In Amazon's Bookstore, No Second Chances for the Third Reich (nytimes.com) 258
Amazon is quietly canceling its Nazis. Over the past 18 months, the retailer has removed two books by David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as several titles by George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party. Amazon has also prohibited volumes like "The Ruling Elite: The Zionist Seizure of World Power" and "A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind." From a report: While few may lament the disappearance of these hate-filled books, the increasing number of banished titles has set off concern among some of the third-party booksellers who stock Amazon's vast virtual shelves. Amazon, they said, seems to operate under vague or nonexistent rules. "Amazon reserves the right to determine whether content provides an acceptable experience," said one recent removal notice that the company sent to a bookseller. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been roiled in recent years by controversies that pit freedom of speech against offensive content. Amazon has largely escaped this debate. But with millions of third-party merchants supplying much of what Amazon sells to tens of millions of customers, that ability to maintain a low profile may be reaching its end.
Rules? (Score:2)
"Amazon, they said, seems to operate under vague or nonexistent rules"
Well....yeah. Are there some sort of rules from Moses for selling books online?
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"Amazon, they said, seems to operate under vague or nonexistent rules" Well....yeah. Are there some sort of rules from Moses for selling books online?
Yes, but the tax gods at the IRS were made irrelevant by Amazon long ago.
And technically, Moses was more into tablets...
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Yeah: sell anything allowed by law. Censorship is bad, m'kay? Amazon really has some bizarre and random censorship though. E.g, they banned all dinosaur porn novels (don't ask me, I just know they're banned). Bigfoot porn novels are fine, though. Some women have odd tastes, but it's nobody's business to ban them.
It;s hard to care much, though, when it's this kind of random stuff. It doesn't seem like there's a coherent political agenda around Amazon's censorship, which somehow makes it less concerning.
Re:Rules? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're a company, it's not censorship,
According to Merriam-Webster censoring is something that can be done by anyone. Not just a government. Anyone who can limit access to ideas can censor. So yes it is censorship. Whether you consider it to be good or bad is another matter.
Re: Rules? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, it's definitely not censorship.
What a bizarre claim. What's motivating you to say that? Amazon is discontinuing sales of written material due to content. That's about as exactly "censorship" as it's possible to get.
Amazon is simply exercising its discretion in deciding what goods and services it will offer.
Yes, and we have a word we use to describe that practice when the the good is a book and the discretion is due to content: "censorship". That's just what that word means. What else could it possibly mean?
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Amazon isn't stopping these authors from writing, publishing, or selling their books.
Amazon is censoring these books on their platform, you ridiculous totalitarian goon.
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Though the growing reality, I shop on Amazon but I buy locally, drive to local store check it out and pay for it and drive away with it. The vagaries of online ordering are becoming too annoying, not the product it seemed to be, delivery when, delivered broken, delivery fine, after sales service and support utterly non-existent. If I can not buy it locally than maybe I will buy it off Amazon but I am more likely to simply delay the purchase or buy something else.
Years of cutting out video advertisements ha
Yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
They consistently refuse to deal with scammers and counterfeiters on Amazon, who unlike random no-name authors people have long forgotten, are causing actual objective harm to many. I will interpret this as "Amazon endorses scammers".
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That's a... strange take, but you do you.
Unwise mindset (Score:5, Insightful)
There are legitimate reasons to study such works, trying to blot out the unpleasant and offensive works is an anti-intellectual mindset.
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Wrong think obviously.
They may ban 1984 at some point as it might also give people bad ideas.
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https://www.npr.org/templates/... [npr.org]
Re:Unwise mindset (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that Amazon was selling "1984" without the rights to actually do so, right? That's not censorship, it's copyright.
Re:Unwise mindset (Score:5, Insightful)
But instead of paying for the rights in Canada and letting people keep their e-books, they went through and deleted 1984 off everyone's devices, including all their custom notes and highlights!!! No warning. Just some dodgy ass shit.
Re:Unwise mindset (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, they had no right to sell that book. Of course they took it back and refunded the purchase price. If the book was sold without having the right to do so, there is no way to retroactively gain the right to have sold those books, at least not without the copyright holder's agreement. So if you want to blame someone, blame whoever holds the copyright to 1984. It was their decision, not Amazon's.
