I live in Springfield, Missouri. Republic isn’t exactly one of our suburbs, but it is the next town over, and just a few minutes away if I should want to visit. My brother used to live there, before moving to St. Louis. So I feel a little remiss in not having commented on the Republic school decision to remove two novels from their libraries in the wake of a Fundamentalist MSU professor objecting to their inclusion. Cory Doctorow posted about the whole thing earlier today on BoingBoing. Essentially, this professor objected to the books being available on the basis that he...

A few days ago, the Supreme Court struck down a controversial California law requiring restriction of violent video games to minors. Without going too deeply into analysis, the court found dubious the claims that violent games were somehow more harmful to minors than other violent media—and since California wasn’t trying to regulate those other media, it was unfair for it to try to regulate video games too. As Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera puts it: While the California law would have added an exception to the first amendment to exclude certain content from protection, in essence...

I haven't been posting a lot, lately—partly because it takes so much longer to write an article by speech than it does by typing it, and partly because I seem to be sleeping a lot more lately. This broken arm is sapping a lot of my energy. I will be having an operation next Tuesday to put a plate and screw in, and after I recover from that I should be somewhat more active. With that in mind, when I do post something, it's either going to be something that I can write very quickly, or something that I...

Here are a couple of updates to the Tolkien story I did a couple of days ago: First, Cory Doctorow heard from the Tolkien estate’s lawyer that the Tolkien estate was actually not involved in Zazzle’s takedown of the “While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion” button—Zazzle did it all on its own. According to [lawyer Steven] Maier, "Zazzle has confirmed that it took down the link of its own accord, because its content management department came across the product and deemed it to be potentially infringing." The weird thing...

At Gizmodo, Matt Buchanan looks at Apple’s recent behavior. He discusses Apple’s decision to require in-app purchase parity, and the fact that it would wipe out the entire profit margin of booksellers such as Amazon. And he wonders what the implications might be for potential censorship of books and magazines. Apple did, after all, pull a lot of “un-family-friendly” apps and appbooks from its store a while back. But on the other hand, it also sells music with explicit lyrics in the iTunes store. Under the new system, Apple may well treat published differently...

It turns out that Playboy is not coming to the iPad in app form after all. Instead, it is going to be a web service that will be available to anything capable of browsing the web, including the iPad, and “will utilize iPad functions”. There will still be a censored app version, since Apple has control over what goes into its store but not what’s available on the web. Of course, it will only be available when connected to the Internet, not at all times as an app would. Not really a surprise, in retrospect. In fact, I should...

Earlier I mentioned that Paul Carr had made an earlier book available for free download in the US when he could not find an American publisher. Now in Techdirt I find a report on a situation that goes one step further: best-selling Brazilian author Paulo Coelho (whom we’ve previously mentioned here and here) learned that his books had apparently been banned in Iran. (The Iranian government claims they are not, but his publisher says they are.) So as quickly as possible, he posted Farsi translations of them on his website for free download. Coelho previously found that “pirating”...

Back in August, I mentioned the censored iPad version of Playboy, which was selling for the same price as the print version but not including any of the risqué pictures. I posited that it might be meant for those people who “only read Playboy for the articles.” However, it appears Hugh has made a breakthrough. Hugh Hefner posted to his Twitter feed that the complete 53-year archive of Playboy (already available collected on a USB hard drive) from its launch to the present day will be coming to the iPad in March—uncensored. So for those who prefer to...

Only a few short months after Mark Twain’s autobiography began to be published in full for the first time (and became an unexpected best-seller), one of the most famous controversies spawned by his most well-known book is also being revisited. Twain scholar Alan Gribben is producing an expurgated version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn with offensive words such as “nigger” and “Injun” replaced by less offensive alternatives. Gribben explained that he felt people (including his own daughter) were being too offended by the use of these words to be able to enjoy the books. ...

A discussion thread on Amazon’s Kindle Community forum notes that Amazon has begun removing some previously-published books or stories from its store, and from the Kindle archives. Readers who have previously downloaded them to their Kindles can keep them there, but cannot re-download them (and will be refunded the price of purchase assuming Amazon can still find the purchase record). The story whose removal sparked the discussion was an erotica title called Wicked Lovely by author Jess C. Scott. The tale dealt with incest, and involved a love scene between a 17- and an 18-year-old. However, Amazon would...

It’s been a while since our latest “Apple censorship” story, so here’s a mention of Apple rejecting a digital magazine from its app store because the magazine was solely about the Android operating system, a rival to Apple’s iOS for primacy in the smartphone and tablet world. The article points out that other magazines that are partly or mostly devoted to Android are still available in the store, but publisher Brian Dixen thinks that the fact his magazine was entirely about Android was the deciding factor for Apple’s rejection. This isn’t Dixen’s first brush with app store “censorship”, either;...

Update: Marcus reports that CreateSpace subsequently apologized and said this warning should not have been sent. On Tuesday, writer Michael N. Marcus submitted the manuscript of his latest book, The Brainy Beginner’s Guide to Self-Publishing, to the CreateSpace print-on-demand service for printing. As one might expect, Amazon came in for some mentions—indeed, given the effect they’ve had on the self-publishing landscape, it would be surprising to see any treatise on self-publishing in the present-day that didn’t mention them. Marcus said that the mentions were “approximately 99% positive.” CreateSpace sent him the following response: The interior file submitted for this title contains text referencing...