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Comment by DiscourseFan | Hacker News Reader

Lolita was published in the US, which has protected freedom of expression; Australia does not.

> Lolita was published in the US

According to Wikipedia it was first published in France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita#Publication_and_recepti...

That’s a fascinating publication history but does in the end demonstrate my original point: once the french government got word of it they banned the book, whereas in the US, once it got a publisher, it basically proliferated unchecked, probably on account of the strong norms around freedom of speech.

Books banned in US schools: https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/

Books banned generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_Sta...

That’s local school boards—other schools and libraries have entire “banned books” sections because of that. Nobody is getting arrested for it.

It still restricts access to literature. It is still a ban, and it is a limit of freedom to explore literature.

But I agree with you, different scale of a similar problem.

In high school, I read Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five entirely because it was on a banned list. So it can go both ways.

Its not a similar problem. In one case a school board bans books from being in school libraries, in another someone is charged with a sex crime for their literary production. There are magnitudes of difference here.

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