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> Honestly, I don't understand why since at the end of the day everyone gets paid, and indeed get paid more than they normally would have (I guess it's more of a "you are altering my art so people can consume it in ways I didn't intend" attitude).

The problem with "you are altering my art so people can consume it in ways I didn't intend" can be a purely economic one, as it's misrepresenting the "brand" that is the author. If you removed the "vulgar" things than you are changing the product in a non-controlled way. It's why some directors or writers remove their names after producers or whatever external controllers get a hold of it. It doesn't represent their creative abilities. They could put out two versions, but I think that the opinions of most authors that if the sex scene could be removed, it didn't need to be there, and it wouldn't have been there in the first place.

It's removing an aspect of the brand.

The way I see it: it's not me or my company altering the brand, it's the consumers themselves altering the brand so that they can enjoy it more fully.

How is a consumer altering a movie experience or book experience any different from a consumer altering a:

- music experience (remix, etc.)

- food experience (customizing a chef's dish)

- video game experience (with game genie, mods, etc.)

- picture experience (with photoshop, memes, etc.)

?

People create derivative works all the time of all media types to suit their tastes, dreams, and whims - I don't see why that should be illegal as long as they aren't trying to resell it or create a competing brand.

Why not just consume media you don't find offensive in the first place? Would you feel differently if I wanted to _insert_ sex scenes in to movies that didn't have them?

> Why not just consume media you don't find offensive in the first place?

FOMO, mainly? You feel left out when all of your coworkers are talking about GoT everyday... if only there were a way to consume it in a way that met your standards and you could participate in the discussions too...

> Would you feel differently if I wanted to _insert_ sex scenes in to movies that didn't have them?

Not at all! If that's what you want to do, you should be able to do it on your own copy! Or if you wanted to replace the main character with Thomas the Tank Engine, whatever floats your boat, that's great.

"hence why companies like VidAngel are constantly mired in legal issues despite widespread popularity with consumers"

Widespread popularity with an incredibly small number of consumers who are generally very religiously oriented. And as seems to be common in the highly-religious groups, VidAngel commits copyright and trademark violations with the justification of "it's for families!" Just like a thousand religious summer camps who make "Reese's Jesus" shirts and shirts with "Jesus Christ" written like the Coca Cola logo because "it's for Jesus!"

The vast majority of people don't feel the need to censor the content they watch because they either understand what's in the content, or simply avoid tainted content altogether. If you're censoring things like ASoIaF, then maybe ASoIaF isn't for you, considering how important incest is to the plot.

> The vast majority of people don't feel the need to censor the content they watch because they either understand what's in the content, or simply avoid tainted content altogether

Right, but said people number in the millions, and would consume said content if only there were a way to selectively censor what they find objectionable.

> If you're censoring things like ASoIaF, then maybe ASoIaF isn't for you, considering how important incest is to the plot.

Speaking from experience, me and my family/friends agree that ASoIaF is a fantastic series, even when completely censored to remove all instances of explicit violence, sex, and profanity.

The only thing you really lose is explicit detail when it comes to specific sex scenes or violent acts - and that constitutes less than 1% of the total prose. Everything else (intrigue, politics, etc. - the 99%) is still there.

>Right, but said people number in the millions, and would consume said content if only there were a way to selectively censor what they find objectionable.

Perhaps I'm not understanding, but if you're whiting it out, you're reading it anyway, right? So, what's the benefit?

If you get to a sex scene, can you just skip it or something?

Have you ever used VidAngel? Basically it gives you a tree of content you can selectively filter before you even watch the show. You can say "filter all sex", or you can drill down into the tree and only filter "naked women" or "naked men" or even drill down and filter a specific scene if you know about it.

When you hit the timestamp of a filter, it just skips over the scene.

Books would be the same, but with the added advantage that you can easily alter the text to make it feel more natural. So instead of an explicit sex scene, you can end the chapter with a new transition where the characters enter the bedroom and close the door and it is simply implied what they did in between chapters.

