Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

richardosgood.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 396 posts

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#41

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

zuzululu wrote: post #19

I'm surprised there are banned books with 1st amendment exists in America? I'm curious as to what these are. I think its rather silly that books can be banned.

Whenever I encounter some news article regarding “banned” books I dig a little deeper and typically discover that some library or elementary school simply put an age restriction on those titles.

I’ll grant that some of the restrictions seem overprotective. That being said, a parent could easily check out one of those books for their child.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#42

Post by JacobKfromIRC »

frollogaston wrote: post #32
simplyluke wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero books are banned by name in the USA. Certain content is: Classified documents (although this is just illegal to share as the one with the original clearance, not to publish/read/possess after), child abuse material, and copyright violations all come to mind. The majority of "banned books" are books that a random school district/religious school in a conservative part of the country elected not to include in thei…

There must be some book with actually banned content in it, right? Especially copyright violations. They could include a PDF of some Linux source code but with MIT license. Edit: per the other comment's Wikipedia link, the unredacted Operation Dark Heart seems banned in the US because it included classified info

There is a book called "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye" which is (was?) banned in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_David_California

Although copyright-infringing books may be illegal to redistribute in general, the difficulty in determining what counts as copyright infringement and what counts as fair use means you can't really tell for sure which books are illegal to distribute and which aren't, so I'm not sure that really counts as "banned". 60 Years Later had an actual court order which makes things a little more concrete.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#43

Post by sgentle »

focusgroup0 wrote: post #12

[flagged]

Your thought experiment asks: what if the banned book library contained out-of-print white supremacist books instead of historically banned books?

The answer should be obvious: it would be a white supremacist library.

Given that the present administration includes fans of those books, their banning seems unlikely. Perhaps a refresher on the kinds of books that are presently under threat is in order? https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10

(You can find contemporary Huck Finn censorship attempts in their database here, by the way: https://airtable.com/appZthgrTU9u1Bf5d/shr4J8Mgiua2CV2Ig?mWW... )

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#45

Post by JoshTriplett »

focusgroup0 wrote: post #12

[flagged]

> what if the collection consisted of the following?

As the only books in it? Then it'd be best marketed as the "white supremacist conspiracy theorist starter kit". Throw in Mein Kampf while you're at it.

Just because a book is controversial doesn't make it good. No books should be banned, ever. But some books don't need promoting in a curated collection, either. They're useful for people doing literature research and understanding certain subcultures, but unlike the first list, they're not something useful and interesting to promote to a mass market, which makes them not good choices for a project like this.

Books are comparatively tiny, as data goes. If you have the space for a comprehensive list of every book in the public domain, by all means include those in it. But if you're making a curated list of a handful of books, and it's that list? That's certainly a choice.

See also this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48549512

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#46

Post by pooploop64 »

focusgroup0 wrote: post #12

[flagged]

Reminds me of the "banned book" table every book store has now. The place where so called banned books are given the most prominent display in the whole store with discounts if you buy a novelty pencil or something alongside it.

I thought we would all be over this after the dr seuss thing.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#47

Post by dindunuf »

frollogaston wrote: post #25
evil-olive wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> likely immersed in the same "banned books" media psyop as other Western News Consoomers all 4 of the books that are checked-in to that repo are old enough that they're in the public domain. I looked at Call of the Wild and it has a title page saying it came from Project Gutenberg, I assume the other 3 likely did too. rather than jumping to conclusions about the author being influenced by a "psyop" I think there's a…

They appear to all be public domain. Even if they weren't, grandparent could've just called out that these are not really banned books instead of being pretentious with the "psyop" thing.

[flagged]

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#48

Post by rickoooooo »

focusgroup0 wrote: post #12

[flagged]

I chose books that were out of copyright, available from project Gutenberg, and had been banned or challenged in the USA at some point in the past to use as examples. There weren't many options. It's designed so the user can include whatever books are important to them wherever they may live. They may live somewhere more oppressive where banned books are a common occurrence. I have no idea. It wouldn't be wise to include copyrighted works in a public repository where I live.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#49

Post by wiml »

p-e-w wrote: post #37
hoppyhoppy2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, "books in our own time" tend to still be under copyright and might not survive long in a public code repository.

There is at least one “banned” book, written by a former dictator, whose copyright expired in 2015, 70 years after his death in 1945. But that’s a good ban of course, because Freedom of Speech only matters when it concerns speech I agree with.

Is Mein Kampf banned? It's currently in print and available from your friendly bookseller, in multiple editions spanning a couple translations and the original German. Of the two public library systems that cover my area, one has it (12 holds on 4 copies) and the other doesn't but does have other books by Hitler. I expect it's assigned reading in poli-sci classes.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#50

Post by evil-olive »

p-e-w wrote: post #37
hoppyhoppy2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, "books in our own time" tend to still be under copyright and might not survive long in a public code repository.

There is at least one “banned” book, written by a former dictator, whose copyright expired in 2015, 70 years after his death in 1945. But that’s a good ban of course, because Freedom of Speech only matters when it concerns speech I agree with.

> But that’s a good ban of course, because Freedom of Speech only matters when it concerns speech I agree with.

putting hypothetical words in other peoples' mouths like this seems like it must be a pretty exhausting way to try to make a point.

quoting from the article:

> I think the idea hosting banned books specifically came to me after having read Ben Brown's short story Library. It's been a while since I read it, but if I recall there are characters in the story who maintain a "library" which acts as a digital archive of creative works, owners manuals, 3d models, etc. Things that others might find useful or interesting that you wouldn't want to lose should they be somehow wiped from the Internet.

the purpose of a project like this seems to be not just "here's some banned books" but rather "here's some banned books that I think are worth sharing / reading". if you think Mein Kampf belongs on that list, just say so directly.

but also the premise of your comment is wrong, because Mein Kampf is not banned at all: https://www.amazon.com/Mein-Kampf-Adolf-Hitler-ebook/dp/B002...

Post reply on HN