It's been going around this week about Pay Pal, which is a pay site meaning they exchange money for products that are purchased through entities such as Ebay and Amazon. They are putting their so called morality hat on and have declared that basically if they look at a book and deem it to be too racy,sexual, violent, etc. they will not sell it. Now, Pay Pal does not "sell" anything. They are owned, I believe-please correct me if I am wrong, by Ebay. While looking around on Ebay there are numerous bondage outfits, sex toys, tons of sex how-to books, Viagra enhancement drugs as well as other sexual enhancers, porn-yes Ebay is selling porn,daggers, swords,violent movies and video/PC games, and the list goes on. Amazon pretty much has similar products. However, the only thing I've heard of that Pay Pal is crying foul over is romance books and books containing sex or violence. Well let's talk hypocrite here because classical books like Wurthering Heights,Dickens works,Tess Of D'Ubervilles, Shakespeare's many works, movie box sets of series like the ever so popular Spartacus and True Blood, Historical books such as the Anne Frank story and China Cry,and the list goes on. Even many books of religion such as the Bible have many instances of adultery and death. I am not big on porn peddlers. I do not consider what I or many others write to be pornographic. I believe that Pay Pal should stick to what it was created for: transferring and posting payments. It's like going to the store and because a cashier doesn't like what you have in your cart, them refusing the sale. Really? Do we want to go that route where we can be told what we can and cannot buy?
This is censorship and the wrong kind. Pay Pal wants to make a statement but it's the wrong one for them to make. It would make more sense if Amazon and Ebay both said they were going to refuse certain books for the idiotic reasons they have listed because they are vendors. I believe that when we start banning books based on someone's own comprehension of their own morality and taste then we are throwing our Constitution down the drain. We're saying it's okay to have our choices mapped out for us. We're saying that all forms of art that are shocking, provocative, or deemed "obscene" in any art form then we are a doomed society indeed. I keep thinking back to that movie, "Pink Floyd's The Wall". So I will close with this....
We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Pay Pal Leave Us Authors Alone!
Cause all in all, we'll break through the wall and where will you be? Broke.
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