Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay • Hacker News Board

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

#891

Post by kmeisthax » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

As someone who just wrote a very long comment about a week ago explaining why you can't call a publisher deciding not to publish something "censorship" (and I stand by it), I feel a lot more uneasy about curtailing third-party resale than I do a publisher deciding not to publish things. Third-party resale is one of the few checks on the otherwise unlimited market powers that copyright holders have; and this could wind up being precedential if applied beyond weird exception cases like racist books.

I'm not going to rail against this particular action any further, because I do not believe in vice signalling and do not care for these books. I can already see people lining up to misinterpret Martin Niemöller and blow some dog-whistles, and I do not want to pitch my tent in their ideological camp. However, I could totally see Disney or Nintendo getting bright ideas to try and shut down legal resale markets for "vaulted" works in the name of profit.

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

#892

Post by avesi » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #851

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, because they are not culturally dominant right now.

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

#893

Post by JKCalhoun » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #636

JKCalhoun wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see anything to get excited about. It's just a sign that the pendulum is about to swing back in the other direction.

How? So far, the big platforms seem to be digging the hole of censorship deeper, and small platforms like Parler are deplatformed. Unless we find a way to circumvent the tight control that smartphone manufacturers have over devices they sell, the only possible haven of free speech would be web on a Windows PC with some specific browsers. Because Google adding you to a list of dirty webs means that people using Chrome…

The big platforms respond to society.

Society will run away from this and the pendulum will swing again toward Morton Downy Jr., The Man Show, Politically Incorrect, 101 Ways TO Kill A Cat, Jerry Springer, etc.

The big platforms will quietly acquiesce to the public's "new found" acceptance of the risqué.

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

#894

Post by grapecookie » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

blackoil wrote: post #880

zdragnar wrote: post #875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children Though you are largely correct, the "think of the children" angle is unnecessary to your argument and fundamentally flawed. Pornography and other materials that ought not end up in the hands of children are available on both eBay and Amazon, neither of which allow young children to have their own accounts.

Unlike pornography, these are actively targeted towards children.

How the fcuk is a rare out of print book on ebay targeting children? You mean like if I kid sees it he might pick it up because of the friendly art on the cover?

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

#895

Post by strathmeyer » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

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…

Forcing someone to publish a book or to list a book for sale on their website is a violation of their free speech. This place is too authoritarian to discuss such nuances.

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

#896

Post by goatcode » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

NeverFade wrote: post #831

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.…

> market-dominating

I'm reminded of In-Q-Tel at times like these. I defy anyone to find more than 20% of wildly successful "tech giants" who have not received government funding and support. It's not a free market when some get tax breaks and government money. If you get those things, your utmost law should be the law that governs the government in your region. This will never happen, of course.

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

#897

Post by TheCondor » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

major505 wrote: post #96

I don't know any culture that banned books independent of their content that people didn't regret in the future. A few months ago I was reading about schools banning the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" because it contains basically the "n" word. I'm not american, and and havent read that book. I watched the movie, through, and it seemed to me to be a very anti racism message. I think instead of banning, schools should w…

Mild point of clarification here. In most recent times, To Kill a Mockingbird wasnt “banned” so much as removed from classroom curricula. Many places that removed it didn’t pull it from the library. Likewise, many public schools have bibles and other non-required reading in the library.

There are levels here. you’re legally obliged to have schooling up to age 16, the state provides it to most. The removal is about the state “mandating” the reading of a book. That and the maturity of the audience. How many public schools require the reading of the Bible, Koran, Marx, hitler, or Nietzsche?

You’re right, context is everything. In the current us political climate, that might be very hard to achieve right now.

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

#898

Post by undefined1 » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

kweinber wrote: post #808

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…

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.

limiting free speech, censoring people and media, is regressive and authoritarian to the core. don't kid yourself.

> when your speech offends someone

“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

Stephen Fry

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

#899

Post by helen___keller » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

I think this particular issue is less about speech or cancel culture. This wasn't even populism (the usual force behind cancel culture), this was power structures that exist above us acting in our "self interest".

The Suess estate has all the right to denounce their own book or whatever. The real issue is that copyrights have been extended to last so damn long that something which ought to be in the public realm by now will be copyrighted for god knows how long (see: copyright term extension act).

Ebay has all the right to delist whatever they want in a free market. The problem is that we don't have a particularly free online marketplace. Unlike meatspace, the vast majority of 2nd hand internet transactions happen in a handful of marketplaces (amazon, ebay, etsy, Facebook, etc). These handful of mega marketplaces have become an oligopoly, effectively. I don't know the solution here (regulations? antitrust action? government-run open source marketplaces that would therefore only ban actually-illegal listings?), but the problem is that a few companies have way too much power.

In conclusion: Copyright has too much power. A handful of tech companies have too much power. Making this about cancel culture is, in my opinion, an absolute distraction of the real issues.

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

#900

Post by captainredbeard » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #598

illirik wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “weapon” here is just basic conscientiousness. A publisher decided to stop publishing some books because they denigrate people, and eBay decided that they did not want to be facilitating the sale of books that denigrate people. We are not talking about an H-bomb - there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here.

I mean if a message goes across a distributed network and all the different nodes of the network independently decide to change their operation then there is no centralized power structure saying do this, even though it is effectively the same.

In the gospel of wokeness, there must be an oppressing power structure