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And this is why I would rather have a "bookz" copy, instead of buying anything from Amazon. There is a little tiff with a rights holder, POOF, it's gone!
This is like buying a physical product, and somebody coming in and taking it in the middle of the night. Even if they left a check on the table, they are still depriving me of a good which unknown to them I may really need. God forbid it's some rare technical manual or something else for which there is no suitable replacement.
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This is more like somebody selling a knockoff product, or a product which may be violating someone else's copyright.
Now the big question is, why the hell is "1984", which was first published in 1949 not entirely in the public domain? Or is this also under the Disney forever copyright system?
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Copyright runs out after 50 years* in Canada so you can buy 51 year old books without paying licensing fees as they're public domain. In the case of 1984, it was a public domain book in Canada that Amazon pulled, I guess due to originating in the US
*Part of the CUSMA trade agreement includes Canada changing its copyright to 70 years, which will likely be legislated this year, which would likely mean some of my public domain books such as 1984 being removed from the public domain.
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Once again, paper books for the win. You won't see a book seller storming through your door to take a book you've already purchased. It's yours, through and through, and not subject to the whims of a company.
Re:Unwise mindset (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd even go along with your statements and agree that this does no good for society, even if Amazon was partly motivated by such reasoning. I sincerely doubt anyone looking for those books wasn't already of an agreeable mindset to the messages that they contain, and I similarly doubt that anyone looking for something else wouldn't be able to spot that these aren't what they were looking for. But the people who actively sought them out will now go somewhere else, likely to a little echo chamber further out of the way where they won't encounter any dissenting information or have a chance to stumble across some source that may cause them to reevaluate their thinking.
But even if it doesn't solve the problem that Amazon might assume they're helping to solve by doing this, I still won't fault Amazon for choosing which products they want to offer any more than I'd fault a grocery store for deciding that it will only carry organic products or a dating website from limiting its membership exclusively to lesbians. Not every store has to be all things for all people. If it's not for you or you don't like it, take your business to someone who wants it.
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Do you think there's some balance between de-platforming these people and letting them recruit more and more people?
The last few years (FBI just last week classifying white supremacists as terrorists) have shown something has to be done to stem their recruitment efforts.
Re:Unwise mindset (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Unwise mindset (Score:5, Insightful)
"Everything I disagree with is fascism. Also I have no idea what fascism is".
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Re:Unwise mindset (Score:4, Insightful)
Not selling them is not preventing anyone from studying these books. They are all available for free anyway. All it does is stop Nazis making money off then through Amazon.
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How does an online retailer have a "mindset"? It's just a company selling stuff.
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The answer is "because I damn well want to" (Score:5, Insightful)
There are legitimate reasons to study such works, trying to blot out the unpleasant and offensive works is an anti-intellectual mindset.
There are also completely frivolous reasons to read such works, the most obvious being plain old curiosity. And that's as good a reason as any to keep selling these books. Because I want to read them, that's why is the only answer necessary.
I get that Amazon is a private company, and they're not bound by any Constitutional rules, but this sets a bad precedent, and yes, I'm going to use the words: slippery slope. Hey, slippery slopes do exist.
Here's the biggest problem: peer pressure and collusion. Once Amazon does this, other sellers will rush to do it to. And while these books won't technically be illegal, in practical terms, they might as well be. We've seen this before. After the South Carolina shootings, Amazon and Ebay rushed to ban Confederate items. Similarly, you'll probably see other booksellers jump on Amazon's political correctness parade, and then other sectors as well. Sascha Baron Cohen is already calling for censorship on Facebook. Jeff Bezos is basically just giving it to people like him, for the SJW attaboys. So you could see a cascade effect on this stuff.
Our cultural and business betters have officially left "I may disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" behind. Not just behind, but that ethos has become verbotten. Memory holed, even. And the same people that used to object to "If you have nothing to hide, then what's the problem?" have now fully embraced "If you're not a Nazi, then what's the problem with banning these books? Punch Nazis! I'll bet you ARE a crypto-Nazi, aren't you??!!!
Also because of the forbidden fruit effect (Score:3)
Arguably, the philosophy which believes in shaping society by banning access to information about other philosophies, is the one which itself should be banned.
