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I'm a little over a week late on the uptake, but PayPal is now censoring erotic fiction content! I'll write a more elaborate post on this very soon - for now I'd just like to link to the petition. This is very important , because if they're threatening sites that sell "barely legal" content (sex with 18 and 19 year olds - how is that not legal??) and pseudo incest (pseudo as in fake, not related by blood), what will be next? They say this content is "items that are considered obscene"*. Well if that's the case, what's next? GLBT literature? Anal play/sex? Prostitution? A lot of people find these "obscene". Do we really want to go down this path?
Here's the petition:
Earlier this week, PayPal told Bookstrand, a major distributor of erotic romance and other erotic content on the Internet, that if certain titles containing "objectionable" material were not pulled from Bookstrand's shelves, Bookstrand's PayPal account would be shut down and the funds within confiscated.
PayPal has a long track record of suspending, freezing, and terminating customer accounts on the thinnest of justifications, but this is going too far. By telling Bookstrand what books they can and cannot sell using PayPal services, they are also telling readers they don't have the right to read what they wish and telling authors that PayPal has the right to take away their freedom of speech and the press.
If you use the Internet to find new reading material, if you use PayPal, and/or if you support the rights of authors and readers to have the widest possible selection of topics to read and write about, please sign this petition and let PayPal know that censorship, no matter what form it takes or how it is implemented, is not acceptable. Readers, publishers, storefronts and authors have the right to choose what books are sold and bought.
Don't leave it up to PayPal to choose how you spend your money or where.
Earlier this week, PayPal told Bookstrand, a major distributor of erotic romance and other erotic content on the Internet, that if certain titles containing "objectionable" material were not pulled from Bookstrand's shelves, Bookstrand's PayPal account would be shut down and the funds within confiscated.
PayPal has a long track record of suspending, freezing, and terminating customer accounts on the thinnest of justifications, but this is going too far. By telling Bookstrand what books they can and cannot sell using PayPal services, they are also telling readers they don't have the right to read what they wish and telling authors that PayPal has the right to take away their freedom of speech and the press.
If you use the Internet to find new reading material, if you use PayPal, and/or if you support the rights of authors and readers to have the widest possible selection of topics to read and write about, please sign this petition and let PayPal know that censorship, no matter what form it takes or how it is implemented, is not acceptable. Readers, publishers, storefronts and authors have the right to choose what books are sold and bought.
Don't leave it up to PayPal to choose how you spend your money or where.
Header image credit
*From PayPal's ToS.
signed it!!
ReplyDeleteYay! Thanks so much ^.^ This thing needs all it can get.
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