Saturday 25 February 2012

Is PayPal Our Moral Compass?


Well, when it comes to erotic fiction, apparently the answer is “yes”.

This is something I knew nothing about, until I read Marlene Sexton’s blog, and was horrified to learn that earlier this month, PayPal began dictating the content of first BookStrand, then All Romance ebooks and, most recently, Smashwords.

In case you are unaware of what’s going on, PayPal is refusing to do business with these companies, if they continue to publish certain material. The material in question (at the moment) is pseudo-incest; the most popular of which being ‘Daddy’ stories around step-father/step-daughter relationships and ‘barely legal’ erotica; barely legal referring to young women, who are only just passed the age of legal consent.

Consequently, BookStrand AR and Smashwords have all adjusted their ToS to rid their virtual shelves of ebooks containing this content.

Now, of course, PayPal is a company, which can choose to do business (or not) with whomever it wants.

And, on the face of it, these demands by PayPal shouldn’t bother me. I’ve never written any pseudo-incest or barely legal material and, to be honest, neither genre appeals to me as a reader, but that is absolutely not the point. The point is, where does it end? Bear in mind, consenting sex between step-relations or with an 18-year-old woman is perfectly legal. So, what about illegal stuff? Should kidnap, murder, burglary, bank robbery, assault and white-collar fraud be banned from all forms of literature? If so, we’re heading for very bland times boys and girls!

As a writer, or simply as a human being, we have the right to free speech, to freedom of thought and to express our creativities without censorship. There may be many people who find pseudo-incest and/or barely legal erotica distasteful, but once we open the floodgates to censorship, there is no stemming the flow.

Moreover, where does PayPal get the notion that it, in some way, has to police its customers’ and users’ morals? Aren’t we all adults, able to make up our own minds over what we find morally acceptable?

However, my main ‘beef’ with this whole issue is that it’s indie/erotic authors and readers who are being targeted and victimised. After all, will PayPal prevent you from buying a film with sex, violence, rape - there are plenty of ’em that are very ‘mainstream’ - from a big entertainment retailer? My hunch would be not.

PayPal is a huge company that is quite within its rights to refuse to do business with any publisher it chooses. However, the irony of this does not escape me. In attempting to take a moral stance, PayPal is actually behaving in an immensely immoral way, by preventing creative freedom and bullying indie authors and publishers, who are powerless against the might of a huge corporation.

2 comments:

  1. I must agree wholeheartedly. I'm personally squicked by a number of subjects in erotica. But I'm more than capable of not buying or not reading books that contain that.

    What makes me very angry is, just as you said, I wonder how many video copies of "Antichrist" paypal processed in the last couple of years? It has to be the most gratuitously sexually violent film I've ever seen. But who would dare ban Lars Von Trier?

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    Replies
    1. Hey there,

      Antichrist is an excellent example. Personally, I wouldn't lose sleep if Lars Von Trier never makes another film, I find his work offensively misogynist.

      However, I think he has every right to write and direct whatever he wants. And, as you rightly point out, of course, PayPal has processed payment for that and thousands (if not millions) of films just like it.

      Besides, whatever happened to Voltaire’s “I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”?

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