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Huh? America was very actively censoring during the cold war. Movies were considered commercial speech so not covered by the 1st amendment, Communism was illegal though I believe eventually the courts struck that down and businesses had black lists of people who weren't allowed to work in certain industries due to there political believes. Not to mention whole groups of people being marginalized due to their looks.
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There are legitimate reasons to study such works, trying to blot out the unpleasant and offensive works is an anti-intellectual mindset.
Yes I'm sure everyone was buying the books of David Duke and George Rockwell to critically analyze them and see what fallacies and leaps of logic bring the authors to their opinions. And totally not to use them to justify and reinforce their racist tendencies.
Amazon's under absolutely no obligation to keep selling this garbage so good on them. There's plenty of other material available to learn why nazis are bad.
Re: Unwise mindset (Score:3)
It ignores the obvious evidence that, left unchecked, Nazism comes with the possibility of *extremely* dangerous consequences.
So does communism. And anarchism. And Islamism. And Christian Fundamentalism. Wanna ban all of those too?
It is possible that censorship is the incorrect action here, but please, if you have better solutions to preventing any more WW2-style atrocities, do share!
Yeah, I have a great solution: fight their bad ideas with GOOD ideas.
It seems like what you're really afraid of is that their ideas might actually be better than yours; that thay may be so good that the majority of people will flock to them. Apparently that is the point when you decide that free speech and democracy are no longer good things. We can't have free speech if people are saying things
When will they ban the real wackos? (Score:4, Funny)
I thought Nazis were passe already. When are they going to ban anti-vaxers?
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The first order of business with any populist movement is to find some scapegoats. The Nazis did all the heavy lifting, so modern day populists can just republish their variations on Mein Kampf in their quest for a white nation of America. In the old days, they had to get their literature in brown paper wrapping so their neighbors wouldn't find out that they were Nazis, but now, they're out in the open. Frankly, moving back to the days when Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists had to distribute their garbage vi
tl;dr.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I prefer to make my own decisions on what's best for me; even my own mother, with all her best intentions, wouldn't be able to pull that off better than I could
anyone or anything else is just full of shit trying to convince me that what is best for them is really best for me
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Maybe they just don't like Nazis and don't want to do anything to help them.
Probably makes them feel better about all the other sociopathic stuff they do.
So much for the marketplace of ideas... (Score:5, Insightful)
...where we could rely on things like discussion and persuasion to show how ridiculous and downright stupid people like David Duke and Alex Jones are.
No, we get to have some gatekeepers filtering everything so we don't have to trouble our pretty little heads with either thinking through ideas or, I dunno, getting out of our chairs to defend concepts like humanism, human rights, and racial equality.
Fortunately, these gatekeepers' qualifications are...that they're CERTAIN they know what's best for everyone.
What a relief!
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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When these sort of clamp downs happened, it went poorly. Various inquisitions come to mind as examples.
When these sort of clamp downs were resisted, things went much better. Formulative times of modern liberal systems come to mind as examples.
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Exposing people to ideas tends to advance good ideas and inoculate against bad ones because people are generally capable of rudimentary reasoning.
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Pretty well, actually. Knowing your enemy is as important now as it was back in the bad old days....
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I mean, other marketplaces sometimes end up having monopolies which restrict supply, so why not this one?
Anyway, I've always thought it was a dumb metaphor. A "marketplace" of ideas is so different from any other marketplace that it's of questionable value. Ideas are not consumable. Ideas are not material. Ideas cannot be easily advertised without giving away the "product" itself. Ideas are unboundedly reproducible for almost zero cost. Ideas are not fungible and cannot be easily reduced to a currency value
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Can you give us a concrete example of how Amazon not selling these books (that is available elsewhere for free) is shutting down debate?
It seems like these people's ideas are more than adequately refuted without the help of Amazon.
Bigger question (Score:2, Insightful)
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Technically they're correct, because as ardent communists point out, it's hard to reduce enough people to lowest common denominator to reach communism. People tend to develop "capitalist tendencies" when you push for communism too hard, that is actually starting to work to improve their horrid lives.
(That was a literal term in Soviet Union for people who tried to get a better job beyond what was designated as their lot).
