[Zelah Meyer]

Yesterday only one of my three sweet romances was missing from Kobo UK - today all three are!  They are all through Smashwords so I guess I'd better go and put in a help request to get them re-sent.

 

[Gone To Croatan]

You speak of "the public" as if they're all 100% on the same side of this and demanded the books be taken down immediately, and that each and every one of those customers were willing for the store to go down if it meant seeing this done.

The complaints didn't come from "the public," they came from the Daily Mail, and others have said that the majority of comments on the Mail article opposed censorship of legal content. The idea that "the public" were going to be outside WH Smith stores with pitchforks and burning torches over this is just ludicrous.

And yes, I agree that WH Smith have probably made a far bigger problem for themselves than they would have by acting in a calm and rational manner. They've annoyed their customers, annoyed their distributors, annoyed authors who sell through them, and made themselves look horribly guilty of Bad Stuff.

 

[Nathalie Hamidi]

Yesterday only one of my three sweet romances was missing from Kobo UK - today all three are! They are all through Smashwords so I guess I'd better go and put in a help request to get them re-sent.

I guess that's because they're sick and ghiarrrrlglglgllgl and repulsive! SOOOO not like my tentacle stories!
Which seem to be still there, by the way.

Seriously, this is so beyond ridiculous.

Hugs, don't despair, I hope they put them back up quickly!

 

[Zelah Meyer]

I guess that's because they're sick and ghiarrrrlglglgllgl and repulsive! SOOOO not like my tentacle stories!
Which seem to be still there, by the way.

Seriously, this is so beyond ridiculous.

Hugs, don't despair, I hope they put them back up quickly!

Oh, I'm devastated. I'm selling nothing there instead of... nothing!

Still, it's the principle of the thing.

 

[portiadacosta]

I put in a help request at Smashwords, for my non taboo erotica. But was told that just because they *are* erotica, Kobo deem some elements of them objectionable.

 

[Jennifer R P]

Actually - the British law *does* require that response.

W.H. Smith could still be prosecuted over those titles even though they took them down immediately - the law there still holds retailers *criminally responsible* for obscene material. The equivalent to the DA has said they aren't going to prosecute, but the fact remains that they have to be 100% certain the don't sell anything that might remotely be deemed as obscene.

Also, their contract with Kobo means Kobo gives them commission on sales in the UK - so Kobo, despite not having a physical presence in the UK and thus being protected somewhat - has to 100% guarantee nothing obscene will ever be found by anyone. I DO think that taking down the entire site was stupid, but it may have been the only way they could avoid prosecution.

Which means that Kobo's market share worldwide is going to go down if they actually stop publishing any erotica (as opposed to region-locking, which they may be legally obliged to do). They were already in trouble

In the long run, it's Kobo and WH Smith's this hurts, not us.

Smashwords is trying to get my titles back up (the only "sex" in either book is non-explicit partial female nudity).

 

[Mysterio]

But what was actually illegal about this content? Maybe the rape stories occupy a grey area, but none of them were real incest or had underage characters. Even the worst offender with the Daddy rape books, See You Next Tuesday Press, has disclaimers in their books stating all characters are over 18 and not blood related.

The media blatantly lied claiming these works were "pedophilia." I haven't found a single book they linked in their stupid articles proving this. They just made up their story as they went along and blew things out of proportion.

 

[mrv01d]

Heads up: BN is deleting accounts. No appeal. No resubmission, just boom gone.

I haven't been hit yet, thank goodness but you can bet I'm going in and scrubbing everything clean.

I suggest you do the same.

 

[Gone To Croatan]

W.H. Smith could still be prosecuted over those titles even though they took them down immediately - the law there still holds retailers *criminally responsible* for obscene material. The equivalent to the DA has said they aren't going to prosecute, but the fact remains that they have to be 100% certain the don't sell anything that might remotely be deemed as obscene.

You really think the British government would prosecute WH Smith over 'dirty books'?

That would seem like a great way to finally put an end to the Victorian-era 'obscenity' laws.

 

[B. Justin Shier]

Per the Obscene Protections Act of 1959 Wiki:

"The Act created a new offence for publishing obscene material, repealing the common law offence of obscene libel which was previously used, and also allows Justices of the Peace to issue warrants allowing the police to seize such materials. At the same time it creates two defences; firstly, the defence of innocent dissemination, and secondly the defence of public good. The Act has been used in several high-profile cases, such as the trials of Penguin Books for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover and Oz for the Schoolkids OZ issue."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscene_Publications_Act_1959

Not a lawyer, and definitely not a solicitor, but it sounds like it would be a hard prosecution. They would have to prove negligence.

B.

 

[Guest]

Just to be a conspiracy theorist for a moment (this is not based on any actual evidence or insider knowledge. Just speculating wildly for purposes of my own general amusement):

Amazon started to clean up it's listings of erotica months ago (as we all know from the ongoing threads here on KB). Almost as if they were preparing for something big to happen.