> I know it would be wildly popular in places like Utah because I fear legal pursuit from authors/publishers (and since you must break DRM in order for the tech to work, I don't see a way out).

FWIW, congress wrote an exemption to the Copyright Act when a company wanted to do this for movies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_and_Cop...

So if your product was actually popular enough in Utah that might happen again. Of course that was 13 years ago.

I can understand this perspective but even voluntary censorship seems so contrary to some of the aspects of literature that make it compelling, chief among those its capacity to help expose yourself to different modes of thought.

Ironically GRRM specifically mentioned that he doesn't write "comfort fiction".

Think of voluntary censorship in terms of other things like voluntarily abstaining from alcohol, drugs, or even meat.

I avoid things that I believe are bad for my body, and I avoid things that I believe are bad for my mind. You might argue that it's impossible to consume something "bad for your mind", but I disagree. I think there are certain forms of entertainment (written, visual, and interactive) that absolutely can desensitize you, distract you, addict you, influence you (negatively), etc. - I try to avoid those effects where possible, and self-censorship is just one tool to combat them.

For what it's worth I have really appreciated this thread. I 100% agree with the comments that you have made and try and do the same. Unfortunately I doubt I will ever make the time to create a project like yours and just ignore certain media instead.

Thanks! If it makes you feel better, you can already use Calibre to do basic ebook editing (bulk find/replace profanity, etc.) - your ebook just needs to be DRM-free.

All my project allows me to do is export a set of changes on a book to a JSON-based metadata format, so the changes can be shared. I'm afraid to monetize it because I don't think I could deliver a good UX without breaking DRM (which would get me into legal hot water), but perhaps making it into a context-free Calibre plugin might be safe...

Alright, thanks! One more thing to add to the future tech list.

I don't really see religious/conservative populations going out of their way to abridge a book that includes scenes that they need need "whited out". There are plenty of other books to read, and they'd probably prefer not to support works they disapprove of, anyway. That's even assuming that the books make sense with the sex and violence torn out; if you were to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with everything a puritan found objectionable torn out of it, there wouldn't be a very sensible story left.

> if you were to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with everything a puritan found objectionable torn out of it, there wouldn't be a very sensible story left.

I think you misunderstand what religious people really want. Most people with "puritanical" objections to media content are just wanting it to be less explicit (i.e. left to the imagination) - not completely whitewashed from the story. After all, most religious texts themselves are rife with sex and murder; the acts themselves are usually not explicitly described in great detail, however.

"Lysanderoth's sword tore into Archibald's neck, spraying blood and chunks of windpipe across the battlefield and leaving him loudly gurgling as he slumped to the ground"

vs.

"Lysanderoth slew Archibald with the sword"

You can easily retain the story while eliminating the explicit aspect of the prose.

For example, I edited the entirety of the "A Song of Fire and Ice" series, and you may be interested to learn that eliminating every instance of explicit violence, sex, and profanity altered slightly less than 1% of the total word count of each book.

I completely understand why an author would reject anybody attempting to change the prose as you have suggested here.

Whiting out in a book, or in your own ebook copy, is one thing. Sharing, then, those edits would be like releasing a fan-cut of a movie. Doing so wholesale (the entire movie) isn't ok - sharing timestamp swaps that you can plug into VLC is a different story.

> sharing timestamp swaps that you can plug into VLC is a different story.

That is precisely what I am suggesting sharing - page numbers, paragraph numbers, length, and other metadata needed to filter the book (essentially "timestamps" for books). This metadata would tell the software where to excise sections from the ebook. People would need to own their own copy of the book, and the ewhiteout software just alters it according to the metadata input.

Interesting, I'm so far outside the target market for this I was very skeptical initially. But as you point out, I'm sure there are many communities that would make heavy use of this.

I knew someone that used the vidangel service, but I don't really get it. If you remove the cursing/sex/violence from much of the works that use them, does it not remove context that is necessary? You mention ASoIaF, which is littered with all three right? How can you consume a "patched" version and still retain the themes and messages of these works?

