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Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

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Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#851

Post by mc32 »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #648
lgleason wrote: post #562

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in…

We know lots of people find all kinds of books offensive for all sorts of reasons (see the banned book week).

Are you saying your bannings are the true bannings and others are illegitimate bannings? Or should they all be equally banned?

Are religious conservatives okay to get their list of bad books banned?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#852

Post by Cyberthal »

Free speech regimes fail and are replaced by those that censor, because censoring exercises power, whereas free speech exercises none. Thus people attracted to power will find some way to censor, and then to increase censorship.

The exception is when free speech is being used as a wedge to destroy the old regime, in which case free speech exercises power, because it is being used to commit lese majeste and revolution.

Truth wins in the long run, when everyone is dead. Power wins in the short run, while the relevant actors are still alive. That's why it's called power.

On the libertarian left-hand side of the scales of state, one has the virtuous population's dedication to truth. On the authoritarian right-hand side of the scales, one has the ambitious population's attraction to power. Add leaden lies to the left-hand side until the two balance, and one discovers how much the regime rejects reality.

See Curtis Yarvin for further details.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#853

Post by Kaze404 »

jtbayly wrote: post #816
Kaze404 wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize this was a publishing company deciding, completely unprompted and out of their own volition, that they don't want to publish these books, right? Whose freedom of speech is being violated here?

No. This was eBay, not a publisher. No. This was not completely unprompted.

Right, but what prompted it was the situation I described. Nobody asked for this.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#854

Post by helsinkiandrew »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #648
lgleason wrote: post #562

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in…

To be clear the "freedom from" I'm referring to here is the freedom for innocent bystanders - children in this case - not to see lazy racial stereotypes surreptitiously in what should be a funny book that either offends them or gives them a false/bad impression of those races.

Throughout history society has decided what (legal) things are acceptable in public - public executions, graphic sexuality, violence. Today, (I think) the majority of society seem to have accepted that racism and racist stereotypes are bad and don't want to see them in childrens books, TV programs and films etc.

This is different from Mein Kampf or Marquis de Sade, or Lolita being available in bookshops - the majority of people reading them would know what they were getting into.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#855

Post by atc »

breakfastduck wrote: post #114
supernova87a wrote: post #55

Now this part is getting a little too carried away. It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. It is another (and overstepping imo) for Ebay to restrict individual people from selling to others goods that are not illegal or in violation of their other practical rules (no selling jewelry, monetary equivalents, etc). This falls into the cate…

Yep. I err on the side of not censoring. However, if they're gonna stop printing a couple of books because of severe racist overtones then whatever. But if they're banning the sale , which then leads to ownership , that's too far. We have to draw a line somewhere. As a heavily left leaning person who feels unnerved about the state of politics at the moment, this decision is extremely discomforting.

> We have to draw a line somewhere. As a heavily left leaning person who feels unnerved about the state of politics at the moment, this decision is extremely discomforting.

Your ilk have been warned time and again.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#857

Post by washadjeffmad »

UncleMeat wrote: post #840
NeverFade wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are market-dominating book distributors like Amazon and eBay effectively deciding what people can and cannot read. The fact that a few people might still be able to view images of these books (illegally, as they are copyrighted) on some tiny closed forum on the internet isn't a real comfort. In the Soviet Union, there were also tiny isolated pockets where "forbidden books" were surreptitiously copied and read.…

> These are huge book distributors like Amazon and eBay effectively deciding what people can and cannot read. The books are available on Amazon. > This is book-banning, pure and simple. I'd wager that sales of these six books will be higher in the next week than they were in the last two years combined.

A cohort and I were just ballparking what it would take to corner some neglected yet vaguely nostalgic market and then seed alarmist copy to manufacture a rush on sales.

We decided it'd be a lark, but the return probably wouldn't beat printing Bibles.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#858

Post by shlant »

DocTomoe wrote: post #818
kweinber wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from responsibility when your speech offends someone. Progressives aren’t stopping you from reading racist books to your children.... just don’t expect most people to want to sell them to you or pat you on the back for making the next generation toxic against fellow citizens.

I plan to make my children toxic towards people denying other peoples basic human rights, directly and indirectly (e.g. by limiting access {e.g. by banning or burning} to books).

who's "basic human rights" are being denied here? Are you saying that the publisher of Dr.Seuss is committing human rights abuses by choosing not to publish some of the books THEY own the rights to?

Also, maybe teaching your children to be toxic towards anything won't really improve the world they will have to live in?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#860

Post by OwlsParlay »

I would probably be considered far to the left of most HN commentators, but I still find moves like this to be pointless.

Ebay, Amazon, etc are all private companies. So I appreciate the point of view that they can operate as they like. But they really shouldn't be prejudiced as to what they sell on their platform, unless there's some form of law-breaking going on (for example the Anarchist's Cookbook).

I'd prefer something at least like how WB handled older Looney Tunes or Disney handled the Muppets - add a disclaimer before relevant episodes explaining objectionable parts. But outright delisting from sale is wrong.

Ultimately these types of moves are bandaids on the real problems we need to solve, like police reform, the schools-to-prison pipeline, the war on drugs, etc.

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