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Amazon fail: straight outta Bantown?

So. Amazon did something that caused homosexuality-related books to become much harder to find through their system. Given Amazon's market position that is a big deal for anyone buying or selling such books. Some say it extends to feminism-related books, or certain other kinds of books; I'm not fully convinced of its scope. Most people agree that it doesn't extend to much if any heterosexual porn. There is also much debate and speculation over exactly what, technically, Amazon did, and to what degree the books were automatically as opposed to manually selected. I'm sure nobody on the Net will be surprised by what happened next. The part that interests me is an item by "tehdely" in which he claims that the whole affair was orchestrated by trolls - and that so were Strikethrough/Boldthrough, Nipplegate, and some other massive instances of Teh Drama. I'm interested in such things, of course, so here are a few thoughts.

(13 April 2009)

Child porn panic claims another victim

This isn't even so unusual anymore: high school students exchanging naked pictures of themselves, school administrators concerned, one saves a picture as evidence, the picture isn't actually pornographic even by Loudoun County standards, but OMG HE'S POSSESSING CHILD PORNOGRAPHY!!!!, zero-tolerance, life ruined. Note that Loudoun County is the same place where they had the filtering software lawsuit in 1998; as one of the smarter commentators on the Wired article points out, if you're going to subject children to that kind of repression, what do you expect them to do a few years later when they're young adults? This kind of disaster is inevitable as long as we think it's a good idea to ban the mere possession of speech. Freedom of expression must be absolute. See also my comments from a few years ago on Nymphet and instigation, which I'd been meaning to move to my new site code and now looks like the right time. As I said then, if we treat the normal sexual behaviour of human beings - which absolutely starts at an age well under 18 - as a frightening aberration, then we guarantee that we will be frightened pretty often.

(8 April 2009)

On Kodomo no Jikan and instigation

A great deal has already been said about Seven Seas and Kodomo no Jikan/Nymphet. People who want to know about that stuff already do. There is just one thing relating to that mess that I'd like to comment on here; it concerns a point in Jason DeAngelis's first public statement on the subject. He has since retracted some of the statement, but the principle illustrated is more general than just this one incident.

(31 May 2007)