If you don't want to be exposed to these things, why not just only consume content that does not have them in the first place?

> How can you consume a "patched" version and still retain the themes and messages of these works?

From context! You don't need to explicitly see two characters having sex or read an erotic paragraph about them having sex to figure out they have an incestuous relationship.

And most, if not all religious folks just want the sex and violence to be less explicit (left to the imagination) not completely whitewashed from the story. Otherwise you wouldn't even be able to read the Bible/Quran/Book of Mormon/etc. without encountering sex and violence.

> Honestly, I don't understand why

I can't believe you don't see the issue?

No, please inform me (after reading my other comments).

It seems like "the issue" boils down to "it offends the author"

DRM isn't in and of itself the issue; copyright is. I have the copyright to my novel Kismet, for instance, and my publisher has the publishing rights in both print and ebook. You don't get to produce a "derivative work" from Kismet without my explicit approval and, because the contract with my publisher grants them exclusive rights to the novel in print and ebook form, a negotiated exception.

I suspect your argument is that you're only distributing the "patch files," and so that's not intrinsically a copyright violation. (This is distinct from VidAngel, which admitted that they did, in fact, have to have copyright-violating master copies of movies they were "patching" in order to stream the bowdlerized versions.) And...maybe? Yes, in that case, DRM would become more of an issue. But I'm not convinced that a publisher with sufficiently deep pockets who wanted to press the case couldn't successfully argue that the combination of your patch file plus the original work creates an unauthorized "derivative work."

Well, let me rephrase that: that combination absolutely creates an unauthorized derivative work. It's not clear to me that it's illegal, but the ethics strike me as dubious. For instance, using my own book again as an example: the book wouldn't be materially affected if the main character's penchant for swearing when she was stressed got toned down. But it would be materially affected if someone came through and edited out the parts that made it clear that she was pansexual, or that changed the non-binary character to no longer be so, or that changed a gay character to not mention his orientation at all, or that quieted the vocal politics of either the protagonist's socialist sister or her libertarian friend. And that's the real issue you'd run into: it's not just the potential for "you took out the R-rated parts, you prude," it's the potential for "you've made my text mean something it wasn't intended to."

If you made a firm commitment to work with authors and publishers and only release approved patch files, that would probably make this possible (again, setting aside the DRM for a moment). But without it...well, with respect, I'd definitely rather not see that.

> This is distinct from VidAngel, which admitted that they did, in fact, have to have copyright-violating master copies of movies they were "patching" in order to stream the bowdlerized versions.

Yeah but they purchased one DVD per streamer, so each streamer was "virtually" modifying their copy. Otherwise the FMA is incompatible with modern video technology such as streaming. The real reason VidAngel got in trouble was because studios do not want users to have the ability to remotely buy/sell/stream DVDs - even if they technically owned them at the time of streaming. To do so would circumvent their lucrative streaming licensing.

> You don't get to produce a "derivative work" from Kismet without my explicit approval

Agreed, but that depends on the definition of a "derivative work".

> Well, let me rephrase that: that combination absolutely creates an unauthorized derivative work

Not necessarily. Does using a game genie on a Super Nintendo game create a "derivative work" if you use it to completely modify the game at run time? The courts ruled that it didn't since it didn't create a new copy[1]. Hence if I could modify your book at run time such that I didn't create a new copy, it could be considered the same. This is sometimes known as the kaleidoscope effect (i.e. looking at a proprietary painting through the lens of a kaleidoscope doesn't create a new painting and thus doesn't create a derivative work).

Or, even more generally, what's to stop me from building two physically overlaid screens - one that displays your original work and one that overlays alterations? That doesn't create a derivative work anymore than drawing on my television screen with a sharpie while a movie is playing creates a derivative work.

Again, I understand your desire for users to consume your work as you intend. But extend that desire too far and you turn into a strong DRM proponent. I'm a DRM opponent, and I respectfully assert my right to modify my copy of your work as I please - and I invite you to do the same for my works - be they software, novels, or whatever.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Genie#Legal_issues