Both sides is a reductionist argument that ignores the extremes one side is taking versus the other.
I'm against censorship, and I think banning books from school libraries is ridiculous [4]. But a single school district in Texas banning a book is not really comparable with the scale and significance of the corporate/woke censorship.
[1]: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/book-burning-at-ontario...
[2]: WSJ: "Amazon Won’t Sell Books Framing LGBTQ+ Identities as Mental Illnesses" https://archive.fo/v5rWn
[3]: Guardian: "It's a moral decision': Dr Seuss books are being 'recalled' not cancelled, expert says" https://archive.fo/SPBMh
[4]: A school library has limited space, and obviously can't hold all the books in the world, so the librarian have to make a choice. But selection should be based on things like what the students would like to read, exposure to a broad diversity of views, etc. instead of ideology.
I’m unconvinced book banning is as big a deal on the left. The one example you bring up was apparently attacked across the board in Canada and the other two are non government institutions, the last one literally being the family of the author.
Maybe more importantly though I’m unconvinced that book restrictions are actually universally illegitimate, but certainly some motivations are. If as the article claims it is mostly multicultural books being attacked despite similar books in terms of sex being left alone, then that is worse than books being restricted because people feel they’re racist because racism is bad. I would for example completely support restricting middle schoolers access to books supporting “race science” at least without the proper context being provided
I disagree, I think book restrictions are Orwellian, but that's another discussion.
[1]: https://www.findlaw.com/education/student-rights/banning-boo...
There are other examples of using copyright for censorship. The infamous book by the mustache man was prevented from being reprinted in Germany until 2016 by the copyright holder (Bavaria's state government) [1]. Use of DMCA notices by corporations to suppress disparaging news about security vulnerabilities is another example.
Do you believe these are not instances of censorship?
Not the GP, but I assume they meant that it being done by the copyright holders makes it a non-issue in terms of censorship: Censorship is something that's done to copyright holders. What they themselves do is something else.
[EDIT:] So, yes, I would say at least your Knausgaard -- oops, no, the other guy with a similarly-named book -- example is not censorship. Something similar, but not quite the same thing. [/EDIT]
It is mostly about infringing the restricting the ability of individuals to choose what they would like to read, hear, and watch; and also infringing their right to free expression.
:-) On the topic of the book by he-who-must-not-be-named, I beg to differ. The intention is quite clear, copyright is just the means to achieve it.
Here is a Gedankenexperiment: assume that there is a jurisdiction in which the state, instead of the estate [1], automatically becomes the copyright holder after the author of a work passes away. [2] If the state starts making rules on which books by dead authors cannot be published, wouldn't you call it censorship?
[1]: Sorry for the a-maize-ingly corny and unfunny dad joke, couldn't resist.
[2]: This is not too far fetched, apparently this is roughly what has happened with you-know-what in Bavaria.
But yeah, I agree: Let's not mention Kn***rd's name again.
They've got two parts: individual freedom to do what you want with the property, and control over what other people can do with the property
More freedom would mean anyone can do what they want with the property, eg if somebody wants to read or copy the book, they can, regardless of what the author says
How is the right-wing viewpoint seemingly that the author shouldn't have the right to be able to stop the publishing of their own work? Is it censorship because I can't buy JD Salinger's The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls because he didn't want it published until 50 years after his death?
I do not know much about the case of Salinger's book, but it seems a bit different as apparently he withdrew the story before publication, it was done by the author himself, and the intention does not seem to be ideological. [1][2]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Ocean_Full_of...
[2]: I think the ideological intention does kinda matter, e.g. curation of the books in the school libraries is inevitable (unless we abolish copyright and make them all a portal to libgen :-)) and is not censorship. But it _is_ censorship when it is driven by ideology.
Because you have been fooled. Seuss’s estate decided to cease printing some of his lowest selling books, cited some problematic elements as a justification, and conservative media decided to manufacture a wedge issue out of it. Could they updated those elements? Sure. Seuss himself did at least once. But why bother? They were among his lowest selling books. Books fall out of print all the time.
Their statement [1] explicitly says they are doing it after consulting a "panel of experts, including educators". A few days earlier, a school district in Virginia had decided to stop reading Seuss’s books on Dr. Seuss Day. [2] Some school boards in Canada outright banned his books. [3] I think some people lost their jobs because of protesting these in off-color Facebook posts. After the prices for used copies of the books skyrocketed, eBay delisted them. [4] Biden avoided using the author's name in his Dr. Seuss Day statement [5]. Don't you find all of these a tad suspiciously Orwellian?
Also, FYI, I don't really appreciate your personal attack there.
[2]: CP24 (Republished from CNN): "Publisher to stop printing six Dr. Seuss books because they perpeturate racial stereotypes" https://archive.ph/HOhAw
[3]: CBC: "Hamilton Public Library not removing Dr. Seuss books, but local school boards are" https://archive.fo/j1OiJ#selection-795.0-795.156
[4]: https://www.cbr.com/dr-seuss-banned-books-delisted-ebay/
[5]: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-erases-dr-seuss-read-...
I think you are merely trolling, and not really arguing in good faith. In that case, I'm done replying to you here. Wish you a happy new year, and have no scruples: we all gonna end up loving the Big Brother anyway :-)
>André Noël, a Quebec journalist, noted on Twitter that his book, Trafic chez les Hurons, published in 2000, was among those removed from shelves. In a Twitter thread, Noël wrote in French that the removal of his book “surprises me and seems excessive.”
“But I fear that this controversy will distract us from the real scandal, which we have not yet fully measured: the destruction of Indigenous lands and the oppression of Indigenous peoples by Europeans and their descendants, including in Canada and in Quebec,” he wrote.
[2] - Private company can sell what they want.
[3] - Private company can create whatever products they want.
[4] - The argument in the article is that there are marginalized students who want to read these books.
On (2) and (3), neither of these are true in reality, and most don't think they should be true either.
Even if you are an extremely principled libertarian, I am sure that you don't think that every single thing a "private" entity does is inherently good. We, the "private" citizens, certainly can (and should) criticize their actions.
On (4), as I said in my comment, I very much disagree with the prudish/ideological banning of the book from school libraries, so I guess we agree on that?
As for government intervention, at least for the case of Amazon banning books, it seems practically infeasible to me. Large and vociferous factions of the ruling class do want censorship, and Amazon et al are doing it in part to appease them.
For social media censorship, there might be a better chance of effective regulation, as probably more people care about it than banned books.
sorry for the lecture, but this argument is one of the few that triggers the hell out of me. the other one is, "I don't care about privacy violations because I'm not doing anything wrong"
Authoritarian people are going to find ways to be authoritarian no matter their political persuasion.
And hardcore partisans always think the other sides is the really-really-really-evil side and they are on the side of angels. So your line of thinking can be used to justify bad behavior because the other side is worse.