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The FBI considers the far right to be as much of a threat as ISIS.
https://boingboing.net/2020/02... [boingboing.net]
Mao is long dead and people are not committing terrorist acts in his name today.
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Revolutionary communism is second biggest ideology in terms of terrorist deaths caused. First one is islam. Islam is a massive outlier, and of the remaining, communism is a massive outlier. Much of which is in fact Maoist.
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Your numbers appear to be made up -- it's not too difficult to find double-digits of murders in a single incident by white supremacists even if you limit yourself to just the US, eg. the El Paso shooting in 2019 for last year, let alone adding things up. No hoops to jump through.
I'm not sure where the 50k figure comes from but that's basically irrelevant even if true, finding even worse people doesn't make the original problem okay.
There's a neat little graph of what we're talking about, as pertains to US
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all prominent Demoncrats **snip** are complicit in FAR more deaths than those that can be directly attributed to Hitler or his Third Reich.
Democrats are now responsible for more deaths than literal Nazis? Seriously? This is what gets modded up to +5 on Slashdot these days?
A depressing indictment on the degree to which society is polarized today.
Re:Bigger question (Score:4, Interesting)
It's really gross how this is modded informative.
No, not all of the above are complicit in far more detahs than can be directly attributed to Hitler or his Third Reich. Probably none of them, though there's some argument to be had about Stalin the recent meme of him causing more deaths than Hitler relies on some strained interpretations (he's still very bad and very very mass murder-y though). "all prominent Demoncrats" is a tell-tale sign of the unhinged, literally demonization, and clearly complicit in fewer deaths than can be directly attributed to Hitler or his Third Reich.
Also, it's fundamentally really weird to compare complicity in deaths on one side to deaths directly attributable on the other side. Compare directly attributed to directly attributed, or compare complicit to complicit.
Finally, do you really want to take the position that it's not fair that white supremacists get their stuff taken down because they aren't so bad? You're saying this is a gnat. The Third Reich was kind of one of the most powerful existential threats to civilization in living memory. Granted, fewer and fewer people still live that can remember that time, but still. I'd recommend either going with "the neo-nazis etc. are bad, here's some other things to also not sell and here's why", or "the neo-nazis etc. are bad, but bad ideas should still be sold by Amazon", not "the neo-nazis aren't that bad, talk to me again once you've censored all of my political opponents".
As for what Amazon should do -- if this were something like Mein Kampf I'd be a little on the fence between whether Amazon should just sell it, or sell it with a big youtube-like banner describing that this is bad stuff but is provided in the spirit of free speech. But eg. if David Duke is profiting off of it, I'd probably prefer to not support a company that directly funds the former KKK grand wizard by acting as his storefront. In that case, it's not about whether the idea is allowed to exist and be given the megaphone that is your platform, it's whether you can actively participate in propping it up by *actually funding it* (you also take profit by selling their material, of course). Hypothetically, if David Duke had struck an arrangement whereby he and his publisher etc. get no payment at all beyond cost of materials to put together the book and the satisfaction of having spread their shitty message, and their website specifies that this book is sold with no profits going to the authors or authors organizations, then maybe I'd be more okay with it. Amazon could ignore me and then I'd be free to choose a non-stormfront storefront.
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The big problem with communism: you get stuck in the redistribution of wealth phase, which has always been dictatorial. There is some truth that communism has never been reached (and could be called untried), but I consider that a problem inherent with communism.
Short term thinking (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be better to have those guys out in the open where they can be identified and tracked? Forcing them to go underground will not make them not exist. It will make them better able to avoid scrutiny.
Why Nazis but not Communists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why Nazis but not Communists? (Score:4, Informative)
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You really need to read a bit more history about this subject. Still, I'm at least glad you at least know about Pol Pot's "Killing Fields" [wikipedia.org]. Some prominent counter-examples:
Stalin's deliberate persecution of wealthy peasant farmers [wikipedia.org]
Stalin's great purges (including party purges, as well as Red Army mass arrests and executions) [wikipedia.org]
Mao's "Cultural Revolution", or the war on intellectuals (inspiration for Pol Pot's massacres) [wikipedia.org]
The death toll of these events alone goes into perhaps tens of millions, and it's hard to a
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This nonsense keeps getting repeated by ardent communists in spite of overwhelming evidence to contrary.
