From the BBC-
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Retailer Amazon has removed several abuse-themed e-books from its Kindle Store after a report highlighted titles depicting rape, incest and bestiality.
Titles such as Taking My Drunk Daughter had been on sale.
Amazon took down the books found by technology news site The Kernel, but many others still remain.
Other online stores, including WHSmith, Kobo and Barnes & Noble featured books with similar themes. They are yet to respond to requests for comment.
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The titles can be found in the self-published section of the retailers' sites - an area where authors can offer their own work. The companies take a percentage of the sales made through their stores.
One lawyer told the BBC that the retailers could find themselves guilty of a criminal offence for allowing such content to be found without protection mechanisms.
"The directors of Amazon have a very difficult question to answer: why are they making profits from pornography which, on the face of it, seems to be criminal?" said Mark Stephens, former chairman of the Internet Watch Foundation, a body responsible for monitoring criminal content online.
However, many of the authors have taken measures to stay within the law, adding disclaimers to their descriptions, such as saying characters were "over 18" or "step-daughters".
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Fictionmania recently removed a story with images that featured full frontal nudity of small children. One commenter said the images were software generated.
Comments
I wonder what the implications will be, if any...
...for Katie Leone's "God Bless The Child" trilogy? Those books have serious depictions of child abuse, after all.
Incidents like the one mentioned above are the number one reason I don't go to Fictionmania anymore, and I certainly wouldn't contribute anything--not even a caption.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
what the implications will be
The type of story they are talking about are S&M stories where the child abuse is glorified usually told from the abuser's point of view, not stories that talk about how bad abuse is, and the recovery from it from the victim's.
Stories that have actual child rape however, even if it is vilified, might have problems on the seller's sites, free fiction sites (like this one) aught not have a problem.
The question is . . . .
The Big question is "Where do they draw the line?" allowing anything and everything can be bad but so is banning everything. In the US there is vast legal difference between text(story telling) and pictures(possible pornography)*. But laws vary all over the world and the internet is not a local thing. As a prime example as we have all seen in recent news or many already know, in some places Gay is illegal. Could they be forced to remove Gay fiction, Transgender fiction and what else? Do they need to flag stuff? To flagging I would say yes. To remove stuff? I worry about who decides what. Do I want to see Amazon selling porn? No! But I don't want to see them dropping all TG content or even just the ones that touch on sensitive topics.
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*Note to those not from the USA: Laws vary quite a bit form State to State, but the "Federal Laws"(country wide) kick in when something crosses state lines.
Ah
The Internet Watch Foundation for those who don't know have IMHO taken over where Mary Whitehouse left off. They are bunch of self appointed bigots. They are not accountable to anyone.
They have made a number of wrong calls in the past.
If they 'deem' that anything depicting rape is a No-No then an awful lot of literature is going to suffer the Farenheit 451 treatment.
Captured Caroline.
Not to go all puritan on you, but I do think that certain literature is not suitable for human consumption, and first amendment abusers can message me at [email protected].
20 or so years ago, I was fond of reading stories like "Captured Caroline, and others, thinking they were just the fantasies of some college kid with too much time on his free hand. Much to my dismay, I later found out that this story and others were based in truth, and that knowledge made me feel guilty and ill, having been greatly abused and raped in my own youth.
I am not even going to mention the true cases of kidnap and abuse that have come to news in the last 10 years. It ain't funny any more.
Gwendolyn
A good thing
It's always difficult in balancing censorship and free speech and I accept that for many countries the line between the two is in very different places.
However, in this instance, assuming the publications did have criminal content under English law, then I believe it is right that Amazon remove from sale (download or paper copy) in the UK any publications that have criminal content under our laws. It strikes me as something fairly easy for them to do given the right software. Anyway, in the BBC article it seems fairly clear Amazon aren't applying their own policy properly in this case and shouldn't have been selling them in the UK regardless. As for the wider unspoken question of does this affect TG fiction? No more or less than any other fiction sold by Amazon in the UK.
I'm actually quite pleased that (for once) our laws do seem to be working.
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
The word "pornography" gets thrown around again.
The definition of porn used by the media and to a certain extent politicians is anything labelled as adult content is porn. It is almost like their goal is to have anything they don't like called porn and get it banned. The current legal definition in both the US and UK requires actual images.
I wonder if John Grisham's book "A Time to Kill" would be considered for a ban as the book's main events are triggered by a brutal rape of a child.
Hugs
Cat
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You can't choose your relatives but you can choose your family.
With regard to the...
... Fictionmania story that was removed, and inparticular the commenter, there is IMHO no difference between genuine and software generated imiages when they invove a child in any state of undress, and for that commenter to surgest that there is, starts alarm bells ringing.
I have no idea what the content of that picee was, and realy don't want to, but having seen some of the content on FM, which is why I avoid FM now, I can only come to the conclusion that those images were added for titilation of some kind.
What I have said above is in noway aimed at web pages run by families that may have a candid shot/s of a child/ren, that at the time it was taken was considered either cute or gigglewothy.
I'll be frank.
Although that's _not_ my name.
As long as it doesn't involve someone _in real life_ doing something to someone unwilling, I don't care what you write, read, orate, or perform on stage. George Carlin even had a routine involving that sort of thing, roughly along the lines of two consenting adults can dress in Bugs Bunny suits and beat each other with steel dildos. If you can't determine the difference between Fiction, Fantasy, and Real Life, you should keep your mouth shut, mind your own business - and avoid any sort of media.
For example, Mein Kampf is a terrible book - but it shouldn't be banned. It's a book (badly written). Just like guns, chainsaws, automobiles, and almost anything else you can think of, it can't hurt you unless there's someone behind it. (Like being hit over the head by 'Hump-tulip's seminal work, How to Kille Insects. All 2,000 pages of it')
Personally? I suspect that catharsis in writing and putting out that work is worth all the headache that it might cause. Who keeps forcing these idiots to read works that they can't stand? I know that if I find something I don't like, I either turn the TV off, or put the damned thing down.
(Yes, I've read a LOT of works that have been banned - like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - and I haven't seen why anyone gets upset)
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.