I heard something very disturbing last week. Apparently, several credit card companies are behind PayPal's current endeavours to force certain topics out of ebooks. I received an email explaining the situation (like thousands of other indie authors who have published with Smashwords), and although I haven't yet written erotica and am therefore not (yet) directly affected, I will gladly follow their call for action.
I don't want credit card companies or other financial institutions to censor legal fiction!
Now, it is the erotica writers (main targets at the moment: rape, bestiality and incest).
What will be next? If they manage to get this step of censorship through, will they try to ban sexual acts completely? Or maybe murder? Torture? Crime in a broad sense?
Yes, some of those topics can be highly disturbing, and would be crimes if performed in real life. But can that be reason enough to ban them from books? Who are those institutions to decide about which topics writers can write and readers can read?
Where is our right to free expression???
Books have always addressed controversial topics. There have always been books about crime (there are whole genres for that, you know), and books including sexual acts. If we were forced to write books only about pleasant topics in the future, where would that place us as a society? Would we start to close our eyes to reality once again? Reality and life are not always pleasant. There are dark sides to humanity, and instead of banning them, we should address and discuss them. We should be aware of them, because only then do we have a chance to act against them.
Censorship of ebooks is only a first step, but a step in a blatantly wrong direction.
Act now!
Language ... the bridge of communication, the magic creator of worlds, the brush and paint of authors. Language is magic. It gives us power. It is something you just have to love.
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