Oh yeah? You think that Mao intended to create a famine with the Great Leap Forward?
Show your overwhelming evidence or STFU.
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Nazis hate Jewish businessmen. Communists hate generic businessmen.
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Communists hate Jews. Source material: On Jewish Question by Karl Marx.
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Wbh (Score:3)
As long as they list the titles banned, and why, that's fine for transparency.
I assume that means all Robert Ludlum novels... (Score:2)
....where everything is a Nazi conspiracy are all gone from Amazon now too, right? :-)
Burn the books (Score:2)
Another book to remove... (Score:2)
Shop somewhere else (Score:4, Insightful)
Newsflash... (Score:2)
Big companies don't like to be associated with Nazis.
Oh yeah - and Amazon has the right to sell whatever merchandise they want to. They are a private company after all.
Gross hypocrisy (Score:3)
So why are Amazon not pulling Communist material, too? The Nazis murdered 6 million in the Holocaust. Now imagine repeating the Holocaust over and over, 23 times. That gets you to the Communist's death toll of 140 million murdered.
What sense does it make to keep supplying the writings of the world mega-democide champions, and only pull the writings of the also-rans?
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I'm not particularly fond of corporations being my moral authority. They have a tendency to go off the rails eventually.
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Yes, that is true. But it doesn't make sense to force a private business to sell products it doesn't want to sell.
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Yes, that is true. But it doesn't make sense to force a private business to sell products it doesn't want to sell.
Nobody is saying that.
Of course, as a private business, Amazon can stop selling these books.
The question is "Should they?"
IMO, they should continue to sell the books.
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As the one who will not lose any sales or customers by making this demand, that's literally easy for you to say. If you want Amazon to sell certain books, why not vote with your wallet, and put some skin in the game?
How is Amazon not selling the book you want any different from ABC or HBO cancelling a show you like? You really haven't thought through your demands, have you?
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That's for Amazon and ultimately its board and its shareholders to decide. Since ending up on the front page of major papers or as an item on the 6 o'clock news for selling Nazi screeds for a profit (and flowing money to the authors and publishers) tends not to be too great for shareholder value, Amazon's first responsibility is to said shareholders, and not to your sense of righteousness.
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Which corporations do you think need additional regulations? How will you go about regulating them?
It sounds like you are saying government is more trustworthy than corporations. Consider your audience here. Is that what you really wanted to say?
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If corporations eventually think Nazis are ok, feel free to shoot them.
Re:Does no one get... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's settle this for once and for all. Everyone gets that. Literally everyone. No one thinks the First Amendment applies (in general, there are weird corner cases) to non-government actors. Nobody. You aren't shining a ray of subtle knowledge down on us. It's like the people who believe all WWE fans believe it's real wrastling, when other than possibly the literally mentally handicapped they all know that.
The "but guise, the First Amendment only applies to the government" people are really annoying Kool-Aid Men bursting through our computer screens with that gem of common, literally ubiquitous knowledge.
However, you made the rookie "first amendment doesn't apply to them!" guy mistake of saying it's not a "free speech" issue.
This shouldn't be subtle either, but apparently it is - there is a concept of 'free speech' that is distinct from the First Amendment. The concept of free speech itself can certainly be debated in any given context, but it's certainly valid to say that this action by Amazon flies in the face of the concept of free speech. In this case, I think it's fine for Amazon to do this. But if they,say, banned books on communism (pro or against) then I'd say that's a pretty shitty action and an attack on free speech. But of course, again, one which is not directly related to the First Amendment.
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People tend to stick up for censorship when it helps them virtue signal and/or it's something they don't agree with.
But you don't really have a free society or really have freedom of speech without it being 'tested' by unpopular or politically incorrect opinions.
But at the end of the day, if we're going to grant these mega-corps gatekeeper status, they should be held to a much higher standard than private citizens.
I don't think the founding fathers ever imagined these issues, in their eyes the only entity p
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If you need to steal my property in order to get your message out it is not a free speech issue. Free speech does not give you the right to force others to use their had-earned property to broadcast your message. Free speech is your responsibility. If you don't have a press, or a broadcast tower, fucking tough. This is the free market, get out there and fucking EARN your property.
