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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> A quick check here in the States showed all of them available on Amazon for under $25 each.

The term “banned books” has become a pop culture meme. In this context it doesn’t literally mean banned, it means the book wasn’t allowed somewhere. In extreme cases a government in a controlling country may have forbidden the book.

However in a lot of cases the “banned books” were just not allowed in some school’s library for kids somewhere.

That’s why all of the books aren’t actually banned in the US and are readily available, unless maybe you’re a 3rd grader looking for them at some school library that probably wasn’t going to order the book for kids anyway before it became “banned”

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>In this context it doesn’t literally mean banned, it means the book wasn’t allowed somewhere.

and what is a good word to use when something isn't allowed somewhere? perhaps... "banned"?

i dont understand why people think something needs be unavailable globally to be considered "banned".

there's a million examples of the word "banned" being used when X isn't allowed in Y context. people only get touchy about it when it comes to books for some reason.

dang bans people from HN, no one gets upset about the use of the word "ban" there, despite it being a context-specific ban.

The confusion is because some books were literally banned somewhere, while others were just deemed not to be age-appropriate for young children in a school environment.

We don’t call R-rated movies “banned” because we’ve decided not to show it at schools to kids. That’s why it’s confusing when we switch to books and the word “banned” means somebody, somewhere, decided it wasn’t appropriate for kids in their school or something like that.

the confusion is fake. books are the only time people get fussy about the word. (despite the same conversation occurring every month or two here)

dang bans someone from HN? no confusion. alcohol banned in public? no confusion. weapons banned from schools? no confusion.

books? oh my god, they aren't banned they just aren't allowed

> dang bans someone from HN? no confusion. alcohol banned in public? no confusion. weapons banned from schools? no confusion.

Notice how all of those bans include a specific context? From HN, in schools, in public.

No confusion.

Notice how the only context in the headline is “in Portugal” but the books are not banned in Portugal?

Confusion.

It’s really not hard.

like every post on HN, if you want the context, you should read more than just the headline. its really not hard.

If someone opened a banned speech museum and then it turns out most of the display is just spam comments from HN it would be pretty silly and rightly criticized.

In your opinion is Hustler magazine a banned book becuase its not allowed in schools?

if i said "hustler is banned from my school", and someone came along and said "it's not banned, it's just not allowed", i would laugh.

the word "banned", specifically and only in the context of books, is one of the fucking strangest quirks of HN.

its not strange. Books represent knowledge and ideas. Ways of thinking. An attempt to ban a book is an attempt to restrict freedom of thought and the exchange of ideas. It has a historical context and a ban is generally considered on a societal level, not building specific. Some books are not allowed in school buildings, they are not banned.

Banning books for example has a very different context than banning cocaine. Cocaine use in the United States is banned, Hustler magazine is not. I can swing by the store tomorrow and pick one up legally, I can't get cocaine legally.

Restricting Hustler from a school full of kids is not banning it. Thus the quirk.

If I don't allow Green Eggs and Ham in my house does it belong in a museam of banned books?

>a ban is generally considered on a societal level

no, its not.

>Restricting Hustler from a school full of kids is not banning it.

only if you are making up your own definition of "ban".

by any dictionary definition, it is completely appropriate to say hustler is banned from the school.

If I don't allow Green Eggs and Ham in my house does it belong in a museam of banned books?

its completely normal and acceptable english to say that you've banned green eggs and ham from your house. that's my point.

Pretend confusion, especially over the very terms of the discussion, is a really common shitposting tactic all over the Internet. Though yeah it’s maybe more common here. Possibly because it falls under the category of trolling that doesn’t draw moderator ire (here, I mean, not in general)

If you were to make a list of banned books, yes, it would be fine to include Hustler magazine, as it was (and remains) banned in many places (and because of its historical significance in the fight against censorship).

I can pick one up at the corner store or order it online but its not allowed to sit in the libraries of US elementary schools so would you consider it to still be banned in the US?

No, I would not consider it to be "banned in the US".

I'm more likely to laugh at the implication that Hustler somehow qualifies as a book.

At a certain point it's called lying

Something actually inaccessible? imgur.com in UK, and soon many others

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