Serious discussion!

[prof]

So! Something interesting and pretty controversial came up at work the other day, and I am curious what other people think about it.

There was a book on Amazon recently, entitled "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure". It receieved a hugeass mountain of criticism and hate in it sreviews, something that it definitely deserved, basically being some uneducated creepy douchebag's ode to pedophilia and being a massive creeper. I don't think most anybody would disagree that it's a bad book and is generally something that has no value.

After much waffling, Amazon has pulled the book from their catalog as of this evening. Personally, I think this was a hell of a bad move.

My reasoning? Removing this book implies that we, as a company, are responsible for censoring our content for morality of content. We made a judgment call in this case, and what it means is that from now on, we're obligated to make judgment calls on all our content. Where the hell do we draw the line? Do we take down Mein Kampf due to the author? The Anarchist's Cookbook due to the subversive material? Catcher in the Rye due to promoting rebellion against authority?

I'm not making any kind of statement about which of these books are good or bad here. AND THAT'S THE POINT. We've already made an executive decision to never take down reviews due to false content, because it requires us to be experts on every subject. So, why do it in this case? We're condemning ourselves to have to make unpleasant moral judgments as a corporation, and there's no way to get out of that that isn't ugly as hell.

So.

Thoughts?

Comments

[ideally-awesome.livejournal.com]

There's something I still don't get about the adult world, and it is that precedent is divine law and utterly uncontradictable. Why can't Amazon's stance just be "We removed this specific item for a variety of reasons, and we are in no way obligated to remove other items for similar reasons?"

[r-amythest.livejournal.com]

Some time ago when there was a similar ruckus over some other incident, but legally slanted, (these incidents date back to the dawn of freedom of speech apparently) Neil Gaiman wrote this (http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html), which I agree about. It basically says something similar to your statement -- it sets a bad precedent. He makes a good metaphor with "the law is a blunt instrument" and yadda yadda.

As a corporation, though? I think the question you might want to ask is, how will this affect our profit margins?

Honestly I think the effect would be minimal either way.

[behold-the-void.livejournal.com]

I am in full agreement with you, but I'm a journalist so I'm sort of contractually obligated to be against censorship. But in a nutshell, yeah, censoring one thing on a morality basis opens up a huge can of worms that can eventually be quite detrimental.

[uwaaaah.livejournal.com]

LATE TO THE PARTY ON THIS, and my first thought when I saw this was, "oh god, it's another TOK lesson" and thought my brain would leak out my ears.

(It hasn't yet.)

But I think I have to agree with you. While pedophilia is almost universally considered bad (it is, right? Pedophilia is bad in most, if not all, cultures?), if you can remove one thing due to a moral problem like this, then that means you have basically have the right to remove any item due to any moral problem. So then what happens if you've got, I dunno, a book on abortion? You might think abortion is amoral and want to remove it before it corrupts minds or whatever, but not everyone else thinks that way. It becomes too easy to impose your own opinions and beliefs on anyone else.

I guess. I dunno, man. These TOK-type questions make my head ache.