Over the last few days, I have been following the news concerning Paypal's demand to e-books publishers and distributors of erotic literature which use Paypal services.
Broadly speaking, Paypal has decreed that it would cancel the accounts of e-books publishers and distributors if they deal with certain kinds of erotic content. The details can be found HERE.
PayPal, which has a monopoly on the market of online-payment processing, has forced them to withdraw certain book contents, not because they are illegal under the law, but simply because it considers them immoral under its own criteria. Booksellers using Paypal may not sell works of fiction that include sexual fantasies containing themes and implied scenarios of pseudo-incest (including “daddy” fantasies, step-family - Woody Allen can do it, but they cannot sell it), incest, fantasies about non-consensual sex or rape, bestiality (widened to include non-human fantasy creatures), and BDSM.
Applied to the traditional book trade, these rules would require that such works as those of the Marquis de Sade, Anaïs Nin, Nabokov, Henry Miller, the Marquis de Sade and books like Caligula, The Sookie Stackhouse Novels (True Blood), The Story of O, Venus in Furs, Lolita, Balzac's Passion in the Desert (which tells of a relationship between a soldier and a panther) and the Bible (which describes situations of incest) to be removed from the shelves in bookstores. As for rape scenes, they are innumerable in literature, which itself serves as a catharsis for writers and readers.
It is a worrying precedent.
Paypal's aim is to not so much to target illegal acts in fiction, which is mind-boggling in itself, especially when they are not glorified, but it goes so far as to forbid what it sees as "morally wrong", with all the subjectivity that is implied, and all the abuses that can result from it. How far can a policy of repression of "good morals" go?
The internet is a huge village square, where ideas can be shared, exchanged and criticized freely. This will change if private companies, who have no legal obligation to respect the right to freedom of expression, are able to use their economic influence to dictate what people should book, write and think.
Sources:
The timeline
The Independent
Smashwords 1, Smashwords 2, Smashwords 3, Smashwords 4
National Coalition Against Censorship
EDIT: Sign the petition, if you are so inclined.
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