Now if I recall correctly, wasn't it Amazon that actually "alerted" the justice department to the whole Apple price fixing thing? I seem to remember there being some controversy

Wouldn't it be interesting if the concerned citizens who alerted the media to all this erotica actually were linked to Amazon? Kobo has a much stronger presence in Europe than the U.S. and is a serious competitor to Amazon there. And while all of their competitors are blindsided as the hounds start sniffing out all the erotic books on their sites, Amazon has already "cleaned up" their house in advance...

 

[SandraMiller]

You're a scary good conspiracy theorist, Julie...

 

[SunHi Mistwalker]

Just to be a conspiracy theorist for a moment (this is not based on any actual evidence or insider knowledge. Just speculating wildly for purposes of my own general amusement):

Amazon started to clean up it's listings of erotica months ago (as we all know from the ongoing threads here on KB). Almost as if they were preparing for something big to happen.

Now if I recall correctly, wasn't it Amazon that actually "alerted" the justice department to the whole Apple price fixing thing? I seem to remember there being some controversy

Wouldn't it be interesting if the concerned citizens who alerted the media to all this erotica actually were linked to Amazon? Kobo has a much stronger presence in Europe than the U.S. and is a serious competitor to Amazon there. And while all of their competitors are blindsided as the hounds start sniffing out all the erotic books on their sites, Amazon has already "cleaned up" their house in advance...

Ha! Actually...hmmm, this really sounds plausible.

 

[Guest]

You're a scary good conspiracy theorist, *****...

We Sith usually are...

 

[Lummox JR]

The conspiracy angle is interesting, but realistically I don't think Amazon would do something that could hurt them in unpredictable ways down the line. Filtering objectionable content has to be a very difficult task for them, and it's not one they'd want to see expanded.

What I suspect to be true is that Amazon had some really clever people keeping an eye on trends in the market, and saw the first stirrings of the uproar before it really went big via the Kernel and the Daily Mail.

Another possibility here is that those goofy dino porn books going viral is what triggered this landslide. I hadn't heard of them till a few weeks ago, around the time that it would have made sense for Amazon to start moving on a new policy. If Amazon took a look at the state of their erotica marketplace and noticed they had some really horrific titles lurking there (not the dino porn per se, but the even ickier stuff), they might have realized others would do the same and there'd be an inevitable backlash. Hence the policy change, and hence the inevitable backlash.

 

[Zelah Meyer]

With most major shifts in the way a company does business, it's a case of following the money.  Wasn't the last erotica crack down due to the payment providers?  I would suspect that they've been making rumblings again and that Amazon have just been quicker on the ball than the other companies when it comes to preparing for a possible ultimatum.

The now banned material has been making a lot of money for the companies.  I may be wrong but I don't think they'd implement such a blanket ban/policy change just for PR.

 

[Jack C. Nemo]

What Kobo should have done:

1. Reiterate that erotica involving those below 18 is forbidden.
2. Specify that erotica revolving around incest, PI, bestiality, non/dub con etc has to be placed in the Taboo section. Advise aggregators/distros and KWL publishers that books placed outside of the category will be blocked, and may be grounds for account closure.
3. Give the partners the ability to block entire (sub)categories. If this applies to both trade and the indies complaints should be few. Publicly list which categories are blocked by which partners.
4. Advise suppliers that categories or titles may be region blocked to comply with that regions laws. (duh) Responsible corporation, blah blah blah
5. Add a Mature Materials filter. Default existing database --outside of children's books-- to being flagged. Let suppliers update, and change upload process to include flag setting. Provide coherent guidance as to what Kobo expects to have the flag on. Even better if the filter returns a response advising you to change settings for mature flagged stuff when you search the way Drive Thru does.

I'm not an MBA or anything, but this seems like it would have worked a heck of a lot better. Might even have improved their market share based on how many people Amazon has aggravated lately.

Unless Zelah's right and it's Mastercard again. In which case, a class action lawsuit for tortious interference should teach Mastercard to mind their place.

 

[swolf]

Amazon has already "cleaned up" their house in advance...

Not quite. The purge going on now at Amazon is at full bore. Every day more lists of authors are having their catalogs decimated over ticky-tacky crap that would not have been remotely considered a problem a week ago.

There is no 'advance' here. If Amazon was in on it, then they didn't prepare adequately.

 

[Terrence OBrien]

I respect that there's lots of room for opinion on whether the censorship was good at all (I'm not sorry to see those particular books go), and on how bad an issue it was, but you're still going back to the J&J thing.
People weren't fearing for their lives over this

.

I am still going back to the J$J case. That's because it posed a sudden threat to the company and involved pulling instances of products from a much larger set. That isn't negated by the fact that books didn't kill people.

And just because the problem was solved doesn't mean it was solved well; they had other options for dealing quickly with this, and took decidedly the worst one. Then they blew up at their business partners and a community that has undoubtedly provided them considerable income. They didn't think this through at all

How do we know their decision making process? I'd suggest it doesn't matter. Only the action matters. This isn't a personal thing. How they arrived at their decision is immaterial. We may never know.

Meanwhile, shutting down in a panic causes all kinds of other problems.

Again. We have no basis to call panic. And even if it was panic, who cares? Action matters, not the names we call it. Good and bad decisions can both be made in a panic. Good and bad decisions can both be made through serious deliberation. Labeling a process panic tells us nothing about the relative effectiveness of the action. Labels are evidence of nothing.

