It’s just the old wordumswitcheroo. It’s OK if I declare that it isn’t what it is. It’s not homophobia, I just think homosexuals are an abomination and should have their rights curtailed. I’m not a racist, I just observe a lot of predictable inferiorities by people from other cultural groups. It’s not censorship, I just want to scrub the world of public discourse to remove language and literature I find objectionable. It’s not a threat, I just declare that there will be consequences if you do not comply. I’m not fat, I’m just big boned. Etc. I find that whole line of semantic bickering completely uninteresting. If you don’t want to call it a threat, call it a threap. If it’s not censorship, call it cemsorship. I don’t really care how you narrowly define words in your personal vocabulary.
That’s not a threat. It’s a customer business preference. A threat would be a promise to harm someone or something physically.
If you want to buy your sheets from the KKK that’s your choice but if you don’t that’s also your choice.
Cite? Particularly for the emphasized word.
That’s not remotely analogous to anything we’ve discussed. I don’t think one single person has suggested in the slightest that anyone has an obligation to buy the damned book. Nor has anyone even suggested that Amazon is obligated to sell it. I do not know quite how to implore the lot of you to look about the field, find out where the goal posts are actually placed, and aim your footballs accordingly.
This is a falsely narrow definition of a “threat.”
You’re comparing Amazon to the KKK?
It’s really more like threatening to picket and harass Target stores if you find out they sell Klan robes. You have a right to do it, but telling them “stop selling the Klan robes or else” is a threat.
Target actually did get pressured to remove skate punk clothes that had coded Nazi symbols on them. The designer had appropriated and incorporated graffiti into the designs without knowing what they meant. The story was big news, but Target saved themselves some of the trouble Amazon has by just saying, “oops, we didn’t know what we were selling,” and taking them back. They didn’t issue a grandstanding press release that they were for free speech, then remove the clothes anyway.
On the other hand, I don’t really think it’s parallel. Amazon’s self-publishing-to-kindle store isn’t really a publishing company or a bookstore. It’s more like Cafe Press or Ebay. They simply let people sell shit through them and take a cut. They don’t have their hands in the material at all. They’ve gotten into a pickle now, because they’ll have to commit to screen every crappy Kindle book people put out or be somehow responsible every time a Twitter mob finds some book that creeps them out.
Of course Amazon has also had public relations nightmares for pulling titles (or in one case, just not listing sales ranks on some books), so they can’t win.
Yes, I’m comparing the sale of a manual for pedophiles to the KKK. If you want to use your analogy of Target that’s fine but it is not a threat to take your business elsewhere. No action is taken against the store. There are many stores I don’t do business with because I don’t like their product mix or method of operation. Guess what, when stores piss off their customers they go somewhere else. The fact that some people do the courtesy of telling the store why they’re going to lose customers is a blessing and not a threat.
The real threat to Amazon wasn’t the consumer boycott. Protestors would have gotten over it and probably shopped there by the end of the year if they did before. The threat to Amazon was the mass media cackling over the whole incident, linking them to pedophilia in all of their headlines. Amazon had to immediately change the lede so they did.
Sure.
Yeah, we know.
So I assume that you disagree with strikes by employees? Or those union employees I am seeing all over the place lately with the ‘Shame on business X’ signs. Right? Or protests outside of political rallies? These are forms of censorship in that they are trying to dissuade certain people from buying certain products, going to certain stores or listening to certain people. Do you speak up every time this happens?
The people who wrote Amazon about pulling the book are doing the exact same thing that strikers/protesters do all the time. Is the behavior of strikers/protesters obnoxious? Are they, to use Dios term, douchebags as well?
There is nothing wrong at all with voicing an opinion to a store that you will not shop there anymore if they sell certain products. The business owner will make whichever choice they feel is appropriate. If they drop the product, that is their choice. If they keep it, that is their choice. You may not like it, but then you have the option of opening your own store to sell any item you might wish. Or going to another store. Or using that fancy new intraweb thingy.
Slee
There’s absolutely no reason you should assume any of that, as protesting a company over unsafe working conditions or animal abuse or whatever aren’t remotely forms of censorship no matter how you define it.
And that goes for everybody else in the next eighteen pages who makes this argument again.
I am not protesting it. I’m simply saying that for those who are, what is the difference between protesting, and boycotting something else you find immoral?
I myself try not to shop at Walmart unless I absolutely have to. I have friends who won’t use cosmetics that test on animals. There are plenty of boycotts. Are boycotts ALWAYS obnoxious.
It’s more the principle of the thing. (Personally, I don’t give a damn whether Amazon sells it or not. I myself probably wouldn’t do so, but if someone else does, go for it)
No, not all boycotts are obnoxious. It depends on the purpose. Sometimes protesting serves a legitimate purpse and sometimes it doesn’t. This is one of the times that it doesn’t. Trying to equate calling this campaign obnoxious to calling the practice of boycotts in general obnoxious is equivalent to concluding that someone must think all free speech is obnoxious if they think that racist speech is obnoxious.
Oh My God that is funny. Not all boycotts are obnoxious, just the ones you disagree with.
I’m not seeing the problem. Whether something is obnoxious is a matter of opinion.
Example: Not all movies suck. Just the ones I don’t like.
Is this really that difficult?
There are clear differences between protesting low wages, unsafe working conditions, pollution, treatment of animals, etc., and protesting for no reason at all except that you don’t like the product and don’t think anyone should be allowed to buy it.
Boycotts are sexist!
In short:
Amazon has the right to sell anything they are legally allowed to sell.
People have the right to protest anything they are legally allowed to.
Amazon has the right to respond to the protest in whatever manner they see fit, within the law.
Some of us think that the protesters in this, and many other cases, are idiots, and setting a dangerous precedent. YMMV.
So, there.
Good thing nobody thought like Dio when Coke came out with New Coke. Me, I’m all for feedback. I leave good feedback when I find something laudable, and bad feedback when I find something I don’t like. I didn’t personally contact Amazon about this book but my mother sent them a polite email letting them know that as an author who also sells on Amazon (including, among other things, a legal book about representing sexually abused kids) she didn’t appreciate her books being sold side by side on a site that would sell a book that helps people sexually abuse kids. In her position, I’d have written the same email. There is nothing “douchebag” about providing a company with feedback about why you are or are not happy with the decisions it’s making.