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Panic Censorship: Amazon, Kobo & Stillpoint/Eros

Banned on Amazon! Juliet Takes Off by KD WestOver the past few weeks, a series of denouncements online and, more particularly, in a British tabloid that we don’t choose to link to have thrown many of the major online ebook outlets into a panic. Accused of being incapable of detecting and deleting all instances of their “vile trade” in child pornography, rape smut, and plagiarism (all rightly illegal in the UK, the US, and the rest of the world), several major ebook marketplaces have taken a variety of knee-jerk steps to give at least the appearance of doing something. British bookseller WHSmith has ditched its entire ebook store, while Kobo has apparently stopped distributing books uploaded through its Kobo Writing Life program, which served not only self-publishers but small publishing houses such as Stillpoint Digital Press as well. Amazon.com, the world’s largest online seller of books (and just about everything else), instituted a series of keyword-based filters to try to catch peddlers of obscene (as opposed to erotic) books. Mostly, Amazon seems to have targeted any book that contained the word “virgin” in the title or description or that featured a defloration — as well as any mention (or apparent mention) of incest, rape, or bestiality. Continue reading Panic Censorship: Amazon, Kobo & Stillpoint/Eros