It makes your customers who were going to buy all kinds of other, perfectly legitimate content have to turn elsewhere. You may not get those customers back. It causes huge and immediate losses in revenue, likely far more so than would be lost by damage to the brand for inaction, and definitely more than would be lost by brand damage after taking far more moderate action

.

I agree about customers and revenue. But I have no reason to presume taking down a dozen books and announcing the company will host Daddy while it thinks about the rest would lead to less brand damage.

Business relationships are hurt in the process, too, especially with the distributor they fobbed all the blame onto. And all that lost revenue, damaged relationships, and clear inability to handle the situation gracefully translates to shareholder poison

.

I agree about relationships. I haven't checked stock prices.

Solving a problem by creating others of at least as big a magnitude isn't really a solution at all--not if you could have avoided it.

I agree. What we don't know us if taking down a dozen books and thinking about the rest would have avoided it.

For saying results trump intentions, you're looking at only the most immediate result, not all the others that will fall out of this.

Of course I'm looking at immediate results. That's where the immediate threat is. Looks like they have neutralized that one. Would taking down a dozen boks and announcing thoughtful consideration have done the same?

You speak of "the public" as if they're all 100% on the same side of this and demanded the books be taken down immediately, and that each and every one of those customers were willing for the store to go down if it meant seeing this done

No. I haven't said anything like that. Straw man.

. I know that sounds like a strawman, but I really don't see how a lot of your arguments for "immediate and drastic action" stand up without that assumption being made.

Agree. Strawman.

We're still on the J&J recall merry-go-round. But this was probably not the first priority for most of their customers

.

Agree. I'm sure they all have higher priorities. I sure do.

Amazon did things completely differently. They usually know what they're doing. They handled the situation and kept most of their authors happy, by having a lot fewer false positives, and kept their customers happy by leaving the store up.

Amazon did do things differently. They were purging books before this stuff hit the media. Threads here demonstrate that.

The fact that there's an obviously right action and somebody else took it is pretty solid evidence WH Smith's super-extreme reaction was the wrong one.

If WHSmith had already initiated a purge campaign, I agree they would have been facing a different challenge. I also recognize a difference in the legal liability of the two companies.

But it's also valid to say that, just as a rule of thumb, the most extreme reaction is pretty much always the wrong one. Also, so is pointing fingers publicly and blaming all of self-publishing, as they did.

I don't rely on rules of thumb when faced with a specific situation.

How does the word "unprofessional" keep sliding out of this conversation? I mean can we at least acknowledge that WH Smith dropped the ball on how they communicated this, if nothing else?

I don't know. I haven't used the word. I don't know what it means.

Their shareholders. Their other customers who are so inconvenienced they'll take their business elsewhere. Their distributor, who they basically flipped off. WH Smith does not exist in a vacuum where they and the specific customers who are fired up on this issue are the only people who matter.

Disagree. The legal system is not a customer and can never dismissed.

And even among those customers, many wouldn't want the site shutdown outright. Among everyone else, they've just displayed an extreme lack of professionalism and made blatantly bad decisions that can only be justified by tortured analogy.

I agree customers are inconvenienced. Again, I don't know what professional means. I look at actions, not self-selected tags people wear.

The fact that Amazon exists in a different legal environment is largely immaterial. The British legal system isn't so backwards it would demand such an immediate and extreme response; it might well have demanded something heavier-handed than removing the specific titles, if there even were any legal issues at stake, but they had to have an option short of pushing the Big Red Button.

There is a significant difference in terms of the First Amendment. One of the reasons the First Amendment was included in the Constitution was a dissatisfaction with the British treatment if books. That works differently in the two countries. I don't have sufficient knowledge of the UK laws to conclude what option provided the best legal protection.

I will of course grant you that Amazon is in a better position, but when their competitors shoot themselves in the foot that makes things pretty easy on them. Besides, Amazon would have been in a much better position to survive an extreme response, like for example Kobo's, which was almost as terrible as WH Smith's.

I agree Amazon is in a better position.

I share your curiosity, though, regarding Amazon's apparent preemptive strike. I suspect something was in the wind long before the Kernel blew this up--not just by a couple of weeks but by several. It takes time to implement a policy change without a call to urgency. This means whatever was brewing probably started in early September at the latest.

Agree. As I mentioned in some other posts, filters cannot be applied unless there is data for the filter to look at. Thats why an adult opt-in is so difficult. The similar actions by WHSmith and Kobo are consistent with a lack of such data. I wonder if Amazon has been quietly working on the data files so a filter can deliver up the books they want to purge. If so, they have another powerful competitive advantage. But I have to acknowledge, they don't call to confide anymore.

 

[CoraBuhlert]

I put in a help request at Smashwords, for my non taboo erotica. But was told that just because they *are* erotica, Kobo deem some elements of them objectionable.

Several of your books were previously published by Black Lace, weren't they? Which means that they would have been available at W.H. Smith anyway, because - to repeat it - W.H. Smith has no problem selling erotica in their brick and mortar stores.