Hacker News Reader

Comment by alan_cx | Hacker News Reader

Authors are not generally persecuted for being authors.

Read the book Voltaire's bastards by John Ralston Saul where he writes about persecution of authors and cartoonists throughout history. PEN Intl also keeps a current list of authors targeted by the state, lawyers, or media. Rowling probably wants to be able to write adult content without it affecting her children's books so used a pen name, because phony conservative media can easily freak out and pressure stores to rip it off shelves. Happened before with other authors.

"Generally", I said.

Authors have never been persecuted on mass for simply being authors. No one refuses jobs, housing, etc because one is an author. Gay people have. Hardly any one keeps being an author secret.

Of course individual authors have been persecuted for specific reasons.

Tell that to Salman Rushdie.

He is not being persecuted for being an author. He is being persecuted for what he specifically wrote.

So it's OK to expose a person's secrets as long as that person isn't harmed?

Not sure where you're going with this so I'll avoid the obvious snarky counter-examples...but are you arguing that if someone designates something as a secret, it is absolutely wrong to uncover it?

Not sure where i'm going either! I'm just trying figure out whether I would publish the story if I was editor of The Sunday Times.

Clearly there are cases where exposing someone's secret is the wrong course of action (eg. someone being gay).

Clearly there are cases where exposing someone's secret is the right course of action (eg. a corrupt politician)

What I'm interested in is the middle ground - where exposing a secret does not harm the 'owner' of the secret, but also does not really benefit the general public. In such cases shouldn't we respect the wishes of the person who is keeping the secret?

No.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com