WH Smith has taken its UK site completely offline until all abuse-themed e-books are removed from its product listings.
The move comes after last week's revelations that Amazon, WH Smith, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers were selling pornographic e-books featuring incest, rape and bestiality on their sites.
WH Smith said it was "disgusted" by such titles and found them "unacceptable".
www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24519179
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>>WH Smith said it was "disgusted" by such titles and found them "unacceptable".
So how did they get there?
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>> So how did they get there?
Via a 3rd party - "It takes e-book content from Kobo.com"
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>> >> So how did they get there?
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>> Via a 3rd party - "It takes e-book content from Kobo.com"
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Don't think there's much control over e-publishing. Sign and upload.
While that's very good at removing hurdles to publication some barriers are best left in place. ......
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>> Via a 3rd party - "It takes e-book content from Kobo.com"
E-book seller Kobo has suspended the sale of all self-published books on its UK website following the discovery of abuse-themed titles.
Kobo - which also makes e-readers - said it did not intend to censor material, but needed to "protect the reputation of self-publishing".
www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24533915
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Do they mean erotica books or romance.? Incest and rape happen in real live you can't stop people reading about it.
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>> Do they mean erotica books or romance.? Incest and rape happen in real live you
>> can't stop people reading about it.
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I agree with you Dutchie, those who enjoy reading about things like that might be quite satisfied with reading/imagination, remove their outlet and what do they do to replace it, if you don't like such things you're not forced to read.
We're all different, what we might find repulsive other people enjoy, so long as no one is harmed what is the big problem.
Admittedly i'm hardly an expert on these matters, i enjoy a bit of standard erotica like most normal blokes i daresay, i wonder how bad i might be considered when the hymn sheet gets rewritten again next week or year, can i expect a visit from the thought police?
Should that marvellous young woman who taught this young chap be hauled up 40 odd years later cos the puritan movement shifted the goal posts to suit, me i'd love an action replay.
Last edited by: gordonbennet on Mon 14 Oct 13 at 14:43
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The stuff I question was a lot nastier than erotica. Graphically described act of abuse, rape bestiality and incest. One of the titles was "Taking my Drunk Daughter". Don't favour. censorship but that sort of stuff shouldn't,t be on sale at W H Smith
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>> Don't favour. censorship but that sort of stuff shouldn't,t be on sale at W H Smith
Should it be on sale anywhere CGN? I don't favour censorship much either but sometimes it seems quite a good idea. There are enough filthy swine around already. No need to create more.
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In my opinion, no it shouldn't.
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>There are enough filthy swine around already. No need to create more.
You're 20 years too late.
Before the unwashed masses had access to the internet and Tim BL wrote his first browser there was a thing called Usenet.
The unmoderated alt. heirarchy was the playground of some seriously suspect individuals and I'm surprised that no-one has trawled through the archives for a PhD.
No excuse for WHS to be hosting pr0n but the horse is out of the bag and the cat has bolted, so to speak.
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I struggle to believe that porn causes anybody to be like anything, I'm pretty sure they already were.
However, legitimizing a particular type of porn, must legitimize that activity to some extent. Perhaps not in my mind or yours, but in the mind of someone who was already leaning that way....?
On the other hand, driving it underground will presumably drive the likely danger underground. So if we're going to do that, then we need to fund/staff up for the increased detection and catching capability likely to be needed.
We also need to understand that if one has a particular sexual bent, good or bad, then outing, imprisoning, fining, or ostracizing will not change that bent. So we need to understand how we will deal with it when we detect it.
For me, and I know I have extreme views, I would execute every paedophile, every rapist and every adult who takes advantage of a minor (really minor, not 15yrs and 11 months). I would be prepared to live with the occasional wrongful execution for the massive change in the number of offenders in the world. (obviously I'd be a lot less content if it was me or mine wrongfully convicted, but law is for the benefit of the society, not the individual).
Every one killed is one less.
However, before one does any banning or pursuing or anything else, then one does rather need to understand how one will deal with the entire problem. Prohibition and the "War on Drugs" are examples of half-assed approaches that did not consider the entire picture.
Simply expecting a retailer not to stock it is silly and pointless. Especially if one believes that will have any effect on anything other than simply hiding it from one's own view.
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As someone has observed in the recent Downton Abbey controversy, respectable literature has examples of all these themes too. The Forsyte Saga was quoted as a precedent for the DA scene. One of the Ivy Compton-Burnet novels has incest.
The difference was that publishers and editors exercised some kind of personal censorship, so there were barriers in the way of unlimited publication of anything anyone pleased.
It seems to me a bit illogical to uphold the virtue of easy self-publication and then to object to some of the things people want to publish.
When society embraced the internet, the genie was released from the bottle. It's a bit late to start trying to plug it again.
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In the current "Spectator", Melanie McDonagh points out that porn is now part of mainstream culture. She quotes a dirty scene from the new Bridget Jones novel and the bondage/dominatrix theme of some M&S knickers. (One of her examples is Princess Eugenie "twerking " with a stuffed bear but I don't know what that means, and probably don't need to.) She wonders what the effect is on young people. Maybe we worry too much about this as, in the elegant terms of one educator (speaking of the classroom) they have built-in carp detectors and I hope they just treat it as something ludicrous.
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WH Smith taken offline to remove e-book porn - Ambo
