. When I went back at 5:20 his paid ranking shot to 1,656. I get it people are downloading it to see what it is, but he’s getting money for it and although I’m not sure he should be banned, I do know I don’t like him being compensated for it. But thanks to the internet gods, if you look you’ll find it.*
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What saddens me is that people do not realize this one thing: when you utterly reject people from civilized society, you push them to the edge of society. With society hating thier existance, they have only thier own ethics and willpower stopping them.
Of course, the absence of anything resembling ethics in society makes this problematic, when right and wrong is dictated purely by society’s own bigotries.
Though to the point: Amazon owns itself (I think), and can choose to sell or not sell whatever it wants; it becomes censorship when the government forces it to stop selling.
Secondly, as I (and likely most others commenting on this) have not read the table of contents, we really don’t have the foggiest idea what the…intent of the book is.
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If the situation was not internet sales and by a large corporation, but rather a local book store and an individual owner, would the local book store and individual owner have the right to remove the book or to not carry it in the first place? Would an individual owner have a responsibility to their community to take care in caution in choosing what to carry and display for sale or not? I contend they would have both the righ and responsibility. I don’t see why that is different for internet sales or a large corporation. Not carrying something for sale is not the same as banning it. Given the internet, there is always someplace ANYTHING can be purchased.
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I don’t think this is as blurry as you think. Freedom of speech does not extend to anyone yelling FIRE in a packed theater if there’s not a fire. No one has the right to cause that kind of panic – and probably injury – without cause. Another example – the anti-abortion activists who called for the killing of abortion doctors. That is not protected speech, and that’s been upheld by the courts. So, there are limits to free speech. This book is one of them.
What if it was a book about how to poison your spouse/boss/child you no longer want in such a way that it couldn’t be detected? Would that be okay? What if it was a book about how to rape coma patients in a nursing home? Would that be okay? No. Because there are things that we as a society have decided are not going to be tolerated. Especially when it involves those who are defenseless – like children and coma patients (and your unsuspecting spouse or boss). Freedom of speech should be limited here because children can’t protect themselves from pedophiles – so the rest of us have to.
The blurry lines are the books about how to commit suicide/assisted suicide and how to successfully develop an eating disorder. This one doesn’t fit into that category because it advocates for harming children who are not old enough to understand or consent. There are limits to freedom of speech, as there should be.
Also, just as an aside – there are huge freedom of speech limitations in the workplace, again upheld by the courts. Your employer can and will have a say in what you can or can’t say. That’s why people get fired all the time for blog posts or other expressions of speech their employers don’t like. So, I’m not crazy about media folks getting fired for things they say – but their employers are well within their rights…
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Alexandria Campbell
Twitter: alexcampbell11
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November 12th, 2010 at 12:40 am
Well Amazon does sell the Hitman’s how to guide and that’s still up & listed for sale. I think that the reason people took such high offense to this is because of the content. Which don’t misunderstand me. I think it was extremely disturbing but this man has a right to his opinion and has a right to sell his book to whom ever decides to pick it up. There are large groups who advocate that homosexuality is highly offensive and wants to keep homosexual marriage illegal. If someone wrote a book about the joys of homosexual marriage/relationships should these large groups have the right to demand it be taken down because it doesn’t gel with their moral code? No they don’t. The beauty of living in America is that not matter how fucked up our opinion is we are entitled to have it & say it whenever we please. If you don’t like it you don’t have to listen.
I’m glad the book is down, but I’m not sure if that was the best decision. If we are basing our decision strictly for moral reasons then it should come down, but the law is not about morals.
As to freedom of speech limitations in the workplace, I thought about that as soon as I published it. But most of these places that hire these “personalities” know that they are controversial and that’s the risk you took. I’m sure that Don Imus has said offensive things about Christians, but he wasn’t fired over that. I think that as a country we pick & choose when we want to be PC and when we don’t.
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Twitter: www.dailywildflower.blogspot.com
says:
I think the line of censorship would only be crossed if the author was told he was not ALLOWED to WRITE the book. It is not censorship when a store refuses to carry a certain brand of coffee is it? No, it is public preference and is the stores right. It is also our right to refuse to purchase something. Just as the author has the right to write the book, the publishing companies should have the right to refuse to publish any material they don’t want associated with their name and the vendors should have the right to refuse to carry the book.
It’s not censorship (in my humble opinion) unless the author is told he is not allowed to write the book.
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Alexandria Campbell
Twitter: alexcampbell11
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November 12th, 2010 at 12:34 am
But is Amazon not within their rights to sell the book? Regardless of the content? It’s OUR right as a consumer to not purchase the book.
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@adampknave has me wondering if this #amazonfail is Censorship or public responsibility? http://beforethebabywakes.com/2010/11/ce… @amazon
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adampknave Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
@alexcampbell11 Well, it isn’t censorship, really, they have a right to not carry things, but yes. It is more complex I think.
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alexcampbell11 Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:41 pm
@adampknave I think that if people me included continue 2 push 4 the book to be removed bcuz of difference of opinion it would b censorship
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adampknave Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
@alexcampbell11 I can agree with that. We both also know that people are and will. Which is sad.
alexcampbell11 Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
@adampknave right its hard bcuz the lines are so blurred. should it be censored because its an illegal act or because its highly offensive?
adampknave Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
@alexcampbell11 Well it is an illegal act. Not illegal to write about. HUGE difference.
alexcampbell11 Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:53 pm
@adampknave exactly i totally agree w you. and as much as i hate it. this is why america is great bcuz perv like him can say what they want
adampknave Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
@alexcampbell11 Yup. I will be sad if Amazon folds on this. Sets BAD precedence.
adampknave Reply:
November 11th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
@alexcampbell11 I am curious what you think about my recent questions about this as it gets odder: http://www.adampknave.com/2010/11/11/the…
adampknave Reply:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
@alexcampbell11 If we demand things be removed because of offense it’ll be .3 seconds before something we like offends someone we don’t know
A Daddy Blog
Twitter: aDaddyBlog
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November 11th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought as well. I wrote to Jeff Bezos, not that he’ll ever see it. I pointed out it wasn’t a freedom of speech issue. Sure the eBook was disgusting and potentially might empower pedophiles by making it appear their behavior is somehow more mainstream and acceptable, but it was not illegal to write or sell it. My appeal to Mr. Bezos (and also to the guy heading up their digital media division, e.g. Kindle) was as a business man. They chose not to sell porn on their site, presumably because it would offend many of their customers. Porn is a legal billion dollar business, as offensive as it may be. Amazon isn’t the government who must protect free speech, they are a for profit business. The have the right to sell what they want. Will they loose a few customers over dropping the book. Sure. Nothing compared to what they would have lost had they not pulled it. Again, it’s not a matter of free speech. No matter how offensive, we can all write what we want. We cannot however demand someone publish it.
A Daddy Blog recently posted..Sing-A-Ma-Jigs Cute or Creepy
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Alexandria Campbell
Twitter: alexcampbell11
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November 12th, 2010 at 12:43 am
Amazon actually does sell porn (I check before I responded. Not searching for it LOL).
If we cannot demand that someone publish something, how can we demand that a company remove an item they are selling?
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