You don't get to steal my shit to get your message out you fucking thief. I've seen you hating on commies, but obviously that's o
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You're wasting words and making your point harder to discern with your boring invective, and they don't bother me otherwise so just say what you mean. It is a free speech issue, meaning I declare it one. My assessment of my personal opinion (which would also drive my decision to do business with Amazon) is that their decision to sell or not sell a specific book because of its content is open to debate based on the concept of reasonable or unreasonable limits to self expression. In this particular case it's
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Let's settle this for once and for all. Everyone gets that. Literally everyone. No one thinks the First Amendment applies (in general, there are weird corner cases) to non-government actors. Nobody
You know, "nobody" is a pretty strong word. Among the millions of people who talk about the first amendment, there are surely quite a few who do in fact think that the first amendment applies to every actor. And if there is just one person that thinks that, your statement is untrue.
So you are surely incorrect, even if I cannot point out that one person.
Sometimes it's better to not go into something with full force and vigor but instead with measured statements that are, you know, actually true.
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Well, I was using "literally" in its more modern sense of "not literally".. But as I said, I'm sure there are a very few rubes who think WWE is real, but you'd be hard pressed to find one who isn't actually clinically mentally disabled.
So literally everyone (who is posting complete sentences on Slashdot and who doesn't eat glue)..
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You are the first to mention some amendment to the constition of some north american country in this discussion.
Freedom of speech is more than that. Amazon also is a global company.
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Freedom of speech isn't forcing a private company to stock, advertise and retail your book for you either.
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Until then what we are discussing is whether this is a good thing. Not whether it is legal.
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Like others have point out, you're confusing the First Amendment with the general concept of free speech.
The First Amendment says that the government can't censor your opinions and expression (with some limitations). Free Speech is the concept that everyone should be able to express their opinions without being censored, so that no one (government, religions, groups, etc.) should be able to censor.
The concept of Free Speech is far more vast than the First Amendment.
Re: Does no one get... (Score:3)
The concept of free speech also includes the negative right of free speech: that no one should be compelled to engage in speech they do not wish to engage in.
When Amazon refuses to sell books, that's an exercise of their free speech right. If the author, publisher, or buyer dislike that, their obligation is to circumvent Amazon by using a different bookseller, not to try to compel it to sell the books anyway.
Re:Does no one get... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't really be a free speech issue unless the gov is telling Amazon to do this.
It's still a free speech issue, but it's not a 1st amendment issue.
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Isn't Amazon just exercising their right to free speech by choosing what to market? I also choose not to distribute Nazi literature, and that also doesn't affect their free speech one bit.
Amazon is not a monopoly, and it's almost trivial to sell goods online today so this doesn't prevent anyone from obtaining said books from the authors. It does make a statement that Amazon doesn't want to be their accomplice.
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Private actors, private property, private companies
Despite the common misconception that the First Amendment prohibits anyone from limiting free speech,the text of the amendment only prohibits the US Congress (and, by extension, those that derive their powers from Congress) from doing so
Am I missing something here then?
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Yes.
Yes, here is what you're missing (Score:2)
Yes, you are missing something.
> That the 1st amendment only covers the gov.
Texas Penal Code Chapter 19 only applies in Texas
> Can't really be a free speech issue unless the gov is telling Amazon to do this.
Can't really be murder if it doesn't happen in Texas?
Texas penal code Chapter 19 is ONE law about murder, that is applicable in a particular realm. That does NOT mean murder can't happen outside the jurisdiction of Texas PC 19.
The first amendment is ONE law about free speech, which applies in a par
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You can get digital books from the library/corsair cove now.
Re:Bad news for 4chan (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how it starts. Irony is lost on the dim of wit. To them, it's merely truth. Pretty soon, those who started posting edgy shit ironically are driven out by the mouth breathing true believers.
That's even if the original edgy shitposters are telling the truth, and not just using "It was a joke bro" as cover.
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While few may lament the disappearance of these hate-filled books
What makes these books hate-filled? Did the "journalist" actually read them? Beating a Jew to death for enjoyment is hate. The concept of white supremacy is not hate in and of itself.
Re: Bad news for free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
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Try this on for size, it's the same thing: I'm surprised they let GAYS sell on those sites in the first place!
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No, it isn't. I shop at a local bookstore.