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Comment by finite_jest | Hacker News Reader

They certainly have the legal right, but I think it is still censorship. See my other comment for other examples of censorship by copyright: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29729059

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.

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> They certainly have the legal right, but I think it is still censorship.

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.

Not really, they most likely did it for ideological/virtue-signalling reasons. You are right in that they probably did it in a way that would hurt their profits the least.

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.

[1]: https://archive.fo/23ZUN

[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-...

So there's a "Read Across America" day, and you consider the very act of not reading Dr. Seuss on that day Orwellian? What is they read Dr. Seuss every other year—is that worth 0.5 Orwells? Are there any other authors that must be read on that day to keep our Orwell-o-Meter down? I agree we should never go full Orwell, but as long as we keep it below 0.66666 Orwells (repeating, obviously), I think we should be safe.

Except that "Read Across America" is Dr. Seuss's birthday, and "Dr. Seuss Day" is the other common name for it? And, what about the rest of the events?

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 :-)

You are making a distinction here between the author of the work and the rightsholder. Are you suggesting part of the reason for the backlash is that the author should be granted extra rights over their work which can't be transferred to a third party? Because that isn't a particularly right-wing view either.

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